I am trying to wear a big, long, blue, heavy fabric(ed) thing that fits over my shoulders like a mantel.
I try to flip it non-chalantly over one shoulder.
My therapist has a similar thing I can have, she says.  A burgundy coat with an asymetric collar weighted to one side.  She looks nice in it but I doubt I will.

There are preparations for dinner.  I have glasses out for everyone.  Wine and one or two with wine and lots of cheese.  No one picks them  up so I bring them along to the restaurant where we will have our celebratory meal.  Rainer is there and Reinhard and Emily and my mom and I guess that's it.  Our table is tiny, tiny - an alcove with a ceiling over our heads the size of our table and pressing at the top of our heads.

We are in Paris, or somewhere.  A neighborhood we should have researched first as (as with London 2012) it is WAY to expensive for us.  Anyway.  I am very claustrophobic and ask to sit on the outside.

2. russian novel so far

1

Ambitious, of course, to call a post 'One' on the first day of the year as if there would be a post 365 at some point.

...

Sweet (sometimes complex) Christmas days have passed. 
Origami and piano notes, domino dinosaurs and terrorizing geese, snow bunny and a kind of awkward music night.  Em here with us and it has been really relaxing and good.  I am amazed at her focus and gifts.

most memorable thing - going out to the car for stockings. stopped dead in my tracks when I looked up...  Huge and filling up half of the sky almost  the amazing, perfect ring around the moon on Christmas night - bigger and vaster than any I'd ever seen. The moon and Jupiter inside - and there the sky a deep dark circle and outside the perfect ring - solid fog so the impression was of a huge, auspicious eye, I guess, or an opening, possibility and promise.  We stared in awe arm in arm, for as long as we could.  Beauttful and literally awe- some.  Almost eclipse like in scale.  Fabulous.

I'll take that for my New Year as my NY was a bust.  No dancing date.  No pretty dress. No nothin but a flu.
Today, also, quiet, quiet.  Also, okay.  Some attempt at pulling together "Lifeguard" - first goal of the year - to get the books out.
Or... to get rid of this bug.

So what then?  What dreams may come.
It is amazing how we tolerate the utter opacity of the future.

i have a tin horse on my tree.  A tin whale.  A tin heart
Origami fleurs linked.  Red hearts.  White lights.  Red cranberries.
Won't have it for long, I guess.
But it's been a good, sweet and slow Christmas season and for now I will just sit some more and just look at the lights.
And the whale.  And the horse.
And my new crystal flute.