absalom.

Christmas was pretty good this year.

Strangely, I am looking forward to Tennessee and our cabin in the Smokey Mountains.

Every time I tell anyone I'm going there, they ask "...but, why?" Would they ask that same question if I said I was going to Paris? No. To Hollywood? No.

Really, people, you could all stand to get out of what you see as "civilization" for a while. Big things do exist in little places. Open land still breathes in Tennessee. And being cold there isn't like being cold in Los Angeles. Being cold in Tennessee is like knowing that Spring is there to rescue you when it's all over. It's Ode to the West Wind reincarnated.

When I was little, we used to go visit my grandparents in the house that my grandfather built. On Christmas Eve, my dad and I would shoot down holly or mistletoe or whatever it was from the trees that populated my grandparents' farmland. Being about four feet tall at the time, those trees were infinite. They housed the unknown, the ethereal, all of my too-tall dreams and ambitions. I've let myself grow up too much it seems.

My dad used to say, in such a backwoods Faulknerian character way, "Just 'cause you live in California now, that don't mean you should ever git above yur raisin'." He would always intensify his accent during those times, for whatever reason. More impact, I guess. But the truth is, I don't think I could ever get above my raising even if I tried. At the end of it all, my family is Southern. And the Jones Graveyard and the Jones River Bend are intense reminders of that. And even though the airport bought out my grandparents' farmhouse and paved a runway over it, just thinking about that place reminds me that I am too far away from where I was meant to be.