The Christmas Kangaroo

First, I don't live in Australia. Second, my eyesight since cataract surgery is very good. Third, I haven't had anything to drink except a half dozen cups of tea today.

That said, there is a kangaroo celebrating Christmas across the street from me.

In broad daylight I can tell that it is not a kangaroo. It's an angel. A sort of metal frame angel with metal frame wings and a hymn book open in her/his hands (I think it's a her, though I'm not sure why I think this. The long dress, perhaps?). Anyway, in daylight it's pretty clearly a seasonally appropriate piece of yard art.

At night it's a kangaroo.

The bushes behind the kangaroo are covered with white lights. So is the kangaroo, except for her wings which are covered in blue lights and from our house the blue lights are not visible, blending as they do into the night. The lights that are on the kangaroo come from the lights on the bushes. There is a tail of them leading to the kangaroo. The hymn book is not a hymn book, it is the kangaroo front feet (paws? arms?).

A kangaroo. See what I mean?

So I've been reflecting on this kangaroo, and it occurs to me that seeing kangaroos across the road is basically what writing is all about.

It's seeing the Bond girl by daylight and turning her into a nurse in New York City with bills to pay and a five year old son at night. It's taking my charm-your-socks-off reporter uncle and imagining what might happen if charm didn't fix a drafty Irish castle with a leaky roof. It's seeing someone else's own Irish castle and appropriating it for Flynn and moving the rooms about and shifting it to a different county and cobbling on a stable for race horses besides.

Writing is seeing potential (and kangaroos) where other people see only what's in front of their eyes.

It's a world that makes sense on its own level where incongruity is interesting, worth contemplating. It is, for example, believing that Sid the cat has his Christmas cards finished when I've just barely begun mine. It's corresponding with him and knowing full well he'll answer. It's fun.

It's work some of the time, admittedly, and play some of the time, of course. I've done it for over 20 years now, and I wouldn't want to do anything else. It beats capping deodorant bottles and teaching Spanish and ghost-writing sermons and copyediting agricultural science textbooks and filling in little boxes on computer printouts -- all of which I have done. They were grist for the mill. They were not particularly fulfilling.

Writing is.

On the blog-writing front, we have a 33rd country which has just turned up - or something that neo-counter thinks is a country, complete with flag (albeit tiny) called Asia/Pacific Region.

I can't google that term and come up with a specific "country" or location. So if you are from Asia/Pacific Region, welcome, and please stop back tell me where you are and how to get a bigger pic of your flag so I can feature it.

I wonder: do they have kangaroos in Asia/Pacific Region?

In broad daylight, probably not. But at night, who knows? If they have writers, anything goes.