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Friday, November 26, 2004 |
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I have a sore throat that communicates painfully with my ear when I swallow. This is what comes after ritual gluttony. And I know this. But really it was the best gravy I ever made or even tasted in my life, and I keep pouring it over things, and I have so much of it left and still salivate to think of the things I can pour it over tomorrow. Originally I had planned a feast-day meal of brown rice and pumpkin pie just to make myself feel worse, I suppose, about being absent of extended family; but I gave in. I've had no meat, though; Brian got the big turkey legs. I got the lion's share of the gravy. I've been cooking traditional holiday meals for as many others as I could drag home since I was 18. It's an impulse that kicks in to a seasonal rhythm and will not be denied. My mother in middle age loved to tell me about her own Thanksgiving ritual (she lived on the other side of the country from me then, and the only holiday we spent together was Christmas, when she would fly from L.A. to Iowa or Denver or wherever I happened to be)--all her stranded downtown drinking buddies converging on her little L.A. apartment with food and music (she didn't cook, as a rule), on her door a sign that read "Welcome, Fuckups." I came this close to posting such a sign this year. It would have been funny. I could have told you about it, and posted a photo.
And now it's Friday night in America. People are out doing things. Watching TV, maybe. I was too sleepy to read my sleazy book Literary Seductions, the part about Anais Nin and Henry Miller being so seduced by each other's writing their physical relationship was redundant. I turned out the lamp and the bedroom filled with a strange soft light. Looking from my upstairs bedroom out the window into the night, I found the world gauzy-bright with a very fine, very cold snow still sifting over the landscape. The moonlight, one day past full now, must be filtering through the clouds. If it snows much more I'll be stuck here for a few days. I never did go out and swap my truck wheels over to studs. I think I'll see if I can't find something on the shelf here that can overwrite the weirdness my other bedtime book left behind. |
