November 27, 2003

9:32 p.m.

Today was Talksgiving. I talked more today, in answer to questions, and asking questions of others, than I have any day this year. This is because I went to Josh and Lenka's for dinner.

They're my sister's vets (& friends), and the last two years we've all gone there for Thanksgiving dinner. It's normally a large affair with any number of friends, neighbors, and kids, and way too much food. This year my sister and her husband are with his relatives instead, so I went by myself to J&L's. This is an unusual thing for me; I don't know them that well really, and there are always people there I don't know at all, and for me to socialize with strangers is rare. But I've been mulling lately over the way I have almost no friends nearby, since I'm always elsewhere with the band, and I really should try to develop some getting-to-know-others skills -- which I admire so much in Josh, in fact -- his ability to ask very interesting questions, one after another, that make a person feel like they're the only one in the room who matters. So I decided to go today, not as a sort of parasite (it's so easy to just listen to everybody else gab, and eat in silence) or a table ornament but as someone who wants to know who is sitting next to them.

It was easy.

First, there was a manageable number of people there. Only two I hadn't met before, and after a while I started remembering their names, and got J&L's kids' names straight (and never did really know the other three, except Molly, because she was the youngest and had to be advised about not playing rough in her velvet dress, and not to give her leftover pie to another child because she had a cold). Josh's parents are so lovely and they were SO interested in everything about my unusual life (couldn't grasp, for a while, the concept of overdubbing in a studio -- "Don't you just sit down and play all at once and just turn the recorder on? That's how they used to do it"), and I was reminded that, yes, I do live very much off the radar, and it is interesting, isn't it?

I sat next to Lenka at the table, and we talked about our passages and our vacations and whether or not we feel grown up yet. It turns out I'm a few months older than she is, and yet to me she seems the older, more settled & responsible one. She denied it. I said, "But look, you have a family, a house, a real job!" She looked around and said, "I know it looks like I'm a grownup, but sometimes I feel no different than when I was sixteen." I know exactly what she means. I am playing at being an adult, and mostly getting away with it; but some part of me knows it's only on the outside.

Later I asked Josh if HE felt like a grownup, and he said unequivocally yes. Because, he explained, the more he looks around and realizes how much he doesn't know, the smaller in the universe he perceives himself to be, and that takes away the invincibility of youth. He feels the responsibility of voting this way or that way based on how it will affect his children's education. He is awed by acupuncture and chinese medicine and those who seem to connect to the healing arts on a metaphysical level. He wonders about the subtleties some are able to achieve, in the transference of healing energy and in artistic perception, and is sobered by the thought that these things may be beyond him. Recently, when I was sick, a woman did some "healing touch" on me in the area of my throat, and it was a profound and transforming experience for me. Josh asked, "Doesn't it make you feel small in the universe?" and I said, "No, it makes me think that there is a richness all around me that I might not have known before."

And on and on; we talked about many things, and they kept asking me questions about what it was like to be on tour, and how did the band get along being together so much, and how do we write songs together, and was there any place we'd been in the country that we never wanted to go back to? Finally their youngest son, who is maybe eight, blurted out, "Are you famous?" and without hesitating I said, "Yes. Very."

Talksgiving. After the traditional two turkeys (one barbequed), and two side tables full of side dishes, and various bottles of wine, there is a little digesting and then we go for a walk. There are wonderful woods paths and it's just about the time when we can catch the sunset from the ridge. So five of the grownups (loose term, see above) and two dogs bundle up and head out, the women naturally separating from the men, to talk about fixing up houses and how a new development is soon going up in these woods and then the walking will be very different, and what can you do about it? We get back when it's almost dark, and we have lots of pie and ice cream, and the kids eat what they like best and play with the whipped cream can and then go off to watch tv, and we talk some more and finally I get too sleepy to stay any longer. They send me off with tight hugs and tubs of leftovers and I go home by myself and let myself into my apartment, where I live alone, and I remember that my sister, my closest relative, is in Texas and this is the first Thanksgiving I've gone alone to someone's house and gotten to know people.

And I feel very grown up.