Holidays Are the Hardest Hours of the Year

This line from a Marissa Nadler song, "Diamond Heart," might be the lyric of the season. Though I'm really not as sad as that probably makes me seem. Being alone actually got quite pleasant after a couple of days, as I put more work into the handful of songs I'm working on right now. Today, I didn't speak to anyone in person. I ventured out to Giant for butter to make mashed sweet potatoes tonight, but even then I used the automatic checkout, as I usually do. I think if I forget the idea that going through a whole day without speaking to anyone in person is somehow "wrong," things are actually alright. Speaking of the mashed sweet potatoes, they were delicious. I could barely believe it, seeing as I didn't really know what I was doing.

Sweat and beer last night led to strange dreams. I shouldn't invent people in my head, especially when they are hopelessly inaccurate versions of people I know in reality.

A year ago today, an ocean away, my uncle died. I still remember scenes from that day: his crying family, his shellshocked-looking brothers, sitting in the hospital hallway, blood spilled across the pale, sterile sheets. I remember not crying; I remember becoming exhausted from both the drama and the jetlag and falling asleep while sitting outside the hospital room. I remember the disconnection: how the fluorescent lighting did not dim or flicker, how the doctors' trained cool never wavered, how none of the sharp edges and corners of the hospital walls twisted with the agony in the faces of the mourning family.

It was that way when dad died too: it was a sunny, early morning, the scene completely detached from the catastrophe unfolding in it. The objects of the world utterly unsympathetic to the people living, dying in it. And I felt the disconnection of facing something that was too immense for a person to understand; I couldn't speak, I couldn't cry, because what was pounding at my mind was far more than could be channeled through a mortal soul and body. It was only when I returned home and realized suddenly that dad would never be there again, never come home from work, never watch TV on the couch, never sit with us at dinner, that I was able to cry or express--feel--any sort of emotion. But by then it was selfish: it was the void in my life I cried for, the vacuum left when a piece of the present became sealed irretrievably in the past, when the piece was only a hint of all that was lost. And that infinitesimal fragment was all my mind could hope to process.

Come to think of it, I've had that feeling twice in my life, the feeling of coming home to the emptiness of someone who will never be there again. At least the second time I was drunk.

Hm. Too much sad. I suppose the point of it all is, there's no real hard-and-fast rule about Christmastime. Oftentimes you spend it with your family. But sometimes you find yourself alone in a city on a different continent. And sometimes your uncle dies. We make up all these rules about meanings certain days have, but it doesn't take much for them to be nullified.

Last night I went to the Talking Head for the Spank Rock Christmas-Eve Eve party. The Death Set played too. I was one of only three people riding the last shuttle bus down to Mt. Vernon--the last bus before Christmas Eve. It was more of an excuse than anything; it's easier to stop being so painfully aware of myself when I'm lost in a packed crowd trying to knock me over.

First, though, you've got to cross the line beyond which it's no longer possible to stand alone and awkward in a corner. Fortunately, the place was packed with hipsters, as usual, many of them wearing big round plastic glasses in tribute to the main act. I watched them drop and frantically search the floor for their glasses all night (fortuitously, I'd decided to wear contacts). I was a little surprised there were so many people there; living in Charles Village with all the students, you'd think this entire city was just abandoned during the holidays, or any other occasion when people went home to their families. Sometimes I forget people--kids even--live here.

Anyway, it was loud, and dirty, and foul-smelling, and a glorious time. A guy who looked like a younger, more heavyset version of James Murphy tried to pick a fight, and a tall guy in glasses shoved him toward the back of the room. I didn't see him again. Started out with solid DJ sets and when The Death Set hit people flipped out. Dancing, as it were, was more or less impossible toward the front of the room; up there, where I was for most of the night, movement was more or less massive and tidal. You couldn't get away from warm and sweaty (well, you could--but what would be the point?). Crowd surfers dropped overhead without warning. I held a few people up from slipping and fell to the floor once myself, but I landed on top of four other people, so it was okay. A gaunt, pale guy in a black jacket asked me as we were waiting in the restroom line, "you know where the drugs are at?" I don't know what it is about me that prompts everyone from small MICA girls to strung out tall dudes with dark hair to ask me for drugs in restroom lines. I went back into the crowd and prevented a short girl from falling, and ended up dancing pretty closely with her near the stage for a while. (I put my face against her shoulder; I hoped she didn't mind.) The MC from Ninja Sonic, who was standing next to us, grinned at me and gave me a high five; I guess he didn't realize I didn't actually know who she was and would never see her again. Nonetheless, some superficial closeness is better than nothing. Around 2AM I walked out after recovering my hoodie and jacket--which had been stashed early on and miraculously survived the multitude unscathed--somehow slightly more peaceful than I was going in.

Look! I got the brandy/eggnog ratio right this time!