thanksgiving

I'm glad to say that nothing more pharmaceutical than a bottle of Lanson black label champagne was consumed today - we didn't call in at the Echo Park pharmacy, but were merely drawn up at the traffic lights on the way back from a circuit of Occupy Los Angeles.   But this looks suitably festive for today.   One part of me, of course, desires the full Norman Rockwell folk myth version (which writes out of the picture, of course, every possible kind of non-normativity as well as family bickering and tensions, and therefore is peculiarly un-attainable).  One part of me thinks that turkeys and corn and sweet potatoes were a pretty bad trade-in for smallpox and measles.  On the other hand, I'm deeply thankful for a day in which no one wants me to attend a meeting or even answer their emails - so I didn't; in which I can spend a morning doing that rare, rare thing, writing; in which we can go up to Griffith Park on a balmy afternoon in late November and  be appreciative of sudden deep, perfect quiet; and on which we can have a perfect Thanksgiving dinner of pasta with grilled baby tomatoes and onion and parmesan, and chocolate mousse cupcakes.  No weird casseroles involving beans and mushroom soup; no weird desire to place marshmallows in perfectly decent yams (believe me, I've pretty much been spared these, in fact, during my years in the US, but they go along with the mythic territory): a quiet day to ourselves is something for which we offer up many thanks.