we went to david and clea this evening, for christmas eve. when clea invited me, she presented it as a dinner party for “lost souls” – i felt immediately addressed. i didn’t know at the time that marÃa and didier were already planning to go; marÃa later told me that holidays plans was the issue to be avoided with me for some weeks… it’s true, i had wanted to be with giulia in italy, with sara in beirut, and with my family – there had been little positive desire to stay in santa cruz. but here i was, a lost soul, in good company.
and so finally we get to meet clea’s daughter, alegra, who came down from alaska. a good part of the evening i find myself hanging on her lips listening to alaska stories. with a big beautiful atlas on my lap, to follow it all. 600.000 inhabitants (not so much more than the population of luxembourg) and the largest state in the union. a significant higher number of men, many of them strange solitary birds according to alegra. wilderness and wide-open space, minimal state regulation, rugged individualism – this is still frontier land. the utopian dream of being far from society, being self-sufficient.
and through her alaska stories, interestingly enough, we somehow get on the subject of suburbia. i get to ask her some of the “why and how” questions about suburbia that have been on my mind since a year now, and she tells the story of the birth of suburbia through the lens of hygiene. the threads of my little america book are slowly coming together: space / wilderness / suburbia / (social)hygiene. with the story that i really want to tell, somehow, being about freedom, independence, and individualism.
after dinner we go outside, in the hills of corralitos, singing christmas carols.
spots of light in the surrounding darkness of the forest: houses are lit not only with indoor lights, but also with outdoor christmas decorations of various kinds, the one more extravagant than the other. a hugh lit cross in front of one house, the scary imaginary of burning crosses.
this is my first christmas eve away from my family.