Sam and Seema's Highly Subjective, Mad Mock Magazine In and Out List for the New Year

In: flippant skirts with boots - Out: wicked-witch pointy boots
In: ripped jeans - Out: buying mouse-masticated ripped jeans
In: Jesse's long hair - Out: Kim's facial hair
In: blue - Out: red
In: prepositions - Out: pronouns
In: form - Out: content
Out: false dichotomies - In: irony
Out: Virginia Woolf - In: Thomas Wolfe
Out: exhibitionists - In: merely enjoying
In: going to college - Out: acting college
In: Romantics - In: Cynics (Romantics sulking)
In: Say Anything - Out: silence
In: baking cupcakes - Out: baking rooms
In: brown fedoras - Out: feather boas
In: Absolute - Out: absolution

In: new friends, old friends, new friendships with old friends
In: inauguration protests, consonants, decisiveness, pre-med English majors, contradictions, three-part inventions, playing language, spatial language, Paris, paradoxes, Yale, Such Great Heights - both Postal Service and Iron and Wine versions, honesty, interinanimation, screaming, fireworks, family, Frayn, uncertainty, optimism, the in-effable, Nick Hornby, potential, the almost Barcelona girls sitting four around a table talking for first time in forever, gossiping, writing, overflowing, a fucking good year
Out: passing out, coke, coca-cola, ashes, insecurity, stinginess, smallness, remorse, shame, melodrama, cheap whisky, players, pretensions, parasites, pettiness, meanness, venality, guilt
In: grace

In: self, blogging, commenting, beauty, borrowing, brilliance, bitter mysteries, Roethke, reading
Out: reading bird signs (we defy augury), brooding, straight chiasmus, sulking, self-pity, selfishness

In: sincerely wishing people all the best
Out: wishing people better than they are or are capable of being
In: the in-evitable, things beyond our control
Out: trying to control things beyond our control
In: logistical nightmares - Out: logic
In: 2005 - Out: 2004

The year is dying

Its death day quick and painless. Spent in Barnes and Noble and baking ignoble devilish cupcakes. The year's been momentous. An annum equal in weight to its sum of moments. Seen second year of college started. Finished first away from home. Tried communal growth in Green House and planted self firmly in soil of a new haven. Good garden for beginning blossoms of grand romance with John Donne. Hours of year are running off, draining too fast. It should put up more of a fight. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Great Squirrel Attack of '04

It's 2 a.m. Finishing one of my favorite movies. Whole family recites the dialogue as or just before it unfolds. Would, does drive anyone else crazy. We've gone through the classic lines. "'This is our daughter Dottie, this is our other daughter, Dottie's sister.' Should of had you and bought a dog." Thoughts on second children. "Mitch Swailey is one step up from a pig." "But an important step." The evolution of men. "Ever heard of Walter Harvey? He makes the candy bars." "Yeah, we feed 'em to the cows when they're constipated." Cracked me up for twelve years. "You know something mister, you're not nice." "See the grass cow girls, don't eat it." Retorts. "There's no crying in baseball!" "Did anyone ever tell you you look like a penis with a hat on?" Jimmy shouts, a lot. "Of course it's hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The hard's what makes it great." My firmest belief instilled from age seven. The music swells. Dottie tells Kit that you just wanted it more than I did. In the darkness, there's a scratching sound by a guitar stand. "Squirrel" screams Mom. "Kim, wake up! Feet off the ground, on the couch everyone." She jostles Jesse, the angelic sleeper. He rubs his head and wakens to the excitement. The movie pauses. The program, attack of the killer squirrel, interrupts. Our evening's entertainment. Our great country drama.

Started after dinner when Dad spotted something behind the glass grate on the hearth. "There's a rodent in the fireplace," he remarked to me. Lifted head from Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume Two. Jesse's flashlight glinted off two terrified eyes on a bushy tail. A baby squirrel, aww. I returned to the book. Everyone else came to make a distracting commotion. All had own theories on how it got in there in the first place and ideas now what to do with it. An alien in a squirrel suit, Brother jested. Jesse waved a baseball bat. Dad reminisced on traps he'd built one summer in science camp. Our humane dinner guests crooned and wanted to give it food, water. Mom murderously eyed the pokers. Finally, the final solution was agreed on. Dad converted a minnow trap into a squirrel catching device complete with peanut bait. Women and children were herded upstairs. Doors firmly shut. Wearing garden gloves for safety, Dad did delicate operation of opening door, dropping trap in and barricading fireplace shut. The wait began. Tension dropped as the squirrel sat and made no move for the nuts. If you saw the trap concoction you'd understand why no animal with a pea-sized brain or better would go in that thing.

So all's quiet on the home front until war or the enemy breaks out, erupts right in middle of a moment of my movie. Paranoia confines us to the couch, our island of safety. It could have rabies. We'd have to drive to the hospital. Shots in the stomach. Should have killed it when we had the chance, Mom grumbles. Dad roots around the house with a broom. The rest of us are crowded on the couch, held hostage in own home. We'll sleep in shifts. Or maybe the car. Could bite you in your bed while you're dreaming. Jesse and I dissolve in hysterics. The protective mother mutters more violence towards a small animal. If it touches her children. Besides, it's been eating and pooping on her sweaters. AND one tried to bite HER daughter in California. I try to explain the continent of difference between the coastal squirrel populations, but she's got an over-developed sense of vengeance. Especially if anything threatens her babies. Rabies is deadly. And there's no ole one-eye Atticus anywhere to shoot the mad animal. Potentially rabid baby animal. No foam, freaked, unlikely, slim to none chance it's rabid squirrel. But it's still loose somewhere in this house. So if you ask for me in the morning, and you find me a grave man, my mother was right, as usual.

"They don't make 'em like that anymore,"

says Nostalgia as the credits of "His Girl Friday" role. Agree with Mom. Dialogue is faster (and funnier) than Gilmore Girls. What can compete with newspaper men, jail breaks, crooked politicians, red scares, and double dealing, double talking Cary Grant?

Maybe the moon intense and brilliant on the river. Left the Adirondacks and the Do-Gersten medley of religions and reason this afternoon for cozy, cold Lexington. Inside post-movie, Mom and Jesse are absorbed into the t.v. screen playing Ms. Pacman, no quarters needed. A Christmas present reincarnation of the archaic arcade game given to the one of the two old enough to be nostalgic for the eighties full-size version. Identical tongues balance on lower lips. Concentration and cursing are part of serious play. Apparently killer Ms. Pacman skills are hereditary.

Outside, the moon's palor grazes snowy cheeks of riverbank. Cold light caresses and changes the land's complexion. Under a full feeling moon, the front yard is bright as noon but thinner. The scene lacks the conviction of reality. Incandescence confuses the willow at this hour and ice shagged pines wonder at the glint in the eye of their cones. The lighting is a nightmare of day. Moonbeams rest on the water as currents of dreams roll beneath unshakeable shadows from trees. Stasis in darkness. Good night.