you told me to go back to the beginning

it is december. the snow has fallen two feet deep and the sun has set. it is one of those nights that i believe only exist in towns like ann arbor, when the sky should be dark, but the snow clouds are low enough to reflect the lights of the city, and so the sky somehow turns a deep, impossible mauve. and we are all twelve or thirteen and bundled in our snowpants and mittens and scarves, blissfully trapped in the two hours of darkness we are allowed without adult supervision, until ben brainerd's mom comes to pick us up at 9:30. the cold is biting, our lips are chapped, and yet we tear off our coats and flush our cheeks and wrestle in snowbanks and sweat and laugh and tackle. it is december, and i am spending ben's birthday with all of our closest friends, tumbling towards something infinite.

twelve year old me climbs a deep embankment with emily and onny. everything looks like a postcard--the silhouettes of the trees, spindly and solemn, the backs of my best friends' heads. we have gone up and down this hill three or four times already, which of course translates to not enough. onny turns around and smiles at me.

two years ago, i was a girlfriend. onny and i would talk on the phone for hours, whisper into the receiver until one in the morning, learning our language. but even then my eye would wander, eleven years old, to the face of samuel gattis, and i told onny i wanted to be alone for the summer and called sam the next day. now eighth grade, three failed romances later, i found myself missing the three hour conversations, the language i had found with no one else. it is impossible for me to be any less hyperbolic--at the time i was sure i had found my true love. i was living in a movie and this was the part where the girl wanders lonely through the streets, staring up at his third story window, watching the lights go out, hanging her head in tears.

emily dives onto her sled halfway up, unable to wait, leaving me alone with onny. he is still smiling at me. my heart is doing double pike dives into my stomach. i try to concentrate on how cold my toes are and stare at anything but him. he stops walking. i am aware that we are alone on a snowy hill, beneath a pink moon, two lovers reuniting. i half-hear violins playing. i think i see fireworks.

"carol."

he, incredibly, is still smiling. my mouth won't work.

"do you want to go out with me?"

ah, the phrase of phrases, the words of legend. different in every school, in every town, the words we speak to ask someone out, go steady, be girlfriend and boyfriend, be together, are the words that echo back to us from the bathroom mirror, the words we whisper into our pillows at night, to that invisible someone, that onny had whispered to me over and over in my dreams.

i was speechless. "sure." meanwhile burying my head in the snow sounded like a great idea.

the rest, as they say, is history.

i write this because i just talked to onny on the phone for four hours, and remembered why i love him so much. it's not that i want to date him or kiss him or sleep with him, it's a much deeper and more honest love than that. he is one of those friends i can count on one hand, and one of the first people i was able to say that about. so this new year's, onny, i will raise my glass to you.

signs

as we drove into the cemetary this morning to visit my father's grave, i saw this sign subtly placed by the side of the road.


make yourself necessary to someone.

--ralph waldo emerson


just wanted to share that with you. you are all necessary to me. thank you.

not even a mouse

somehow i always get insomnia on christmas eve. it's always happened, although i think my reasons for it were different when i was younger. but ever since i discovered staying up late was cool, christmas eve is when it hits me. silly, since one wants to be awake and alert on christmas day. it's like the get out of jail free card day. it's the only day where you can be like, "but it's christmas!" and your mom is like, "...yeah it is!" and you want to be there for that. and your family gives you sweet gifts, i mean nobody knows you better than they do, right? and you don't want to be yawning. because there is no way you are going to take a nap on christmas. because every relative you have is wanting to ask the same three questions (how's school/your boyfriend/your job? when are you getting a better education/boyfriend/job? whatever happened to your old education/boyfriend/job? we liked that one so much.) and every seven year old cousin you have is going to be bouncing on your bed (look what i got/will you play this with me/what did you get/want to watch me fart with my knees?) and your mom is going to keep coming in and saying things like "it's such a beautiful day/why don't you play with your cousin/when are you getting a better boyfriend/job/education?"

