Garibaldi's restaurant

The best time of the holidays are the days right after the holidays.

It's a propitious time for reflection. I should know, having chosen to take some time to look back on the year just concluded with an open heart and being rewarded with a little feast.

Two things of personal consequence happened in 2014: 1) I experienced boredom for the first time in my life and 2) for the first time in my life I began to see things first as images and then as words.

Having never been bored before I was taken aback by its power, the way it overwhelmed everything I saw or heard, felt or touched. After two or three days of boredom, however, boredom began to demand much more than I was capable of giving, so I asked for help. A kind woman, who'd previously suffered a similar affliction, suggested that I meditate, but I'd forgotten how to meditate. "Meditate anyway," she said, and I did, and soon enough the meditation overcame the boredom and I became myself again, Brooks Roddan, an interested observer of boredom wherever it may be found.

The other situation faced in 2014, that of seeing a thing first as an image and then as a word, has yet to be resolved. It feels as if language is forsaking me, but I could be mistaken. Time will tell.