Not Yet Out of the Woods

Christmas is not quite over--the two leather chairs I bought for myself arrive this very morning between 8:30 and 10:30.  Hurrah!  In anticipation, I've been looking around the house with a decorator's eye.  Plans almost formulate.  I can almost see what I want to do.  And then. . . not quite. 

The day itself was fine enough, a peaceful morning after the events of the previous eve, lying in bed remembering the night and reading from the Norton Anthology of Religion that Q sent me.  I started with the introductions which are probably more fun than the religious texts that are to follow.  The editors promise to eschew theory though theory is in everything.  Indeed the concept of "religion" was a result of European's categorical thinking, the say.  There was no such category, perhaps, in people who believed in god and practiced the gospels.  It was just "life" and not a category of how one lives.  The editors stress that there is no adequate definition of the term "religion," nothing that people can agree upon.  I loved best, though, the idea that theories abound and that "theories about science are as useful to the scientist as ornithology is to a bird."  I will be using that one in my arguments with smarmy theorists in the coming year. 

In the afternoon, I showered and went to my mother's house for our "Christmas feast."  In actuality, it was not bad at all.  We ate a practical, "slendering" meal of pork loin and vegetables.  I didn't miss the stuffing and the rolls and the pie at all.  We started to watch the Sandra Bullock movie about floating around in space, but neither of us were up for two hours of misery, so she switched over to a show called "Buying Alaska" instead. After a few episodes of that, there was a show about people buying tropical islands.  The premise in each show was the same.  The buyers were shown three properties and they chose one.  I tried hooking up the new printer I bought her, but I couldn't.  I realized her OS was out of date and that I would have to install the newest one.  After ninety minutes, the little progress bar was barely a quarter way across.  I know this is going to be a disaster as the functionality of the new OS is going to change a bit and my mother will be slow to retrain.  I will go over and finish up the installation today. 

And the house repairman wants to come back today to finish up. 

But I am worn out.  I need a little "me" time.  A lot of it, really.  The tank is empty.  I may be more exhausted than anything else.  It is physical.  It is mental.  I could lie in bed for the rest of the year and listen to music and read books without regret. 

I would love to start a magazine, I think, with writers and reporters and editors and illustrators and photographers--the whole bit.  I would be like Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter--only better.  It would be solely online, of course.  I think I could do it, too.  It might be a monthly that was compiled and published day by day like a blog but which would end up bundled like any other magazine at the end of the month.  Hmm. 

For those of us who have not killed ourselves yet, we are still not out of the woods.  There is New Year's Eve to come, another depressing time for many.  These are empty days now when family and religion give way to adult paganism and idolatry--and perhaps adultery, too.  Is there still such a term as that anymore?  "Adultery"?  It is a word like "nymphomaniac" or "fiend," archaic, a reference to another time.  They are words to be used together--"She was a nymphomaniac, a known adulterer, a truly insatiable sex fiend." 

But truly, we must stay on guard.  Depression abounds this time of year.  It is a terrible thing.  Be nice to yourself.  Give yourself a break, permission, if you will.  Take a walk and a nap.  Things might not get better, but maybe we will.  Who knows?