i have digressed. the point is, christmas is crazy, at least in this household, and i need all the rest i can get. so why do i deprive myself of it every year? especially when now i sort of feel like i'm going through the motions. no one in our family kids themselves about santa. so why make such a big deal of it? tradition.......i guess tradition is important to me, really. i do derive quite a bit of pleasure from all the christmas decorations my family gets out every year and the big tree and christmas tablecloths and glasses and candles and advent calendar and thousands of cookies and gingerbread houses and plum pudding and prime rib....it's just sometimes i wonder why we go to all the trouble. i quickly find the answer in the smile on my grandmother's face when we sit around the fire after dinner reading christmas stories.

a burns tradition for years, every christmas we haul out the christmas stories. my mother reads The Polar Express (yes it was a book first), my grandmother reads the Bible (the birth of jesus and the visitation of gabriel), my cousin reads "A Visit From St. Nicholas" ('Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house...) and I read O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi. it's always pretty dorky and we all know that, but it is unbelievably comforting to hear my mother read the same story to me when i'm almost 22 as she read when i was 2. and it's the only bible story i find really magical. and i LOVE the gift of the magi. i mean i looove it. one of the best short stories ever. so funny. and so good. and so redeeming and life-affirming. you should read it immediately.

i don't know what i'm talking about anymore. oh yeah, insomnia. i can never sleep because there is so much weight put on the next day. not just your typical weight. it's like, christmas comes once a year. it's sort of the beginning of a six-day period that's really a limbo--between years. once you hit christmas, you're pretty much done. that's it. no turning back, no regrets allowed, the year has happened, happened, for better or worse, and you just have to accept it. and being home for the holidays (not that i haven't been at home for five months already) is stagnant. nothing to do but think. about the coming year, the past year, what you've left behind, what lies ahead. what paths have you altered/destroyed/ignored/leapt to? what paths will cross again? all these and more are the heavy, heavy questions that weigh on my mind. *yawn* i'm actually getting sleepy while typing this. maybe all i needed was to BLOG on christmas eve, yeah, that's what i've been missing!!

what are your christmas traditions? mine is go to bed by 3 am the morning of.

have a good one.

i woke up this morning to snow. allow me to quote my favorite play of all time, Angels In America, by Tony Kushner.

Louis: Look at that heavy sky. It's purple.

Belize: Boy, what kind of a homosexual are you, anyway? That sky isn't purple. That's mauve.

Belize exits. Louis is left alone onstage. He looks up at the sky as the snow begins to fall.

Louis: Huh. Snow.

in the play, the snow falling is representative of protection from above, falling to blanket the earth, trying to stop us from moving. the whole idea behind the play is that god has left heaven (in the great san francisco earthquake of 1801) and the angels all figure it's because of humanity's "progress". we boom and explode and move forward at an incredibly startling rate for beings who are eternal, and we scare the angels. so in 1985 the angels name a prophet, Prior, a homosexual man recently diagnosed with AIDS, and visit him and proclaim that it is his duty to STOP MOVING. stop evolving, stop dying and birthing and fucking and killing and living, just stop moving. stop progress. not stop time, no no, that's up to god, but the hope is that humanity will stand in one place long enough for god to see how beautiful we really are, and then he'll return. well, the conclusion of the play (which is really just the first part of a two parter) is that Prior visits heaven, and returns their prophetic implements to them, and refuses his "duty" as a prophet. as he puts it, "i want more life."

more life. what a beautiful thing to want. more life. who doesn't want more life? i want more life. but the stillness of the snow makes me want to stop moving, to unfocus, to leave earthly things like work and studying and planning and eating behind and just...sleep. flop. lie there.

it really is so calming to watch it fall. a thick coat of ice falls one flake at a time. it's (forgive me for this) kind of like those plastic thingamajigs they sell at the Discovery store, that are filled with purple or pink liquid and their whole purpose is to flip them over every so often and watch the liquid drain from one end of the compartment to the other in tiny little drops.

here's a better metaphor. the world is like an hourglass, and now, at the end of the year, it turns over, drains its white particles back down here to melt, and prepares for the new year.

