How curious that it happens now, when the leaves have all been shed and the feast is behind us and we just want to close the door against the wind and stir the soup and ease into the cozy chair and open the oversized novel that was too much to contemplate just a few weeks ago, the long nights still more a cradle than a cage, how curious it is that this is the moment chosen to over-stuff our hours with acquisition and consumption, that rest is not ours to embrace but the can that we kick down the bedazzled road of this holiday season where so little is holy and everyone is already angry that there are not enough checkers at Target, the winners disappointed that the losers are still among us, shaking their incessant bells and getting in the way of wherever it is we think we're going.