A melancholy holiday
It seems these Sunday night shifts are good for little other than updating Livejournal, a task that I have pitifully neglected recently. Seriously, working 9-midnight on the quietest desk on campus, you'd think I could fire up Word, get a book out and do some essaywork, right? Sigh. At least I'm getting paid.
Got a glimpse this afternoon of what Christmas is gonna be like. Here's the thing. My aunt Heidi recently relocated from Sweden to Boston. She is pretty well off, more so here because Sweden is expensive. So she has offered to pay for a return flight to Boston for Christmas. Which means I would get a pseudo-family Christmas. And probably snow. And lots of good food and good drink. But. There are just few enough people staying in SF over Christmas for it to be really miserable, and just enough for it to be really fun and different. I want to stay, to be with Sarah, and everyone else, and get that sense of solidarity, being a pretty long way away from home at that time of year.
I want to go for an early xmas morning walk through Golden Gate Park, whilst there is still dew on the ground and all the hobos are asleep. I want to start drinking early so I spend the day in a happy little haze. I want to play board games with all the English kids, whilst drinking. I want to go to Sparky's for lunch, and eat burgers and fries and drink mimosa. I want to go back, drink sherry and mulled wine and watch Christmassy films.
But.
This afternoon, after dozing intermittently throughout the day, woke up about 4.30, and spent the afternoon doing nothing in particular, killing time until I left for work. And the time dragged. Douglas Adams was right about Sundays. And watching the sky bruise and darken, I knew that this was exactly how it will be, at least some of the time, over Christmas. You can't stay drunk for a week straight. It takes mathematical precision to keep yourself topped up to be perfectly merry all the time, and the more you drink the more that precision diminishes, and anyway you are bound to fall asleep and wake up feeling rough. You can't stay at someone else's apartment watching movies all the time, you have to go home and change and shower and sleep and everything, and all the snatches of time in between all those things, the time will drag and the loneliness will set in. And in those moments you will look around and see nothing, and you will look inside yourself and see nothing, and feel nothing, and be further away from everyone and everything, and you can throw back your head and howl like a wolf and no-one will hear you or understand.
God knows what is must be like for the astronauts on the International Space Station...