christmas cookies and candlelight

something about today made me change my mind about the holidays. lately i've been quite down about them--down on capitalism, and consumption, and just generally feeling depressed about SPENDING so much money on things i know my family will love for a week and then forget i gave it to them last christmas, and next year ask for the same thing (that happened). and i spent the day at Twelve Oaks (huge big annoying stressful casino of a shopping mall) which only depressed me more, because it's all made to feel so special and yet every store feeds you the same lines and everyone looks tired and everything reminds you of every christmas movie/memory/song you've ever seen/had/heard, and there are no windows, only skylights, and so much traffic and everyone is in a hurry and i just had a terrible time, really. and i couldn't find anyone's gifts.

but then i came back home, and took a fifteen minuute nap, and went out to grab a drink with my favorite college professor, buzz alexander. and by god if he doesn't inspire me to be a better person more than anyone else i've ever met. talk about a mentor. i am able to talk to him about things i don't tell anyone else. he draws things out of me that i didn't know existed. and he gives me advice, GOOD advice, advice i'm not scared to act upon. and he believes in the power of art, like i do, and the belief that it can change the world and our lives and others' lives and that it betters everything around everyone. i'm being very...ebullient. and gushy. but it was just so nice. and then i came home again and my mother had made pizzocheri (buckwheat noodles, potatoes, swiss chard, cheese, all baked into a casserole-type dish that is among the more nourishing things i've ever experienced), and we ate and chatted and i drank wine and felt like an adult and my mom said she doesn't really think of me as a child anymore. and then the phone rang, and it was my great-uncle, my grandfather's brother, who despite his brother having passed away when my mother was 11 still is part of our family. and he had the amazing news that one of my first cousins, who was thought to have been schizophrenic all his life, has "turned a corner" and has a girlfriend and has reconnected with his father, my great-uncle, and everyone is crying and reminiscing and i turned to the proverbial audience of my movie of my life and said, so that's what christmas is all about.

it's not about christ, not for me, and it's not about money, and it's not about red and green sweaters and kitsch (the way milan kundera defines it--a mask of beauty hiding something undeniably shitty). it's about love, and family, and good smells, and inspiration and turning points. i never thought i'd say this, but i found the christmas spirit in me tonight. and i will be damned if i let some stupid christmas song shake it out of me.

so, shout-outs:
malinsk: let me put my love into you.
max: i watered your plant today and felt better.
chris: boh. give me your toblerones. how is the comforter working out for you?
pat: thank you for that day making cookies--relaxation is something i could get used to!
susie: (and sam?) at long last! i hope you two have a wonderful visit. hey, merry christmas for what it's worth. i feel like i can say that since it's different in england. also--when are YOU visiting? :)
avani: hi! i have jones' number if you still need it.
graham: hey guys, let's go to an amusement park! hope it isn't haunted! andrew's drinking tang (i'm drinking tang!)!
mitch: how's your rib?
whoever else (friendsters?): may your days be merry and bright and not sucky and annoying. call me anytime.

xoxo,
carol

from now on our troubles will be out of sight

you know what song just kills me this time of year? "have yourself a merry little christmas". it's just so melancholy. every romantic comedy that takes place around christmas uses this song as background to the scene where the lead actress is wandering through busy, snowy New York streets at night, and pausing in front of the window displays, dismally watching other couples laugh and point and kiss, knowing that they are literally going to go home and dream by the fire, or she stares at the china pattern she and Tom Hanks were going to have, and her eyes well up with tears. and the camera cuts to him, sitting in their favorite restaurant, on his fourth whiskey on the rocks, staring at the television which is showing ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, and the bartender looks on knowingly (bartenders always look on knowingly).

it's just such a sad, mournful song. it's so innocent. somehow that makes it sad, to me. so hopeful--from now on our troubles will be out of sight. if only it wasn't set to that tune. so easy to slow it down, burst into tears.

