Happy Thanksgiving
Re-up from November 2016, the last time that motherfucker won an election. One of the things I’m thankful for is you guys, readers, commenters, and subscribers! Even if I get crabby from time to time.
Image by blogfriend Fearguth, November 2015.
We spend a lot of time criticizing the Thanksgiving myth, of that first feast at Plymouth Plantation, where the Indians, having helped the Pilgrims survive into their first harvest, come to share its fruits at the same table; for its false consciousness and historical decontextualization, ripped out of the record of exploitation, theft, and violence that marks the white people's takeover of the continent, but maybe we ought to remember that it is, after all, a myth.
Athena didn't leap, an armed baby, out of Zeus's skull, either! You can't expect a myth to be true! Maybe we should be thinking about the fictionally happy picture itself, of that multicultural table, as something we yearn toward, prospectively, without any illusions about the actual festival of 1621, toward the time when we can all sit down together, conscious of our identities and willingly sharing across the boundaries, those who have more obliged to share more, or even better to make it real every day, or as real as we can, imperfect and selfish as we all are by nature.
The Thanksgiving myth is a myth, and it really is about celebrating diversity! But not 400 years ago, when it didn't happen: 400 years in the future, or this year if we want it!
It doesn't mean anything if everybody at the table is the same, or if we pretend we're all the same; it derives its meaning from the differences, from dramatizing whatever differences we have, even if it's just generations or genders, but ideally racial differences, and being generous about them, not just with food but with attention, and not just attention but a little surrender, maybe of allowing the other person to be touchy and ready to get indignant, maybe of noticing how touchy we're feeling (with good reason!) ourselves.
And tomorrow, Resistance! Have a great holiday.
Image by Plane_guy 172 at MakerWorld.
I think the happiest holidays I had were beginning the 2nd or 3rd year after I'd moved to NYC in my mid twenties and was cobbling together friendships, and beginning to love the New York practice of hosting sit down dinner parties, semi formal even if you are poor, so friends could talk. And for me Thanksgiving is thankfully the holiday that isn't soaked in guilt or sad memories, it doesn't really signify of that much history, but truly is a time for recreating, and I'd stretch the limits of what I could afford and shop and cook for a couple days and bulge out what my 6th floor apartment could contain in guests and a couple of us had day jobs at the UN so there were always a few orphans who didn't even know what the holiday was and we all got to explain differently and locals brought singles for us to flirt with. and always artist friends who were 4x as poor as I. Id get a case of good French wine at Astor Place cuz you still could for $60 if you had good advice, and we'd be at the table until eleven or so and then we'd drink cognac or scotch and eat pie until 3 dancing to James Brown, The Zombies, James Chance, Tammy Wynette, it was amazing how a dozen people can dance so expressively in the 175 sq ft common space of a Little Italy 2 (tiny) bedroom. A couple people would help clean up and we'd drink coffee and watch the sun come up from beyond the Bowery. Awful hangovers But those were the best, most definitive,Thanksgivings. Everyone wanted to be delighted in each other and we were.
The Queens Man said something stupid and I told him to stuff it...