a face to meet the faces that you meet

I feel Prufrock-y lately.

Today finds me tired and feeling a bit unwell. A migraine descended upon me Saturday night, and has lasted well into today. Fortunately the headache hasn't been too terrible; but the nausea keeps worsening, and I wonder if I've picked up a bug somewhere.

Yesterday I enjoyed a day of being snowed in -- not because we got a lot of snow, but because the couple of inches that fell possessed the consistency of pudding and Henrietta's brakes need a lot of work -- a bad combination for driving. So I stayed at home, drank a lot of orange pekoe, took a nap, cleaned the kitchen, simmered Marianne's Best Spaghetti Sauce You'll Ever Have on the stove for hours (the local Farmer's Market peddles excellent fresh sausage), and committed what in my family amounts to a nearly unforgivable sin: I put on Christmas music before Black Friday.

Christmas in my family begins on Black Friday, and not a day sooner. From Black Friday to New Year's Day the only music heard in my parents' house is Christmas music. Over the years I've cultivated a selection of "cheater" albums, most particularly George Winston's December and Linus and Lucy; but last year, when I didn't feel like Christmas at all, and this year, when once again I can't wait for all the absurdity and overexuberance and warm fuzzy magic and mystery and unspeakable holiness, I find I like to break these lifelong rules and play whatever I want, whenever the mood strikes me.

So yesterday the Christmas album of choice was this cheap thing Mom and Laura and I bought a number of years ago at (of all places) Big Lots, called Winterlude (it appears to be one of a series, but they're all discontinued), which quickly became a family favorite. All instrumentals, very calming, perfectly suited to a wintry evening with a glass of wine and a good book and a slant-eyed cat drowsing on the back of the couch. In particular the album boasts one of the most lovely piano renditions of "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" I have ever had the pleasure of hearing.

Speaking of couches, it's so great to have my very own, full-size couch. Since my senior year of college I only ever had an ancient and hideous loveseat in large leafy floral prints of brown and orange on a hairy white background, obviously a relic of the inexplicable 70s, which graduated from sheet drapery to ill-fitting slipcovers as the years went on. Ironically, the trailer is the first place in which I've ever lived which will accommodate a couch; the Ivory Tower was too crammed with my other jumbled bits of eclectic furniture, and The State of Denmark too cramped. And while I had grown accustomed to sitting exclusively in my delightful, deep, amazing, funny-looking armchair, I now enjoy the pure delight of sitting on the couch of an evening with books and laptop and cell phone and teapot and papers strewn around me. (And, despite the fact that the couch is in actuality a sofabed, it's a rather comfortable sit.)

I spent awhile yesterday evening laughing at myself. The only laptop I have available at the moment is the ancient doorstop given to me by the college administration my freshman year, which went out of mode about a week after I got it (it's a Compaq, if that tells you anything). It only works sporadically (I maintain that has nothing to do with its catching on fire one Christmas break), but it's better than nothing when handwriting in a journal is too slow and the fiction bug has its mandibles set firmly in my brain and I'd like to be lazing on the couch instead of sitting at the PC. So I pulled it out last night, got it fired up, and started picking through all the bits and pieces of writing I had stored on it from college.

This is always a humbling, embarrassing, and humorous experience. Ninety-eight percent of everything I wrote is shit. For about eighty percent of that I harbor a lingering fondness, and I read those first; some of it even bore the seeds of potential, in idea if not in execution. But some of it was so hideously awful (back in my Christian fiction days...ahhhh, it's painful to admit!...but in my defense I at least wrote dystopic fiction, not crap romance stories) I cringed and laughed and closed it out quickly, groaning, "Ohhh no, Sarah."

The funniest moments came from the content: Most of it was so depressing. I laughed my way through about ten different documents which I remember taking extremely seriously, telling my younger self, "Omigod, it's going to be okay," and telling my present self, "Aren't you glad you're taking pills? Geez."

So there's a time to rejoice in growth. I'm not as crappy a writer as once I was. I have improved, and learned a little about taking myself more lightly. (A little.)

I'd like to start picking up some of the threads of my Clytemnestra project -- a vast undertaking conceived the spring semester of my senior year, when I grew in dissatisfaction with Aeschylus and Euripides and decided the villainous women of mythological history had more to tell than their own evil. I read through some of that last night and it's mostly good. There's just so much intricate organization, I've let it rest on the shelf for about four years now, and I'm not sorry; I think I'm reaching the point where I might be mature enough (or at least on the verge) in character and in skill to do the story justice.

And there's something about writing of a winter evening, the tapping of snow on the windows, the tapping of fingers on the keyboard...

I love the first snow. I love the muffling effect, love the silence, love the beauty of watching falling snow from the warmth of a window. After dark yesterday evening I wrapped myself in scarves (presenting a ridiculous figure in cashmere wraps, a sporty jacket and sweatpants, had it been light enough for anyone to get a good look) and went for a quick walk around the park to revel in the wet chill of an air that barely feels cold, and the harsh caress of a northern wind stripping the day's dreamy lethargy from my face.

There's a magic to walking in the snow at night. In the silence of a sleeping world you can really be alone. The world is crowded, choked with traffic and pedestrians and clamoring with the thoughts of a thousand people, and most of the time a person can only feel alone in the absolute wilderness, or in the anonymity of the city. Snowfall, however, changes a lot of that. People stay indoors; and the darkness and precipitation mask your face from any faces that you meet, so that you don't have to pretend anything. You can let go, and be.

And it's kind of fun and weird to see snow with falling leaves coating its surface. Some of the trees here are still green.

I still have arrived at no definite places for this season of my life -- my living arrangement is temporary and subject to change at a moment's notice; employment prospects are grim (though 'tis the season for part-time holiday retail positions, so hooray, I won't starve!); but somehow I'm not worried -- I have greatly enjoyed this period of rest, the chance to sleep, to recover from a difficult year, and I'm happy to be where I am. I have this increasing feeling that something amazing is just around the corner, and, like a child anticipating Christmas morning, I'm all alight with wondering, and with waiting.