The Return of the Moth-Mand

The Patriots have their Elvis, the Celtics their leprechaun, my mascot is the moth.
I’m not sure which moth, which genus, but I think you know the one. The creature that’s supposed to be long-dead, especially this far into the wintry weather, but is still there, clinging onto the clapboards, ready to sneak in, to bask in the warmth and dance in the excess wattage, whenever anybody leaves the door open just a few seconds too long.

‘Shut the door, you’re letting the moths in’.

That’s a familiar refrain around our house.
Is it just us or, as I suspect, are there quite a few of you experiencing this phenomena this winter?
Usually, I think, these pesky, non-descript, blandly brown little winged critters are gone after the first frost.
I don’t think there was anything out of the ordinary this fall. I don’t remember the summer as being particularly hot, or humid.
But for some reason these otherwise uninteresting specimens are showing unusual hardiness.
Or maybe I am projecting.
Projecting: that’s a psychological term I learned back in tenth grade, a millennium ago. It means, basically, seeing things the way you want them to be.
I perceive these brown spitballs with wings as particularly hardy this year, because that’s what I want to be.
A survivor.
My little blue species is supposed to have been frozen out of existence long ago.
I have been barely hanging on, clinging to the door and to the fading belief that the light is getting stronger, the climate warmer.
In my delirious state I often fantasize that I have made it inside and found an enormous wool coat that, tiny bite by tiny bite, I consume it it’s entirety.
A wool coat, or as Dick Nixon said in his famous Checker’s speech, ‘a respectable Republican cloth coat’.
But when the wind blows and threatens to rip me off the wall where I am clinging I wake up to the truth that the odds are against me.
I should be long gone by now.
This climate is not conducive to the health of my kind.
Wool or cloth is, however tasty, without any nutritional value whatsoever.

You’ve got to give these little guys credit.
Did you ever flick at a moth clinging to the wall, and have them just turn to dust? Man, that is dedication to a cause.
It’s like a science fiction film: the prehistoric creature fights with every ounce of energy to escape its fate and -- millions of years later, is discovered where it made its last stand: a pile of petrified bones and footprints in the dirt.
Right up to the end they were carrying on.
That’s how it feels sometimes, to be a liberal.
I’m flying on fumes.
I’m held together by wire and wax.
Extinction is just around the corner.
But if the door opens just a crack, and the thinnest spear of light slips out, miraculously my wings come to life.

Lately, perhaps, there seem to have been more than a few ‘chinks’ of light, more than a few glimpses of the warm, well lit world inside the big house.
Is it the light at the end of the tunnel?
Maybe, maybe not.
But even a few reluctant admissions about Iraq, a handful of plea bargains from corrupt lobbyists, and a dollop of outrage that our Homeland Security turns out to mean that the government is spying on you in your home - even these scraps of light are enough to keep up my strength, allow me to hold on a little longer.
On these intermittent flashes I have made my way from the scrub oaks in the front yard, to the steps, to the door, and inside onto the wall.
I am lying low here, my wings folded tightly, barely a splinter of brown on a beige wall, above eye level.
Out of sight, out of mind.
If I can just stay here, undisturbed, for a few days, maybe weeks, I can regain my full strength and take on bigger challenges, take bigger bites out of the wooly mammoths of this new age of conservatism.
For now though, I have to conserve my energy.
For now, I have to rest my wings.
.
Keep your front door shut, the lights off, the closet closed.
Beware the Moths of Spring!

Start the new year 'trashed'

Janus isn’t my trash man, but he should be.
Janus is the two-headed Roman god of doors, and January, supposedly, is his month.
The basic concept is easy, even for those who never took Latin: here we are, at the end and the beginning, and it’s time to make a choice.
On one side is the past – a calamitous year for many, and on the other side is, at the very least, the hope that things will be better.
Seems like an easy decision.
And God bless those who can take such a sanguine, philosophical look at life. All praise to those who can simply turn the page on their life and start anew, even if they don’t manage to actually pull it off by year’s end.
As for me, I can hardly get to the front door, much less the New Year, for all of the junk.

Maybe junk is too strong a word, too negative: call my end of the year condition instead, a mess, an accumulation, a disarray or disorganization.
For me, and I suspect for many others, the year doesn’t build to a crescendo and then refresh itself to the accompaniment of French Horns. Rather the year is a runaway train that only stops its squealing when it leaves the track and crashes head on into a concrete abutment.
Again, I have to say that I know it’s possible that there are those who have everything together: on the day after Christmas they have already taken the tree down, written their thank-you notes, and are enjoying a Pina Colada on the Tahiti deck of the Enchantress of the Seas as it purrs out of Miami Beach.
Happy New Year indeed!
But for me, I’m still stuck on the ‘pooped’ deck as the year ends.
Once again my December didn’t follow a clear, well-lit path to an impressive solid oak door with a carved alabaster knocker in the shape of a god’s head. My year ran amok, like a coed fleeing from an ax murderer, emptying her pockets as she fled.
2005 steamed through spring, lost its breaks in the summer, careened madly through the fall, before finally crashing down December’s aisles.
Consequently, I don’t have a clear view of the future. Instead, I have a house full of empty packages, torn wrapping paper, old toys, old Sports Illustrated magazines, and discarded computer peripherals.
To make matters worse, the really old junk – the allegedly important papers and designated ‘collectibles’ that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away last year at this time, were recently moved from their normal piles to free up a sleep sofa or otherwise help establish the illusion that our home was safe for the annual influx of relatives.
If there is a door here someplace, I can’t find it, much less squeeze through to a hopeful future.
My future is on hold until I can get to the dump.

Is there a patron saint of landfills, and a special prayer to invoke her blessings?
Is there a father of waste incineration with his own plaque in the town square?
Is there a Rufus Refuse comparable to Dewey Decimal, or a biodegradable Roman god of trash?
There should be, there must be: there will be.
My path to the immediate future – and probably the paths of millions just like me, cannot be navigated without first dredging the muck from the channels of the recent past.
And considering the amount of trash American’s generate, the first Monday after New Year’s Day should be declared a national holiday.
Trash Day?
Incineration Day?
Dump Yours Day?

Whatever, let’s party at the dump!
Let’s take all of last year’s excess and compact it down into a manageable bale.
Let’s break a bottle of champagne over a brand-new dump truck, and bang pots as 2005 is hauled away.
Let’s sing and dance on the top of the landfill mountain until we can hardly stand, then drive home in the dark and point out the shooting stars that are the embers of a year of waste sent up the chimney like a prayer toward heaven.
Lord let me make it to the New Year, and let me be able to tell when it arrives.