December 27, 2011

Heavy rain, blown by strong wind. Beethoven from iTunes. Maud demanding her morning backrub.

Good Christmas Eve service at All Souls, if about as much as I could stand. Drove in the dark of Christmas morning to Atlanta. Was watching as the sun turned the southeast to the infinite reds. Big old red-tail in his accustomed tree. Can it be the same one all these years? Joyful time in Alpharetta. The Adam boys form among themselves an ideal brotherly community, and it was a joy to watch them and their friends together. They are a clan in every sense of the word. The probably have their holy objects and rituals, too, though they do not speak of them. Daniel chided me for staying up with the adults rather than coming down to the basement and playing with them, which I would surely have done had I been sure it would not have been an intrusion. Jon’s adventures in Thailand are good on so many sides, and breeding good as they go. I came away with, among other things, a set of harmonicas, which added to the concertina makes this a musical Christmas. To round it off, or to make it odder, I ordered a harmonium online. I have always walked through every door that opened, banging it against the wall as I came. L’s friends gathered for Christmas dinner. They were easier for me to relate to than in the past, not quite so churchy, even refreshingly ribald. Poor R was allowed to, even expected to, go through the litany of his past misdeeds, a sort of community confession, as though he had been the designated sinner. Drove home that evening, because the drive was so to be dreaded that I didn’t want to begin another day with it. Also, thought I might have a date, but did not, in the event. St. Stephen’s Day spent running errands, writing abundantly in local cafes, working out, sleeping off an unaccountable exhaustion that left me feeling, all day, like a tired kid. Not an unpleasant feeling at all. In fact, extraordinarily happy from Christmas Eve till this moment, and having no reason to expect immediate change. I have to stop thinking about my life in order to be this content; sometimes I am able to do just that.

Lovely stock market will allow me to pay off my December excesses.

– the ravishing theme of B’s violin concerto– soaring and melancholy at once.