Full Moon Alone

It is 7Am Christmas Eve. The moon is no longer up, but I still am. I didn't take a third sleeping pill this time, advised. I knew that I wasn't up to going to the little town in Tennessee where my maternal family is congregating. It will be very difficult coming up with pseudonym for the town. I'll ask my uncle who is an historian, and playful, to help with that. Some trip when I go there I'll take pictures of the grave sites and porches and gardens and sandstone archways and streams, huge icicles and caves, and little reading cafes, and beyond those things what I could mention would be identifying I suppose. I suppose it doesn't matter at all as long as I am not keyword search-able. They call it a "mountain," this town. It is a 2000 feet plateau above the valley floor. It is seat of an Episcopal Seminary and "University" and debate about whether it should more appropriately be named a "college" since it offers no upper graduate degrees. Traditional Liberal Arts. It is famous for its literary review. Most writers and all Episcopal priests anywhere) know its name. The only way in which my writing here is fitting with my post photograph is in contrast. Here I am. There they will be. I thought I would be alright. Christmas, nicely has not been about gift-giving for a long time for us, so without that stress, it has been easy to really cherish it for all its other silly glittery things. I don't receive many gifts, two this year because I'm so uncomfortable with the imbalance of not being able to afford more. But I have no excuse for not sending cards or something. I certainly couldn't send out one of those letters updating the family on family yearly milestones. This year I may have come close to stopping breathing, but I managed to stay out of the hospital. I shot a lot of photography for my cat-sitters's book and blog, and helped edit a second of his books to submission, and I started working downtown (I live downtown, so downer-town, taller buildings, the ones I look out to through these windows - there's the relevance to the photo - working with his publisher to refile everything to his system, and learn how to do it myself. I go once a week on Fridays. It's near a Peet's Coffee and Tea, there's a doorman, and a receptionist and big wood desks. I sold an article from this blog to a magazine that comes out in March with a full page photo not yet selected from a photo-shoot the "Exposure" post was referring to fear of. School is postponed again but not forgotten. I worked hard gutting and building houses in New Orleans in July and August, which I would say was the happiest I've been, except for the Southwest trip with my "friend" and that first sleepy-for-him night, all night, sleeping that way, and in the morning, was the happiest I may ever have been. I don't know that he has any understanding of that happiness. It was like holy. I'm not going to avoid that word. It was whole, and sacred to be. We were careless later, temporarily - but I know that first morning wasn't wrong. Something happened that affected me forever now. Nothing could live up to being accepted like that - without speaking about it, to not be something contaminated to be protected from. To be together after some amount of time, awake and conscious and knowing and unhesitating. I have never felt so "good." This is my place to say these things which have passed and gone away. And will probably never happen again.