going about it the wrong way

It is, of course, not them I dislike, but myself when I'm with them. If I were good either at dissembling or at defying I would be more satisfied with myself. As it is, I feel like I compromise too much to maintain my pride, but not enough to actually make things go smoothly.

Ah, family.

My brother, on the other hand, is just rude, and they love him. Mind you, he believes it's a good thing -- family, togetherness, all that. Well, so do I, in the abstract. Someone else's family, say.

Things have gone much better, actually, the last couple of days. The night of the 23rd was a gruelling one -- at first, champagne made everyone relaxed, and we told stories, and for the first time I liked the extended family members again. Then I was talking on the phone to grumpy bastard, venting a little -- not even about the things that really bother me, since I couldn't articulate them then ("You know, I really bother me...") -- just stupid petty things -- and people kept coming and going past the computer room until I got terribly worried that they'd overheard me saying something Wrong. (Which would have amounted to, at worst, that I didn't like their movie -- or, well, that I like them better when they drink...)

It's perfectly all right to vent -- necessary, in fact -- but you have to do it in a way that's not going to hurt people. But this damn house manages to be big without providing any privacy at all -- and the downstairs fridge is right in the next room -- and I have this odd history -- maybe this is a characteristic of people who keep a Tight Rein on things (except, you know, I don't think the Horses of My Emotions are all that checked -- but anyway) -- this odd history of every so often being incredibly gauche in fairly obvious situations.

So, anyway, overcome with dread at the prospect of two days of offended relatives, I couldn't sleep night before last. Instead, I stayed up and read Peter Carey's Jack Maggs and scratched the skin on my scalp raw. I didn't get to sleep until after 4.

Anyway, everyone seemed fine the next day, or sufficiently repressed (oh, if only I had the skills. I try and try), and there was no tight-lipped catastrophe. And since then things have been much better. So I think I must have jarred something loose in myself, in a good way. We had at least five minutes of genuine good time, singing along with the carols on the Stuart MacLean CD.

This is all pretty context-lite, and I apologize. More venting; this silent, possibly safe, provided no one looks over my shoulder or follows my back links. (I'm going to clear the history out of Explorer.) Just edit in whatever family tension makes sense to you.

Anyway, Jack Maggs. Pretty good book, although trailing some loose ends behind it. I haven't read Oscar and Lucinda because I know what happens -- my mom saw the movie and told me -- and it's the sort of outcome that frustrates me. It would be all right to read it for the first time, not knowing it was coming, but I can't just walk into it expecting it to happen. Sometimes knowing the plot of a fairly dense novel in advance is helpful -- it's a kind of map through oblique plotting or obscure language. But if what's happening is just going to make me gnash my teeth, then I find it much harder to start.

I'm trying to think what kinds of things those are -- I think thwarting. Thwarting bugs me.

I'm book shopping on my parents' bookshelves -- my mom's offered to loan me whatever I want -- which is great, because their collection is about equally divided between high-end thrillers and literary novels of the fairly accesible kind. I have a stack of the latter and am skimming some of the former for prose that won't annoy me. (If I find myself editing in my head, I know I have to put it back.)

Anyway, today went well, so far -- nothing caught on fire and nobody died -- and tomorrow I come home. In closing, I offer you my youthful atheist's rewrite of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen":

Blank rest ye, merry gentlemen
let nothing you dismay
remember blank blank blank blank blank
blank blank blank blank blank day
blank blank blank blank
blank blank blank blank
blank blank blank gone astray
oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy
oh tidings of comfort and joy

{rf}

update

Have just made Pear Frangipane Tart from Moosewood Sunday Cookbook. Or, rather, have just assembled it about 1/2 hour too early, as the free-range turkey is stubbornly not browning. Tart slowly disintegrating into Pear Frangipane Pudding in pie plate. My fault for putting wet pears into uncooked pie shell. Wasn't thinking.

Pain of failure eased by a very nice Okanagan Gewurtz. Trying very hard not to drink entire bottle before dinner. See champagne tragedies of previous entry. Alcohol is Not Your Friend.

{rf}

Spiritual and Social Questions

In the comments, Josh_hoo_hah touches on holidays, having relationships to them or not, and as it happens, I've been thinking on that very subject.

I really wanted to write something in the LJ for Chanukah, so that my livejournal wouldn't be just another brick in the Xmas monolith. Praising or complaining, it's all hegemony, n'est pas, comerades? But when I came to do it, I didn't have the chops. I didn't have the depth of familiarity that would let me create the kind of piece I wanted to. So Chanukah has passed, and now it's Despair Day itself, and I'm still wedged into the hegemony.

And of course, I never could not be, if you can navigate those negatives. Usually I'm good at remembering that. This year, having lost the context of the marriage, which (while it did not define it) socially normalized and simplified my having a relationship to Jewish culture, I am a bit at a loss. Which is why I was over-reaching with the writing -- overcompensating. I thought (I think) that if I could demonstrate my connection through writing, I'd be able to re-create a clear link to the tradition. Instead -- logically enough -- it showed me the more complex nature of my relationship -- my gaps as well as my affinities. (With some beta-reader help from the ex-co-con.)

It's difficult to write well about my relationship to Jewish holidays, as a secular-Xian gentile, and I probably won't, but I'm going to try.

When the ex-co-con and I were together, we chose to celebrate only Jewish holidays in our home, and we both liked it that way. I thought, and think, that it was the least he could ask to have a home that was a sanctuary, as much as it could be under the circumstances (the circumstances being, for example, Me), from the ethnocentric culture surrounding that home. (Not to claim that I'm free of ethnocentrism. Oh, Would That This Were So.) And because I am, like so many a leftist child of the mainstream, disaffected from Christianity, it was easier for us to negotiate this than if I'd had a strong affiliation/identification with my family's traditions. (Instead of a Generic Rebellious Stance.)

There's a nasty habit a lot of people in my situation -- disaffected child of the secularizedwhitechristianmiddleclass -- um, let's think of a good acronym there, shall we? -- anyway, a bad habit that we have: attaching ourselves to other people's traditions, often people oppressed or marginalized by our own culture's dominance. To which habit I cogently say Bleagh.

In the context of the relationship, I think I was usually able to maintain clarity about my position, and to avoid this kind of appropriation. We liked to call me the Gentile Auxiliary. Within the ex-co-con's extended community, there is a lot of experience with intercultural marriage, and the adjunct gentile is a fairly familiar figure.* We also called me a 'secular convert,' because it's secular, critical, politicized Jewish culture that his family identifies with, and that I feel affinity for.

I still am what I was; my attachment to Jewish secular culture remains. It wouldn't have been much of an attachment if it didn't. Now I am trying to think of a way to be connected to a larger Jewish community, or even simply to the traditions themselves -- a connection that is both honest to my relationship to religion/secularism, and also feels like a respectful relationship to a culture that is not my own. I don't want to lose that part of my life, but I don't want to cling to something that isn't mine to hold, and in doing so, become someone I can't respect.

{rf}

*This phrase, and others, in keeping with my notion that all theorists should be forced to alliterate so as not to take themselves over-seriously. QED.)