To boot, C&R have sent The Good Doctor 3 awesome pics of R taken right before their trip to the theater on Christmas Eve. Thus, we all received a late Christmas present from them. Thank you C&R!
***
Doc here, a man who some say has read thousands of reports in the 7+ years of The Journal being "a thing". Some reports are entertaining. Some reports are informative. Then there is a report like the following one from senior Journal scribe, Johnny Paradise.
This report is going to stick with me, like a latent image. Speaking for myself, I could not only visualize Johnny's report in my mind's eye, I could also sense it. This has happened maybe 4 or 5 times since I pushed The Journal out on an August afternoon in 2009, and it catches me off-guard each time. The smell. The light. The touch.
This report is sticky, and I hope it sticks with you, the good readers of The Journal. And trust me, it's worth every minute you dedicate to reading it.
Please welcome back, the awesome Johnny Paradise.
***
WHY ARE YOU HERE ON CHRISTMAS EVE...?
Prologue
This is a story about Christmas.
It is written in an ambivalent mood, informed by an ambiguous ethic, set in a somewhat desolate town in a theatre near a church on December 24th, and though the time if not the place would suggest it, this tale will not conclude with a summary pronouncement of the true meaning of the holiday. There are no angels here, and no elves, no sleigh bells and no sacraments, neither miracles nor metamorphoses. It comes, ungarlanded by moral parable or religious theme, unless it is the simple axiomatic parcel of heavenly wisdom which holds that salvation is the business of sinners, and the concomitant revelation that to receive what is sacred you must sometimes stand vigil through a pageant of the profane.
Though it may be a tale that shouts LUST and THRILLS and HUNGER and WANT, essentially it is a story of LONELINESS; it is a story of lonely people in a lonely place, lonely souls adrift, together and alone, in a season of uncertainty. The circumstances may be modern but the story is as old as Adam, Eve, and Apple. Not so far removed are we, in our contemporary culture, from that ancient world we hear described each December in carol and hymn - that WAITING world; and whether it be Bethlehem or Bedford Falls or a Glass City, it is our world - and in it we are wanting, seeking, hoping, reaching - needing (in that sad and proud and lovely human way) a light in the darkness; or maybe a moment of pleasure to answer a lifetime of pain.
This is a story about Christmas, because Christmas is a story about hope, and hope, after all, is wherever you find it.
So, on a quiet night, shepherds, sages, kings and commoners, panderers and prophets, libertines and lovers, viceroys and voyeurs, the meek and the mighty, the merry and magnificent may gather anywhere to seek a salve for the vast loneliness to which the human heart is heir. They may meet under a star, or even in a once-proud theatre...
So…
PART ONE
Why are you HERE on Christmas Eve?