:: ...naturally ::

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

So it's Christmas again. There's a comforting routine to be found in the usual motions and surroundings of Dec. 25th, and this year is not very different, save for a few key exceptions:

1) the weather outside is indeed frightful (I'm not accustomed to this). A constant sleet practically beckons "come outside if you have a masochistic fetish for pneumonia."
2) I find myself sitting at home in my cozy (read: cramped) apartment celebrating (read: drinking bud light tallboys) Christmas alone for the first time.

Why am I at home alone on this, a day for family? It's really an intricate confluence of several factors (details available upon request), some self-imposed, some circumstantial, and yet others the timely will of the fates. Suffice it to say that if I had really exerted some willpower, I most likely could have made it back to sunny southern California, so if there's a need for culpability, it can be placed squarely on my shoulders.

That's ok. My family may be 3,000 miles away (farther away than Mexico City, and nearly as far as London), but at least I still have my chums upon whom I can always depend to lift spirits*, right?

Regrettably, no. It seems everyone has decided to prioritize their familial mirth above my quixotic need to be entertained, failing to assuage my insipid ennui. The sheer audacity of this act will not easily be forgotten.

I don't mind solitude, though I've never craved it, but I abhor isolation. Admittedly, it's more than a little ironic to claim that I'm stranded all alone (woe is me!) amidst one of the denser* population centers in the country, but I'm not the type to depend on the kindness of strangers. It takes a lot of time and effort for me to forge friendships, but when I do they're usually intensely rewarding and life-long. This being said, one serious danger with having a few tight-knit mates as opposed to a plethora of acquaintances is the significantly stronger likelihood and impact of absence(s). If I had the vast network of a social butterfly, there would no doubt be a few stragglers with whom I could chill* in this freezing rain.

No bother, there are a multitude of alternate means of amusement.

I actually carried on a whole conversation with myself last night, half because the mood was right and half to see what it was like. Oddly, it didn't strike me as abnormally strange. We all tend to have an inner dialogue (the classic image being the devil and angel haughtily perched at the moral and physical extremes of one's shoulders) and verbalizing it wasn't so far of a stretch as to give rise to self-doubts of my sanity.

Next I plan to smear peanut butter over every square inch of my body and single-handedly reenact the battle of Antietam. I shall be the vessel through which General Ambrose Burnside lives anew.

I don't have anything else interesting to say right now.

*potential double entendre

Posted by morland @ 02:27 PM

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