of course, the faster, more cheerful ones are irrespressible and wholeheartedly irritating. and fake. but this one has some soul behind it. so maybe it's also my favorite one. not because it's depressing. it reminds me of my childhood, i guess, which always makes me a little melancholy, just like looking back on anything beautiful makes me feel. is this entry ridiculous? maybe. if i wasn't bored at work listening to fourth graders practice it on their clarinets in the next room, and maybe if they hadn't been playing it for the last half hour...maybe i'd be a bit more peppy.

hey, happy holidays. :) may your days be merry and bright.

in a boxing fight with heaven

nothing really to report. i'm just in the mood to write.

wish i was hanging out with someone right now, at a bar, in a corner, pumping money into the jukebox and playing all the good stuff, giving people the onceover, ordering more rounds, inviting the waitress to sit down with us, discussing work bullshit and love bullshit and life and death and sex and war and peace and euchre strategies (all the essentials) and maybe dancing a bit, towards the end of the night. around closing time the owner of the bar would sit down with us and pour us a few shots of jack, pat us on the back and say something like, "the world needs more of you kids." then we'd pound 'em down, head to diag before it closed and buy 40s and wander around continuing the conversation, laughing falling down wrestling drunk, end up on a porch couch somewhere and have it be one of those nights where we stay up all night, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. maybe we'd stay up till the sunrise and walk to frank's and have some eggs over easy and hashbrowns with plenty of hot sauce. we wouldn't be tired, or we'd be so tired we couldn't possibly attend to reality as something tangible and instead we'd float through the streets, haunting doorways and shop windows like ghosts. maybe around 10 am the day would suddenly stretch before us like a hotel hallway, monotonous, umoving, too bright and too like our grandmother's curtains, and we'd stumble onto a bus and make our way to someone's bedroom and crumple into the sheets, not caring if our legs tangled or our breath mixed, too sleepy to notice, too tired to care. we'd fall asleep in each other's arms, wake up in the afternoon sunlight on opposite sides of the bed, rumple each other's hair, and go our separate ways.

feel like doing that? let me know. i'm always up for it.

she's on time

i am sitting at my desk, trying to finish aaron's portfolio for tonight's session. he has to illustrate the cover so i have to get it to him tonight so he can finish it by saturday which is the reading!! exciting. i hope he's excited. you never can tell with aaron. he is very secretive. like a paper crane with a poem written on it, but it's all folded inside, and you can only see the parts he's showing you, and you know if you could just figure out how to unfold it you could read everything that's there. but then he wouldn't be able to fly on his own. so maybe he needs to read it himself. ahh....as usual the metaphor has gotten away from me. ba-di-da.

i am having the kind of feeling today that you can curl up inside. warm and soft. safe and happy. the sky is eye-color and the snow is falling softly and the light is yellow and my house smells like a christmas tree and i'm munching peppermint bark and editing poetry. god, i love skipping work.

want to hear a joke? a man went to an art museum and had an art attack!

*sigh*

someone take me waltzing in a ball gown. i am feeling romantic.

times like these...

maybe if i type it out it'll get out of my head. although it pretty much sums up how i feel today. hmm. ch-ch-ch-changes.

i
i'm a one-way motorway
i'm the road that drives away and follows you back home

i
i'm a street light shining
i'm a white light blinding bright burning off and on

it's times like these you learn to live again
it's times like these you give and give again
it's times like these you learn to love again
it's times like these time and time again

i
i'm a new day rising
i'm a brand new sky to hang the stars upon tonight

but i
i'm a little divided
do i stay or run away and leave it all behind

--foo fighters

i just saw "closer", mike nichol's new movie starring natalie portman and jude law. those two deserve oscar nods for it, but the movie itself was miserable. cruel. why do we do this? why do we watch people make love into some horrible monster? it's exhibitionism. it's voyeurism. it's disgusting. the whole movie was just about terrible, cold, sad, lonely people, and we watch them make themselves sadder and lonelier and colder. it's so depressing. i mean, when i was 15 love was about carrying me away. love was a cowboy on a unicorn with a dozen red roses and a ticket to ride. and now? love is blind, complicated, vague, lustful. love has become a word again. love is fleeting and love is empty. love has no spark. i fell out of love tonight.

jesus, someone get me some chocolate and red wine.