NOTES ON A THANKSGIVING DINNER, AND THE DAY AFTER

6:30 pm all guests were at the dinner table, including my miserable self sitting stiff and limbering at my pre-assigned seat. As the host started with his pre-dinner rite, so too was the spinning of my head. Insomnia was killing me, and as the host was saying grace - not just for what's on the table we were about to partake but "for the affairs in life we were so fortunately able to succeed in" - I was tempted to tell him to pray for my headache, too.

The host was funny. Somehow, in his prayers, he sought for change in leadership (No More Years! he chanted) and that prompted me to raise my spinning head which at that moment met the eyes of the man across from me. He winced, as if in pain, and I knew it was not from hunger; his politics did not share the host's and he made the excrutiation oh so obvious, at least to me. My little heart smiled, wickedly, for in the spirit of my spectrum he was also sitting across from me.

The gracious hostess (obviously a great party organizer) followed suit; she described the dishes and explained the tedious process of doing the sauces from scratch: the cranberry chutney, the gravy for turkey, the gravy for ham. My eyes were rolling around, waiting for some funny comment like "You could have just used Mang Tomas Sarsa ng Lechon", and looking for things that might incriminate - like facial expressions or veiny signs in the forehead that read Let's Eat Already. I saw smiles, seemingly authentic, including the guy's across from me. Ahh, how nice, such an absence of impropriety.

Then the woman at the far end of the dining table was asked to stand and initiate the buffet line; at that instant, the yak-yak-yakking began. Talks of business this and business that, politics this and politics that, party this and party that, and they made me analyze my fate even more - I was at the other end of the dining table, potentially the last person at the food line, and probably the only person to capture the full force of the yaks. And so my mind went astray as it always did to while away the time and escape from the moment; (I trained myself for this eventuality since I was a kid - to look nice without being so.)

On a scale of 1 to 10, my social skills are probably an average 5. I love to talk and I love company but what makes me rate myself so lowly was my nasty tendency to pre-judge people. For example, if you told me you adore Paris Hilton or watch The Apprentice and wish to emulate Donald Trump, I will make a pre-judgment that we have nothing in common and anything you say after that are beyond my capability to hear. Still and all I am working to correct this attitude, so please people, in the spirit of change and forgiveness, I will pray for resurrection, too, for I will definitely undo that in my next life.

And so it was, while waiting for my turn and walking all the way back to my table looking at the mountain of food on my plate, my mind was venturing somewhere else. I thought about The Dead, James Joyce undying novella that is built around a party, and which Mary Gordon very smartly noted (re the party, the story) as the hubbub of realism, the buzz and Babel of the 19th century, where people (partygoers!) talk, talk, talk in so many voices that mistakes and misunderstanding become inevitable.

Our dining table was a little Babel - three languages were spoken, sometimes simultaneously: Tagalog, English, and Spanish. The lady to my left, a gorgeous 80 year old woman from Uruguay spoke only Spanish, but since she was hard of hearing, I talked to her in Tagalog. She would tell me something in her raspy voice, and I would say, Ows, talaga?, and she will smile back a very gorgeous smile.

I hardly looked outside of my plate and Madame 80's lovely face, smiling and working through the tenderness of my turkey's flesh, when all of a sudden I heard somebody said: Is it true there is a strong correlation between mathematics and music? The rising of my head must have been a little violent that it caught the attention of the inquirer. Did you think so, c? Uh, I guess, I said hesitatingly, rummaging for thoughts, as a chemical reaction in my tiny brain was gasping for oxygen as well as for support to my automatic "I guess". So I said, "Uh, both have something to do with measurement, uh, how about linearity, one of notes, the other of numbers, uh, both speak of precision, I think, uh...mmmm, this waldorff salad tastes really, really good."

Madame 80 gently grabbed my shoulder, lowering my face towards her shapely mouth, and with her sweet breath tickling my left ear whispered raspily something like, Que paso, que pasa, pasa doble, pasong tamo, or something to that effect which, based on her facial expression, must have meant, "c, you are such a rocket scientist."

For a change, I listened intently. No, not because math interested me. It did not, it does not. It was because the guy who must have initiated the topic of discussion, a mathematician (I believe) from Peru was discoursing the Mozart effect to a kid's future math prowess with this spec-ed teacher from Honduras who plays the viola.

The conversation, the feedback from the audience, the ohhs and the ahhs from the gallery of dysfunction, somehow put my spinning head to rest (which, fortunately, unlike a top did not fall on its side). I butted in...

Speaking of math, did anybody ever read Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar?

No response from the audience.

How about Death and the Compass by Borges?

There was a resounding Yesss!!!, inluding Madame 80 who spent some gracious time in Argentina.

And so I asked, Uh please tell me...

(As I was asking, I became very conscious of what I was saying and doing, hoping, assuring, that I will never make a mistake in words, in issues, in character, in attitude, or I would have been James Joyce's poor version of Gabriel, the unaffectionate Gabriel, the tactless Gabriel...)
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I woke up this morning at 7:00, my head heavy from the spirits and bubblies, my flesh was weak but my own spirit was willing to drag my ass to the mall, and scream Go Consumer GO!!! Like Canada's own Boxing Day, the day after T/G is the great shopping day in America, the land of the shoppers. I showered, dressed up, and before leaving I checked my e-mail. The first message I saw was this, from Sojourners Publication:

"Dear C,

The Christmas season is always a busy one - full of competing messages that bombard you with great sales and must-buys. We at Sojourners support Adbuster's "Buy Nothing Day" (observed on what is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year) as a way to reflect on our participation in consumer culture.

So, today, buy nothing."

At 7:30 am, my bed felt very, very warm. With great excitement, I started reading Mr. Palomar, picking up from where I left off.