November 17, 2003

  • Katie's all right, just smacked around a little.  I don't know what I'd do if Brett got violent on me.   Probably leave.   One guy I dated had the annoying habit of patting me all the time--probably some passive-agressive tendency coming to the surface--and I couldn't stand it.  From the way he badmouthed all his ex's, I knew he'd up and wam me some day when he couldn't hold back any more.   At least Kate's got the bucks to cry about it in style, which I don't.  That room service of hers can't be beat, no pun intended.  We could order anything we wanted, all on her Dad's business card.


    Spending Halloween at Auntie's and seeing Katie holed up that way must've stirred my desire for the beautiful life.   Since last weekend, I've had a recurring dream of being rich and living in the woods in a rambling storybook house against the mountains.   It has a feeling like the paintings of Thomas Kinkaid, Lily's fairy house in Legend, or even the lodge in the old Santa's Village.  Yes, that's the one.   My aunt used to tell me stories about it when I was little, how every time Grandpa, then in his late thirties, would travel through Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz mountains, they'd pass the entrance to Santa's Village, a gingerbread wonderland deep in the wooded glen.   She always searched the side of the road anxiously for the candy cane sign.  It came and went so fast, like the ring on a carousel, calling through the trees, beckoning in the night.   Grandpa never stopped, for, plagued by financial problems, it was rarely open.   Thus it became for her a true-to-life fantasy, something unreal that was real.   To journey up the twisted path and partake of the pleasures therein would be to transcend time.   She had to be content with a coloring book from there Grandma found her, now a collector's item--until she grew up, married, and found a tiny concrete piece of the village in her present home.


    Festival of Lights.  Rise forth and Knock.  Like Auntie as a young girl, I venture up to the twinkling house, but never enter it.  Yet I know the country road, the picket-fenced yard, the stepping stone path by heart.    It's always Spring or Fall there, always gentle, never severe.  Some place in time that's mine.