Great Expectations

Well after that big intro, there was NO road kill story this year. I know you're all very disappointed. In fact, there was very little drama of any kind. I stayed true to the red wine rule, and added a little extra to the tradition ( the pre dinner nap), which managed to keep my contact and therefore my annoyance to a limit.

I have spent this holiday realizing how much I truly am an only child, how much I eschew the company of others. While my relatives were in the living room telling stories ( who knows maybe I simply missed the road kill story this year) I stayed in the kitchen reading. I had no reason to stay away, except I had no desire to join them. I spent most of the holiday enjoying my mother's dsl or finishing the Sorrows of Young Werther and moving on to the Collective Memory by Maurice Halbwachs.

The trip to upstate for many reasons was confusing. The days cooking, the people I met while I was there with mother, the restaurants and stores made me think that maybe I had cut country life short when I was younger. I thought of all my friends who never moved out of CT, all the people who had never lived anywhere but upstate and I wondered about living that kind of life, had I made a mistake coming to NYC all those years ago? Should I have stayed and had a quiet life? I saw so many dynamic people who had moved there, and I wondered, that the life I seek here and do not find might be there.

But then, the last day was quiet, and the depression that always descends upon me in the country finally emerged. When I realized that I couldn't just walk across the street to visit the argentinian guitarists at Rohr's or meet Bishop for a drink a F's or run to the deli for Carr's water table crackers at three in the morning, well that put an end to my dreams of more pastoral life.