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Nutshell Kingdom: Christmas (with) Eve
2003
This weekend marks the beginning of my fall break and I am spending it much like last year's: by not doing anything at all. In fact, over all of Saturday and Sunday, my only contact with the outside world came when I was ticketed for the following: (1) failing to pay a parking ticket back in July and (2) allowing my registration to expire back in August. Oh well.
Last year, I sat around and made tapes and then took long, pointless drives and listened to them.
Funny. I'm not anxious for others. I'm screening my calls.
Fall break marks, for me, the beginning of the holiday season, a dark and gloomy time filled with spine-tingling pressure to "connect" mixed with an enormous separation anxiety from my normal routines. When you're in school, Christmas means a three week "vacation" (or hell on earth, if you have nowhere you'd rather be). Why don't I have anywhere I'd rather be?, you might ask. Don't know. Wish I did.
All's I know is it all starts now: the Halloween fear of having no fun, the Thanksgiving dread of a purposeless family visit, and the evil, ever-present monolith of Christmas- weeklong void- New Year's. That week always plays out like the longest Samuel Beckett play ever written, only not as funny.
I need help before this becomes a lifelong trend. I need to move faraway from my burdensome holiday past, maybe to Hawaii, like Eve. Hey Eve, any room out there in volcano land? We can start new holiday traditions. The old ones don't work for me anymore. Can the rainbow state take away my gloom? At the very least, I might long for homecoming instead of dreading it months in advance.
