Thursday, December 11, 2003
FILMS:
Movie day today: SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING/ Albert Finney/ Angry young man and so forth. 1961. Pretty good--not all THAT angry actually; sorta' sweetened with romance. A four star (out of five) rating for the Netflix people. A NYTimes 1000 Best Film. We are working down the list to see them all with some other non-Best in between. I figure that this will take about five years.
STORM HOLE:
After the movie, Franklin and I got out between showers. There was a rainbow over the Eastern Valley for half the hour of it. Within minutes of our return, the rain hit again with fierce winds. Our moment of grace was over. The desert is all extremes and this little sequence is no exception. I like to think that I can 'smell' the hole in the storm and make it 'between'. Today I am right.
HOLIDAY ATMOSPHERICS:
Every winter a friend from back East says or asks a question like this: (from my friend Jim in Cincinnati, OH):
"I imagine it's hard for you to get into the "Christmas spirit" when it's 85'
and sunny. Back here, putting up the lights to stave off the darkest days of
the year, changing into turtlenecks, and building fires in the fireplace all
bring the season to life."
So do we need cold hardship to have the holiday spirit? Noooooooooooooo.
Here is my answer to Jim and all the other northerners who feel sorry for us down here in the 'tropics'.
"You are over-stating a bit with the 85. We are actually struggling through the more frigid sixties this week and usually have to settle for the mid-seventies for warmth. And, we lose our light in December too; often faster and sooner as we are up against the mountain--sunsets at three with a long long twilight. Sunrises are earlier though...it is flat out there in the East.
But, this is mere quibbling. You are right, the weather here provides undeniably non-traditional holiday atmospherics. It takes some work to gin up the 'feelings' but actually it is not too too hard.
There is community compensation behavior. My friend Charles, the shrink, hypothesizes that this arises from mass guilt feelings as many of us have slipped away from our Northern homes and hearths. We frantically light the landscape to assuage these feelings. We get the abandonment 'issues' from the other end. We are the abandon-ers.
Whatever. I have never seen more twinkle lights anywhere but here. AND we are all bloodthinned from the constant warmness of it all, so, when the warmness falters a little in December, we all wear sweaters AND scarves and, if we have them, mink coats too. We are actually too hot most of the time but there is that compensation thing again. A little suffering eases the guilt.
There is a festival of lights parade the first December Saturday (notice the non-sectarian-ness of that) to get us revved up for the season and, I think, ready to shop. Everyone in it has to have at least 35 lights on their body and most folks go way over that. John even wore lights this year to WATCH the parade. Some of us need more acting out than others. Floats have twinklers that number in the thousands. So it is very SEASONAL if not traditional.
SNOW? That we cannot do at this level, although Southern California has a booming artificial snow industry for events all over the area. It is shaved ice blown down by the ton.
AND if we want real northeastern style winter, we can drive up the mountain to Idyllwild in about an hour--a mile high--well 5500 feet.
We drove up last year for Christmas dinner and had a foot of snow to walk in and some icy sidewalks to slip on. It was cold--in the twenties! Dinner was next to a roaring fire. Then, when dinner was over, we came right down the mountain (on switchbacks overlooking the Coachella Valley lights) and our traditional eastern winter was over.
Oh, and about that fire; we have a gas grate that goes on with a whoooosh! Wood is out of the question; there is some but it comes from somewhere back East and it is illegal--smog laws. So if all else fails, we turn on the gas for a happy holiday.
Movie day today: SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING/ Albert Finney/ Angry young man and so forth. 1961. Pretty good--not all THAT angry actually; sorta' sweetened with romance. A four star (out of five) rating for the Netflix people. A NYTimes 1000 Best Film. We are working down the list to see them all with some other non-Best in between. I figure that this will take about five years.
STORM HOLE:
After the movie, Franklin and I got out between showers. There was a rainbow over the Eastern Valley for half the hour of it. Within minutes of our return, the rain hit again with fierce winds. Our moment of grace was over. The desert is all extremes and this little sequence is no exception. I like to think that I can 'smell' the hole in the storm and make it 'between'. Today I am right.
HOLIDAY ATMOSPHERICS:
Every winter a friend from back East says or asks a question like this: (from my friend Jim in Cincinnati, OH):
"I imagine it's hard for you to get into the "Christmas spirit" when it's 85'
and sunny. Back here, putting up the lights to stave off the darkest days of
the year, changing into turtlenecks, and building fires in the fireplace all
bring the season to life."
So do we need cold hardship to have the holiday spirit? Noooooooooooooo.
Here is my answer to Jim and all the other northerners who feel sorry for us down here in the 'tropics'.
"You are over-stating a bit with the 85. We are actually struggling through the more frigid sixties this week and usually have to settle for the mid-seventies for warmth. And, we lose our light in December too; often faster and sooner as we are up against the mountain--sunsets at three with a long long twilight. Sunrises are earlier though...it is flat out there in the East.
But, this is mere quibbling. You are right, the weather here provides undeniably non-traditional holiday atmospherics. It takes some work to gin up the 'feelings' but actually it is not too too hard.
There is community compensation behavior. My friend Charles, the shrink, hypothesizes that this arises from mass guilt feelings as many of us have slipped away from our Northern homes and hearths. We frantically light the landscape to assuage these feelings. We get the abandonment 'issues' from the other end. We are the abandon-ers.
Whatever. I have never seen more twinkle lights anywhere but here. AND we are all bloodthinned from the constant warmness of it all, so, when the warmness falters a little in December, we all wear sweaters AND scarves and, if we have them, mink coats too. We are actually too hot most of the time but there is that compensation thing again. A little suffering eases the guilt.
There is a festival of lights parade the first December Saturday (notice the non-sectarian-ness of that) to get us revved up for the season and, I think, ready to shop. Everyone in it has to have at least 35 lights on their body and most folks go way over that. John even wore lights this year to WATCH the parade. Some of us need more acting out than others. Floats have twinklers that number in the thousands. So it is very SEASONAL if not traditional.
SNOW? That we cannot do at this level, although Southern California has a booming artificial snow industry for events all over the area. It is shaved ice blown down by the ton.
AND if we want real northeastern style winter, we can drive up the mountain to Idyllwild in about an hour--a mile high--well 5500 feet.
We drove up last year for Christmas dinner and had a foot of snow to walk in and some icy sidewalks to slip on. It was cold--in the twenties! Dinner was next to a roaring fire. Then, when dinner was over, we came right down the mountain (on switchbacks overlooking the Coachella Valley lights) and our traditional eastern winter was over.
Oh, and about that fire; we have a gas grate that goes on with a whoooosh! Wood is out of the question; there is some but it comes from somewhere back East and it is illegal--smog laws. So if all else fails, we turn on the gas for a happy holiday.
Comments:
Post a Comment
