24: time comes
Take a tree and stand it up inside your house.
Put the wide end at the bottom, please. Put the tree in the corner of the room. Don't be surprised when suddenly the corner looks like the centre.
Does it seem odd? It shouldn't: trees, unlike televisions, refrigerators and pelotons, are real. But it does feel odd, standing next to the internal tree, and we understand. It felt odd to us too, at first.
Ensure good branch distribution by rotating the tree. The branches might prick you. Don't be offended! The tree is shaking hands.
Hang small lights on the tree, it doesn’t mind. Some people wind their lights around the tree, and some zig-zag the lights down the visible half. Which one you do says everything about you, or it doesn’t.
Now plug the lights in. Ah, yes. Remove those broken ones, and put them in the bin. Take them out, google 'fairy light recycle where', then leave them on the side, just for now. It's alright, you’ll work out what to do with them by next year.
Tinsel is an eel made of plastic light. It's not very fashionable now, but at this time of year it's not fashionable to be fashionable. Put it on yourself like a scarf. Notice how it makes you feel, and don't find out it makes you look. It's okay if you don't want to take it off.
Bauble is a word for a useless but pretty thing. Make sure the smallest useless but pretty things are toward the top of the tree, and the bigger useless but pretty things are at the bottom. This will give the effect of a cascade of useless prettiness.
You've found the rusty tin, good. No, they don't make those pink wafers any more (turns out the colouring was a low-grade stimulant), but the tin is still important. You'll need the ornaments: the children riding rocking horses, the angels playing in a band, the ceramic pear. They'll all feel like handling a memory, but you might not know what they're memories of. That's okay, perhaps they're memories of themselves. Perhaps all times like these are one long memory, and always will be. Perhaps you're always eight.
If you feel like you have too much stuff to hang, put new things in front of old things. Don't worry if you can't see everything, just know that it's all there.
Try to keep the colours distributed. Two identically coloured baubles or ornaments touching is a no-no. Unless it's not. You might decide it's a yes, and that nothing is a no, for once.
Go have a cup of tea now. As you're making it, let the tree catch you by surprise. It's good when you walk in on it. It's perfect when you forget it's there.
It's time to make the star. Traditionally, you’d use hydrogen and helium, but if you have cardboard you'll be fine. There's an old package lying around somewhere. There's a ruler, or the edge of an old loyalty card. There's a gold pen with a dried-out tip; shake it, don't lick it.
Careful now.
Once, at a festival, you signed up to a workshop to cast a silver ring. A token to yourself, though you didn't yet know what it was a token of. You knew exactly what you wanted to engrave in the band, though: a fleuron, that leaf-on-a-stem glyph that means everything and nothing in books that you love.
The process was simple: stamp a shape into the silver, bend it into a hoop, then heat it to complete the band. You carefully twisted a tiny piece of wire into the leaf-shape, using the smallest pliers the workshop lady could find. You held the wire shape against the silver with masking tape. You swung the hammer down, but — even now you would say you were too careful — something skittered under the blow. When you lifted up the tape, a wonky image of failure was driven into the silver. You hit it again, and made it even worse, even weirder, and the lady wouldn't let you have another piece.
They sent you to another station, to bend the silver to fit your index finger. The station was next to the lake; you wanted to chuck it in, but they would have seen you. You curved and pressed it against a steel drum the size of your knuckle. To make sure it was right before firing, you had to try it on. You looked at that mess, on your clumsy hand. It was like looking at the sun.
Your turn came, and they sent you to a third station. The lady took your garbage ring and placed it in the centre of a flat stone, like it mattered. Then she lit the blowtorch. The flame played over the smooth part and the marked part, darkening the silver to tungsten. As green heat seeped down the channels you'd made, you felt a great sense of fixing-in-place. You felt yourself say, "this is." And by the time the ring dropped into a bowl of water to cool, it was yours.
Any ring is a promise. This ring is a promise: everything that happens has happened, is laid into time and deserves its place in time. You can carry it with you, and it will not weigh you down.
People will say that a good star has five even points, exactly the same as a star you might be given for good work.
A great star is whatever finds itself on the top of your tree. A great star is a promise, too.
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