Merry Christmas! (Or, I saw this movie you should see)

I forgot to say before, please see Charlie Wilson's War.  I don't want to say much about it until people have seen it, but I want you to see it so I can talk to you about it.

If that's not reason enough... Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic and deserves your admiration and love, and is acting in this movie.

But seriously.  See it.  Then talk to me.

Merry Christmas some more!

Merry Christmas! (Or, random thoughts about my dad)

Here I am, with my beautiful new laptop, having beautiful internet in my very own room at home, and sadly my phone has to be plugged in around the corner and so at the moment is more awkward to reach than my computer... but no one is online to talk to me!  

Well, that's not true... the automated moviefone thing is online, as is a person I only knew on the internet except for meeting once randomly in person, but with whom I have not spoken in any context for some time.  And some people have away messages up.

But that's ok, because I have a delightful public-private inner-thoughts-to-outer-world forum to keep me company until my phone gets more charg-y.  Or until I just get sleepy, and forget all the things I wanted to say, which seems to be happening right now.

It's been an interesting time so far.  I spent some time with my dad Saturday and Sunday, and that was good.  It's amazing how I can feel so connected to him in some ways, like when we talk about the big stuff of life and the spirit, which sounds, as such things often do, ridiculous to write down, except that I really mean it... and I feel like we're really sharing something important, and special, and we are... and then I try to tell him what I think about a movie, or what I'm doing next year, and it seems like we're communicating but suddenly he says something that has all the ingredients of what I've been saying, but isn't actually my point at all... and then I look at the picture we took together using Photo Booth, and our smiles do the same thing to our faces, our noses are the same, the stretch of our mouths... or I see him almost-sleeping on the couch and he moves his thumbs against each other restlessly like I know I do, or his feet, absurdly high arch tucked and rubbed against the top of the other foot, and that is just like me.  And somehow all these things, connections, disconnections, awkwardness, alikeness-- come from the same person, in not even 48 hours.  And he tells me he wants to know more about what I like and I am quiet, not knowing what to say.  (We are talking about music, should I give a list?)  And sometimes I think he creates an idea of me quite fully out of pieces of true things, and sometimes I think he knows me in ways I cannot know myself.  

This is ironic, since part of our discussion, a real heart of it, was how you cannot see yourself, how if you look for the self you cannot find it, that self-hood itself (ha) and everything around it is created... but if there is no self, created by whom?  This is one of those statements that should maybe come with warnings, like the Cloud of Unknowing: Don't read me or think about me unless you're way gung-ho about the whole spiritual path deal.  Or maybe I'm just posturing.  (Who is?  Ha.)

He can irritate me intensely, and I am terribly afraid of displeasing him in some small way.  He bought me beautiful shirts-- in size extra-large.  I take a stupid pleasure in being more educated than he is, in thinking silently that I understand more while he speaks.  Especially about eastern religions.

I can see now how crippled he has been, because he is not so big and full of power as he used to be.  When he hugs me, he is still the strongest person in the world, the whole world still goes away.  I think he is trying to protect me from his family, or protect himself through me.  I think he has systematically removed me from their reach... he may be fully conscious of this, or totally unconscious, or I may be incredibly wrong.

I love him.  I can't decide if that statement encompasses all of this I have said before, or not.

So, there's actually a lot more I have to say, about things other than my dad, like... my mom!  ;)  Well, and how Christmas Eve went and how it was singing at Mass and how my extended family is responding to my telling them about Charlotte with a wonderful outpouring of love and support so far... and how I got some cool presents at Jeff's family's party, and... well, but this will all have to wait.

In the meantime, the merriest of Christmases to you all!  I love you!  (Or I don't know you, but you can have some love too, if you want!)

Notes to (or on) the World

It's snowing. It's been a real winter so far. Several real snowstorms and lots of trudging through ice and snowbanks and having big snow crystals in my hair and finding my feet sliding out from under me. I think I'm happy about it. Or, it's a pain, and it's cold, and it's difficult to get around, but somehow I feel some kind of strange joy when I am out in it nonetheless. I did this morning, anyway.

And last night, I was cutting home through the woods and I suddenly noticed how beautiful it was, and how quiet. I looked over and I saw this small tree, thin and curvy and bent, standing by itself. I felt like this was Christmas, or Advent, this was something I'd been waiting for. So I stood there looking for awhile, debating whether I wanted to get my feet wet to go over to it, and then I got off the path and trudged through the snow, and when I made it to the tree I fit perfectly against the curve of it, with my arm around the side and my cheek against the cold, wet bark.

I hope this will do as a resumption of posting. If I have any faithful readers left. ;)

A more petty note is that people should not write in library books. Ever. Especially not if it's a complicated novel like Midnight's Children which I am trying to read and pay attention to, but somebody has underlined half of every page and written crap like "style" and "shows failure of omniscient narrator" all over the margins. Just read! Don't write! Or, if you must, get your own book or write notes on a notebook or something.