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 mar\u00c3\u00ada and didier were already planning to go; mar\u00c3\u00ada 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
after dinner we go outside, in the hills of corralitos, singing christmas carols.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
this is my first christmas eve away from my family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 mar\u00c3\u00ada and didier were already planning to go; mar\u00c3\u00ada later told me that holidays plans was the issue … Continue reading “christmas eve”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}