Buddy the dog and Noah the cat are slumbering indignantly while the crickets mumble loudly outside. Its not even close to cold, at the peak of darkness from winter here in Hopland, NorCal.

Just got back from dinner with the Welches, a holiday kind of dinner, number 7 of seventeen it seems, the kind of dinner you come home from both satisfied and regretful at once, full, tired, drunkish, where did the rest of life go?

Its good though to be doing these kinds of things, out to dinner with my family, meeting their family, two families colliding like a couple of galaxies, not even or symmetrical, but perfectly formed in themselves.

Its good because in high school, or whenever I last lived here, o, yes, high school, well, there was that stopover after the Europe trip, post graduation, but I don’t remember stuff like this per say, anyways, lets say high school I would have inevitably hid in my room and played guitar and listened to Creedence Clearwater or both, and drawn pictures of circles for six hours and told myself that was the way it had to be. You know, the true life of an artist. But now, accepting that maybe, maybe after all this I actually am an artist, I no longer have to prove anything. And so I went out to dinner.

Although I did have to prove something to myself post Christmas day, my hair was long, I was unshaven, wearing pajamas around the house had become commonplace for me, easy, easy to be slowly circling the endless questions that have become my identity upon return from this latest trip. I had to prove to myself that I had not slipped into something inescapable. I had to prove that though I didn’t have a job or school to go to, that I wasn’t starving or in jail, that I had some sort of deep purpose, some sort of day to day inner smile. That’s what it comes down to, something you laugh about with yourself, on your way to or from work you think how silly it is, this day to day thing we do. That’s what contentment is for me really. I remember 530 am on the way to work at the pear factory in Ukiah, Summer becoming a tragic memory, and thinking how silly it was, that I was in that car, the sun rising again, drastically sleep deprived and unsatisfied.

Anyways, I was around my family, Pete comes up with T from the city, to be married in June, and they are looking spotless and stylish, not over the top, not yupped out, not anything I wouldn’t wish upon myself, just kind of content and getting married and having jobs and apartments and happy to be young and doing it. I felt a million miles away from that entire existence and it bummed me out. I couldn’t understand the use of hair product, why? hadn’t used it in eight months, campfire was my stylist. Nate and Sam, beautiful and vibrant in college, the energy of the dorms of Santa Cruz wafting from their voices and stories, and their lives one great open highway into promise and potentiality. Mom and Dad, thirty some odd years later laughihng with and at each other, out to party with friends, old friends, more times in two weeks than I have in the past year.

And I don’t thrive on self pity, nor do I believe in it in any way. So I don’t go there, but walking soggy footed out to the back of the house, to see the view of the highway from above the rooftop of my parents house, the christmas lights glowing in the cold air, I think to myself steadily about the choices I ought to make right now.

I got my haircut yesterday in the department store salon, started cleaning out piles of boxes in my parents’ garage, and cleaned my room. Took a shower, shaved, and looked for jobs online. Ran into Joe Leonardo, close distant friend and person who asks all the wrong and right questions at the wrong right moment.

Ready to give up, in the best of ways, to say Oh well, I guess I just have to live my life from here.

Christmas, it came and it went. The days leading up to the Day, I was driving on the highway back and forth to mall land, Santa Rosa, solitary witht he rain constantly slamming the windshield, my own company with a camera to hold the days down one by one, presents to buy, things to distract myself with. At night I would settle down to turning on the christmas lights, putting together the model train set, decorated in completion with fake snow and clay gazebos.

I felt giddy thank god. The night before Christmas was and is a perfect crystallization of a whole year, a whole lifetime of affection and interaction in my family. I took the moment, the one moment I have always needed, to stand in front of the tree with its heavy syrup of colored lights, covering the hastily wrapped presents laid out in piles beneath the tree, the scene as primal to me as anything could be, a pure expression of my childish desires, something I can remember with clarity and reverence. I took that moment, and many others, sleepless on Christmas Eve, 27 years old. I thought about Santa Claus above the rainy clouds, how, in spite of everything, all evidence and clear thinking, so many kids were believing headily in his reality, its hard to not accept that in some way he is there.

Christmas morning we sat there, opening presents, making fun of each other, laughing, myself with my coffee, a little dumbfounded by the generousness of life and my family, my family really truly giving, and able to give, in ways that are more genuine than pop culture could conceive as fiction.