Threw my bad fortune off the top of a tall building

We are home. Or we are at least stationary in Somerville, where a cat is making his presence known. My grandfather's yahrzeit is tomorrow, so I am driving to Maine with the rest of my family for the unveiling. After which I will not move for several days.

This is the worst thing that happened to me all trip: I was overcharged two dollars for my hot chocolate at the Starbucks in the St. Louis airport. I have some regrets that we didn't have a full day to wander around the Magic Kingdom, but on the other hand all the rides we really wanted were indoor attractions and that was the only day it rained. I would have liked if Disney hadn't been shockingly more expensive than Universal, I'm sorry, having two more parks doesn't explain it. It would have been nice if I'd managed to program "The Rainbow Connection" into the Rockit. These are immaterial things. I rode ten coasters and ate brilliant food and drank things on fire and walked miles everywhere and slept terribly now that I look back over my posts (this morning at four o'clock: some kind of deep juddering noise in the wall that got through my earplugs on a frequency that really hurt and couldn't be blocked even with pillows over my head, so I didn't sleep until it stopped as inexplicably as it had begun and I still have no idea what it was), but it didn't seem to matter. I read Kim Newman's Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles and Mary Renault's North Face and Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide again. derspatchel and I have been west of the Mississippi together.

I may have some more thoughtful reactions as the next few days fall out, but at the moment I think what I am feeling is exhausted happiness.

I am fine with that.

( Happy. )

Di zun vet aruntergeyn hintern barg

We did the unveiling with the linen cloth that belonged to my mother's grandmother, in which my grandmother always wrapped the afikomen at Pesach; my mother does the same service with it now. It is ivory-colored, fine enough with wear to see through: unraveling at two edges so that it looks a little like the fringes of a tallit katan. I don't know who made it. The rabbi had brought a packet of cheesecloth and little tacks of painter's tape to hold it down, but the linen fit exactly over the nameplate. We had already placed our stones: from New York City, from the sea. (The cemetery has a little granite bowl of stones now, for visitors who I guess can't be bothered to collect their own? I have more than mixed feelings about this.) There were prayers and some poems: none that spoke especially to me, none that offended. My aunt performed the actual unveiling. I remember the mourner's Kaddish by a melody I first heard at Brandeis. Standing in the dry bright cold, I had my hands in my pockets for warmth, wearing my leather jacket and my green scarf and my flat cap, which this time last year was my grandfather's. Afterward we ate at Duckfat on Middle Street (by recommendation of my brother, who was correct: house-made apple vinegar soda with honey and maple, salted caramel milkshake, duck confit panino and fries to rival the Friendly Toast's) and celebrated my aunt's birthday three days early because she's flying back to California tomorrow and drove the next two hours home. We lit the Hanukkah candles at the kitchen table, the fifth night for remembrance.



Shadows and sun.