Catching up.
My friends, who had sent text checks over Christmas, called to see me. I kept them at the door like Jehovah’s Witnesses, while I got my coat and boots together. Then we went out.
We recreated a medieval banquet with burgers and milkshakes, and I got the full list of CDs, DVDs, books, games and random curiosities that now defy recall. I’m not going to get all middle-aged about the commercialisation of a spiritual holiday, because that’s the world we live in: like a reality show, God and the corner shop have swapped places. I can’t help thinking we’ve got it wrong though. The impossibility of remembering more than three gifts given to four people suggests a glut of spending more about the denial of the cold and wet than any kind of celebration. So maybe we need to rethink what it is we need in mid-winter, and what could comfort us, rather than things that offer distractions. Maybe I should work on that for next year.
That said, I’ve got a new second-hand printer/scanner, courtesy of Cobber, who got an upgrade; and Fuzz got two Rolling Stone best ofs, so he gave me one of them. I won’t pretend I’m not happy with them.
They all spent New Years day with headaches, dehydration and a ravenous aversion to food – more interested in Andrew’s Resolve than resolutions. The second of January was spent in that slow motion dash of people who’ve lost a day, lurching to recover the bits of themselves they’d let drop. And still they shake off grumbles about never drinking again, as if they’re telling war stories.
Cobber asked “What did you all get up to for New Year’s?” although no one asked why I didn’t let them inside, where Samuel's still lain out on the sofa in yellow smudges. He looks terribly theatrical, in my father’s dressing gown and blankets, the curtains half drawn, and wearing his sunglasses in the dark, even for those who’ve seen his eyes. I had to change the subject, since I’d no wish to hear them telling me that I should be on my own.
Angela says that modern drunkenness is a pitiful attempt to recapture a Dionysian rapture. She says it was pitiful before November but now, since the grapes lost their full potency, it’s also impossible. All alcoholic pursuits are in vain, she says, yet people seem compelled to follow the echo. I suggested genetic memory, but she doesn’t believe in that.
We recreated a medieval banquet with burgers and milkshakes, and I got the full list of CDs, DVDs, books, games and random curiosities that now defy recall. I’m not going to get all middle-aged about the commercialisation of a spiritual holiday, because that’s the world we live in: like a reality show, God and the corner shop have swapped places. I can’t help thinking we’ve got it wrong though. The impossibility of remembering more than three gifts given to four people suggests a glut of spending more about the denial of the cold and wet than any kind of celebration. So maybe we need to rethink what it is we need in mid-winter, and what could comfort us, rather than things that offer distractions. Maybe I should work on that for next year.
That said, I’ve got a new second-hand printer/scanner, courtesy of Cobber, who got an upgrade; and Fuzz got two Rolling Stone best ofs, so he gave me one of them. I won’t pretend I’m not happy with them.
They all spent New Years day with headaches, dehydration and a ravenous aversion to food – more interested in Andrew’s Resolve than resolutions. The second of January was spent in that slow motion dash of people who’ve lost a day, lurching to recover the bits of themselves they’d let drop. And still they shake off grumbles about never drinking again, as if they’re telling war stories.
Cobber asked “What did you all get up to for New Year’s?” although no one asked why I didn’t let them inside, where Samuel's still lain out on the sofa in yellow smudges. He looks terribly theatrical, in my father’s dressing gown and blankets, the curtains half drawn, and wearing his sunglasses in the dark, even for those who’ve seen his eyes. I had to change the subject, since I’d no wish to hear them telling me that I should be on my own.
Angela says that modern drunkenness is a pitiful attempt to recapture a Dionysian rapture. She says it was pitiful before November but now, since the grapes lost their full potency, it’s also impossible. All alcoholic pursuits are in vain, she says, yet people seem compelled to follow the echo. I suggested genetic memory, but she doesn’t believe in that.
posted by The son of Edward Fold at 2:25 am
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