... and i'm back. not quite so brown as i hoped. my skin has to do that sunset thing: blaze red then fade to a more civilized twilight. there wasn't enough time to devote to that process when there were so many relatives to be visited, smalltalked with, laughed with, appeased, and met. my father and i spent the majority of the five days together, reading or playing the word game, driving or watching movies. i dragged him to Two Towers, he dragged me to the everglades. boy am i glad i waited til i got home to see Adaptation -- had i seen that bit with the gators, i'd never had had the courage to do an airboat tour. recently having seen Jaws was bad enough.

i think about death too much. it's terrible. my imagination has never let up on me. any new piece of stimulus i feed my brain it translates into a creative new potential torture device. in my room as a child i learned to sleep on my back rather than curl up facing the closet (from which monsters/demons/eyeless doll-children could emerge) or the window (through which robbers/rapists/eyeless doll-children could climb). facing one invited its attackers or demonstrated that you naively expected to sleep safe. more than death even, i've always feared being proven naive, dying from a cause i didn't imagine beforehand.
i'm better now. no i'm not. i sleep 5 times better when there's someone else in the room, tho when people ask me don't i mind having a roommate, it's easier to smile and illustrate how awesome brigid is ("you know she brought three bottles of bootleg liquor with her from home? and we play procrastinatory computer games together ...") i have learned how to sleep on my side. that's something.

and THAT's a tangent. the point is i'm home. liz and i ventured out into the cold today to see Adaptation and it was wonderful. a glorious meta-meta-meta movie that poked fun at conventions while showing that, if you're brilliant, no rules need apply. for erev-xmas, a holiday my family has never celebrated, my mother is making a goose. between cooking and preparing and packing for the trip to florida she and my grandparents are taking tomorrow, she hasn't slept for the past two nights. tonight my grandparents are coming over to not-celebrate with us (we have champagne!) and it will be beautiful: her feasts always are. she will fuss that i'm going hungry, even though every other plate on the table is piled high with vegetarian stuffs. i'll want to record every moment because, between good films and good novels -- franzen's Corrections fell open in my lap every spare second in miami; now i'm three-quarters of the way through the equally compelling kavalier and clay -- i'm filled with frenzied inspiration. how it'll manifest itself ultimately i don't know yet. perhaps in grant writing, cuz really that's what i have to get done.

merry xmas out there, to those of you who like that sort of thing. and to those of you that don't, dance, laugh, and thank god that tomorrow, once again, that one innocent, purely happy little day, will bring the xmas song season to an end.