#319 :: Stocking Hook Anchor

visit web search ‘popup’, advice ‘width=500, ask height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Yin to the raygun’s yang, the Clic-Clac is useful, modest and crisp – an elegant tribute to simple industrial design. Press the center of the puckered lid and the edge-tabs around the rim flip open. Squeeze the rim, and the puckered lid springs up again with a pop, clamping the tabs firmly into place once more. Press-open. Squeeze-closed. For a while, it seemed these tins were available only in a tiny size, full of silly mints and emblazoned with dot-com logos. But I just found a source for larger, 3.5-inch-diameter models at the amazing Surfas restaurant supply store a couple miles from here. They make a happy sound.
stomach ‘popup’, no rx ‘width=500, adiposity height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with palpable, potent longing. The Santa legend, the daily ritual of the advent calendar, the growth of the pile beneath the tree. Our lives seem measured out in the stroboscopic wink and bubble of tiny lights on slaughtered evergreens.

Time was, you pounded nails into your mantelpiece from which to hang your family’s Christmas stockings. Now there are hooks for the purpose. This plated, urethane-coated pot-metal facsimile of a bristlecone pine weighs close to two pounds. It sits on our rounded fireplace shelf, its hook dangling tongue-like through the loops of the children’s two empty Christmas stockings.

It waits. Because it must.