Thanksgiving

Jean Perréal (b. after 1450 - d. after 1530)

I'm lying in bed at my cousin's house drinking some bitter coffee and perusing the net.  The house begins to come alive with kitchen sounds.  I feel guilty that I am not helping this morning.  I just want to stay out of the way.  Soon I will go on a beach trip, then come back to shower and mix with the relatives and try to make some pictures of them.  Probably won't though.  It is difficult to photograph things you have to see again and again.

My friend said he would feed my cat.  I bought him a bottle of champagne and left it with the cat food.  Then I picked up my mother and drove south.  When I got here, I had a voice message from him.  He'd gone by the house and couldn't find the key.  Shit!  I'd forgotten to leave it out.  Fortunately, I guess, the cat had gone outside when I was packing the car, so he will leave food for her there.  But she is not used to staying outside all the time any more, and I worry.  Not enough to drive the three hours back, but enough.  If she survives the three days, she will be very angry with me.  Who knows what she will do?

This is a strange holiday, I think, when we celebrate the first (and only) feast with the people from whom we would steal real estate.  Go Team.  That is why football is the tradition.  A violent contest over turf is just the thing today.  O.K. O.K.  I'm not that way.  I just feel like it today.  I am envious, I guess, of all those happier than I am today, those wrapped in the bosom of the kinds of families and familial situations that we see in the movies with Steve Martin as the father, intelligent rich things.  And, of course, it is a day of self-blame.  I mean, if I wanted that. . . what the fuck happened?  I thought somebody else would give it to me, I guess, while I was running around the world being my own hero.

And such.

But to you, my friends, a Happy Thanksgiving.  Let the games begin.