Christmas night

Alison B says, "I'm finally starting to miss my DTWOF characters a little bit. I checked in to see what they were up to today, and got this skimpy glimpse."

Peter A has resolved already. He'll be taking a ride in a hot air balloon in 2009.

I'm rather of a mind to do some resolving myself.

It's hard as a fat person sometimes to get into resolutions. So many of so many people's, like many of mine, back in the day, revolve around fat, and for most of you reading I imagine I don't need to get into how messed up that whole mindfuck can be, as itself and in its legacies. But do I value something about the renewed focus of resolution. My inner admirer of Jewish culture (a.k.a. my Jewish wannabe) likes the new year assessment, amend-making, rededication et al. that goes on around the highest of holy days. I like how seriously that tradition takes it. Much more than champagne and "finally gonna lose these [sic] 25 [sic] pounds!"

A new year. The observed new year's day seems to be a holiday that doesn't migrate around the calendar between cultures real casually, you know? I mean they say Easter got attached to a Springtime pagan festival (pardon me if I'm ignorantly using "pagan" incorrectly---I don't know what I'm talking about there, to speak of, or enough really to speak of it, but hey, you know I don't always let that stop me) and Christmas is said to be located 'round about now cuz it's close to Saturnalia, or festival of the harvest, or something. Grafting holidays onto each other and all, historically, strategically. But when New Year's comes doesn't much move.

Of course when Christmas is, variously, remains fairly immovable, now that it's been nailed down for these hundreds of years.

Funny, I wasn't setting out to talk about Christmas, per se. Just Pete got me on to that.

I sense a good year coming for me.

I have a very strong suspicious streak in me with respect to my own optimism. Whenever it rears it head, I'm on it. It doesn't escape my notice, and I'm not oblivious to its associations, like the association it has with any forward-thinking that feels no need to undercut its own hopefulness. I think the reason I sense a good year is that I feel, right now, as if I'm less uncomfortable about seizing power than I've been in a long, long time. Power, not control. A power that's wrapped around, oddly enough, not giving a shit.

If it does happen and I seize extra handfuls of that power in coming months, that could be more interesting than scary. All depends, like everything else, on how I look at it.

I hope I dream tonight about Mona and Anna and Michael Mouse and the gang. I've just been back to visit them. 4th or 5th time I've gone to see them in San Francisco, via their BBC/PBS adaptation, there on Barbary Lane, and here and there else in the city. I've read about them too, but that TV version with that Scottish director and the woven-in ongoing homage to Vertigo and to the city itself---it brings the characters alive in all the improbability of their having come to have such rich lives to begin with, in the newspaper column.

I love Mrs. Madrigal's story about San Francisco as Atlantis, about those drawn to San Francisco as seeking to return to the sea. shmizla, if I could find it written out online I'd have transcribed it for you here, to see you on your way, to sprinkle on you a little of the magic fairy dust of that idea of the place.

This one's for you, O. I know you love this song.

Christmas night

Alison B says, "I'm finally starting to miss my DTWOF characters a little bit. I checked in to see what they were up to today, and got this skimpy glimpse."

Peter A has resolved already. He'll be taking a ride in a hot air balloon in 2009.

I'm rather of a mind to do some resolving myself.

It's hard as a fat person sometimes to get into resolutions. So many of so many people's, like many of mine, back in the day, revolve around fat, and for most of you reading I imagine I don't need to get into how messed up that whole mindfuck can be, as itself and in its legacies. But do I value something about the renewed focus of resolution. My inner admirer of Jewish culture (a.k.a. my Jewish wannabe) likes the new year assessment, amend-making, rededication et al. that goes on around the highest of holy days. I like how seriously that tradition takes it. Much more than champagne and "finally gonna lose these [sic] 25 [sic] pounds!"

A new year. The observed new year's day seems to be a holiday that doesn't migrate around the calendar between cultures real casually, you know? I mean they say Easter got attached to a Springtime pagan festival (pardon me if I'm ignorantly using "pagan" incorrectly---I don't know what I'm talking about there, to speak of, or enough really to speak of it, but hey, you know I don't always let that stop me) and Christmas is said to be located 'round about now cuz it's close to Saturnalia, or festival of the harvest, or something. Grafting holidays onto each other and all, historically, strategically. But when New Year's comes doesn't much move.

Of course when Christmas is, variously, remains fairly immovable, now that it's been nailed down for these hundreds of years.

Funny, I wasn't setting out to talk about Christmas, per se. Just Pete got me on to that.

I sense a good year coming for me.

I have a very strong suspicious streak in me with respect to my own optimism. Whenever it rears it head, I'm on it. It doesn't escape my notice, and I'm not oblivious to its associations, like the association it has with any forward-thinking that feels no need to undercut its own hopefulness. I think the reason I sense a good year is that I feel, right now, as if I'm less uncomfortable about seizing power than I've been in a long, long time. Power, not control. A power that's wrapped around, oddly enough, not giving a shit.

If it does happen and I seize extra handfuls of that power in coming months, that could be more interesting than scary. All depends, like everything else, on how I look at it.

I hope I dream tonight about Mona and Anna and Michael Mouse and the gang. I've just been back to visit them. 4th or 5th time I've gone to see them in San Francisco, via their BBC/PBS adaptation, there on Barbary Lane, and here and there else in the city. I've read about them too, but that TV version with that Scottish director and the woven-in ongoing homage to Vertigo and to the city itself---it brings the characters alive in all the improbability of their having come to have such rich lives to begin with, in the newspaper column.

I love Mrs. Madrigal's story about San Francisco as Atlantis, about those drawn to San Francisco as seeking to return to the sea. shmizla, if I could find it written out online I'd have transcribed it for you here, to see you on your way, to sprinkle on you a little of the magic fairy dust of that idea of the place.

This one's for you, O. I know you love this song.