The Week of Sundays

Thanksgiving break has come and gone. Funny, these American holidays: always feel so detached, from the warm family gatherings and hearty dinners, even though I've been around long enough to have developed a taste for dark turkey meat and cranberry sauce. In fact, I'm very fond of cranberry sauce. The past few years--since I came to this country--I've spent Thanksgivings with one friend's family or another: Andrew's (can't even remember his last name, but it wasn't Martin), Aleta's, Zach's, Andrew's (the regular one), Nick's, Granger's, but this year I stayed in my apartment. People can say they welcome me all they want, but I'd still feel like I was intruding, and have. Since I've no family within a continent of here, I suppose it was only justified I finally spent one Thanksgiving alone.

It wasn't that bad. Finally finished my personal statement for graduate school applications. For days I sat at my computer unable to remember why I even want to go to graduate school at all. Change tactics to camping in the library before the sun went down and mainlining some misguided optimism via Stars of Track and Field and Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People and managed to work it out. Met up with Gustavo this afternoon and somehow got the slideshow for Wednesday's presentation hammered out, so I might be going to the Dinosaur Jr show after all. It depends on if the current miasma of stress and paranoia lifts by Tuesday.

Charles Village was dead this week, obviously. But the leaves turned colors, and how. I didn't speak to anyone for over 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday evening. Thursday evening went for a walk west of campus with the Hold Steady and a camera, took some pictures, and then to Stephanie and Crystal's for Chungking Express and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; them's good films. We had a long conversation afterward; I'd say what it was about, but it was one of those cases where more topics were covered than could be recalled later.

I've decided to jump the gun on the seasons this year and start early with the Sigur Rós. No point in holding out, I suppose, when the humidity's pretty much dried up and it's already pretty cold some days with the sky blinding blue. I remember junior year of high school when I used to spend hours doing very little but lying on my couch listening to (), and maybe reading something. Those were days when I still took time out for myself. I've also begun to perfect my spiced cider recipe. I might experiment with adding ginger to it sometime.

I've set myself up for what looks to be the loneliest Christmas/New Year's break in my life. Mom called Friday and I told her I wasn't going home this winter, because travel--is dangerous, yes, but also is very stressful for me. Even notwithstanding circumstances, the mere thought of having to prepare to go intercontinental gives me a headache. I've done it at least twice a year for the past six years, and I still can't stop being paranoid every single time I make the trip. Second of all, this is the busiest winter I've had in four years, if not ever; I'm going to try and get all my application stuff done before finals, but there's no real guarantee that's going to happen, and if it doesn't get done, then I need to stick around and get it done. I don't think I could take having to absolutely finish with everything and get out of town by a certain date. And finally, regardless of what my mother tries to tell me about our financial security, it would cost me at least $1200 for a round-trip ticket home by this point in the year--if I could even get one, which I probably couldn't--and, assuming I went home around the 20th and stayed there for about 10 days (must return in January for research and interviews), that would work out to a minimum of $120/day for me to just be home. Even though I wouldn't be paying for it, it's more than I'm willing to let anyone shell out to have me stare at a wall for a week and a half.

What it comes down to, though, is that if I were in a slightly less stressed out and exhausted state, I might be able to find it in me to get my shit together and make travel plans. But the fact is this semester has been a soul-crusher in many ways, and I'm still trying to build myself back up while attempting to not neglect the half-dozen other things I have to do. I think I need those two weeks to reacquaint myself with the present, make myself comfortable in it again.

I just feel horrible about it, because I know it doesn't matter if it's twelve hundred or twelve thousand dollars, my mother would pay it just to bring me home for two weeks, and I could tell over the phone she was sad that I didn't want to go back. She asked me if I could reserve a ticket but not pay until the day before. I told her I'd talked to travel agents and that wasn't how it worked, they could release your ticket as long as you didn't pay. She suggested every conceivable loophole. I told her they wouldn't work, and they probably wouldn't, but the fact is, I don't want to go home, I don't even want to think about going home, or anywhere else, I just need to not think about anything, completely forget and annihilate myself until I've made it through the next two or three weeks alive. And then try to salvage the remnants. But she'll understand--she thinks I've got some kind of initiative, and I know what I'm doing, and usually it's best to just let me call the shots, and she'll let me make my own decisions even if it makes her sad. And somehow that doesn't help at all. Heart and soul, one will burn...

I hate how once in a while, just to keep my own head above water, I find myself forced to neglect and hurt people who care for me. How I'm forced to turn my backs on them so I can wander off alone in some questionable attempt to hold my own life and mind steady, with a high chance of returning from the journey worse for the wear. Remember the last time I did that? Me too. It was fucked.

Last year's rain didn't fall quite so hard.