#64

When I was a teenager I made tons of lists. I don't really do that anymore. What kind of a list would I even make nowadays? What list would be useful to me.

It strikes me that it used to help me get my thoughts in a certain order, but I gave up having ordered thoughts. Or anyway, thoughts ordered in integral sequences, or aimed towards generating rankings or the keeping of personal statistics.

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It was the coldest Thanksgiving on record. That was an enjoyable thing, I thought. It was I who thrice walked the family dog! I volunteered. If there had been no family dog to walk (as I had advocated) I would have taken a walk regardless. Record-breaking shit, you want to see and feel as much of that for yourself as you can match to your tastes and abilities.

Thanksgiving is, speaking historically and as national holidays go, monstrous. The myth that upholds the feast--an upside-down and backwards-ass big fake smile deception--bears the mark of the Adversary in plain and indisputable terms. Then there's alcohol and family dynamics and football and trauma everywhere, reverberating through every human soul.

Everything is in how you do it, though. A harvest feast to give thanks. Plain and simple. Worth doing. Good things can happen when you feed people. A lot people get fed on Thanksgiving.

As for the day set aside, well, the day set aside is the day of reckoning; so it has always been and so it is every year. Do the best version of every twisted thing--and everything in this world has been twisted--and you will be doing your part to uphold what is decent and worthwhile in human life. Let how you do things be a fortress against disintegration and a direct challenge to people who get off on ruining things.

I might say similar stuff around Christmas.

For my part I had excellent Thanksgiving thoughts. My family and I enjoyed a special repast, rich and plentiful but not excessive. Very nice. It was a blessing to be with them. I played all my musical instruments except my ocarina. I realized lately that I've lost my harmonicas somehow. I am thankful anyway.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. I know it can be rough as hell.


--JL