Usually on New Year’s Eve, I’m either in church or on stage. This year, I decided to break with tradition. I went to church on New Year’s Eve Eve. I seriously considered showing up at the big swing dance at The Supper Club afterwards but my featherbed was calling me. I promptly went home and buried myself in clean vanilla scented Wamsutta sheets and dreamed of sleep. That’s when I realized that I wouldn’t be going out for New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want to see lots of unfamiliar people. I definitely didn’t want to lose myself in a crowd of hysterical strangers. It seemed like an exhausting thing to do. And I was exhausted. I had been working non-stop for days on end and I felt that the whole world had been wringing on me from the inside out. When oversleep is a luxury, its time for me to take a break. Armed with my laptop, a jar of lavender bath salts and a pint of lotion, some journals and a wifebeater t shirt and boy shorts to lounge around in, I house sat for a friend in the city and hibernated. Brought along a small pint of black eyed peas. Managed to find some halfway decent Tex-Mex and a Blockbuster in my temporary neighborhood. Rented a slew of movies. I was going to be there for a week and I had nine days to give them back. Here’s how unbelievably random I can be:
Some visuals are still with me. Titus’ daughter Lavinia, dressed in white filth, hung on a tree, dark hair splayed against an ominous sky, swinging towards the camera, tree branches for hands, spewing a steady glob of blood as she attempts to speak because they cut her tongue out (and cut her hands off) after they gang raped her. (Gotta love that Willie Shakespeare…) The soldiers and the gay boys campfire orgy on the beach, the swinging lights in the jail scene when he’s writing letters for everyone, the distorted flashes of the revolution, lying on the back of a convertible with his friend and laughing at the falling snow as they drive through New York City (that was magical and surreal, that scene) in Before Night Falls. (What a lush, beautiful movie. I must own it.) At the end of Billy Ellot, when his spellbound working class father and brother are sitting in the audience, waiting for his big entrance in Swan Lake.
Days later, I knew when I dozed off in the tub with a stupid beauty magazine over my face (hot chocolate within easy reach) that I was back to normal. At the end of the week, I would take my clear head to a clean house and start everything up all over again. I would sit at my freshly scrubbed kitchen table, crack open a Blenheim and get some more writing done. Ah, yes. Everything is going to be alright. It really is.
COPYRIGHT 2004 QUEEN ESTHER