{"id":1328,"date":"2016-12-24T20:40:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-24T20:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2016-12-25T17:29:18","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T17:29:18","slug":"otherness-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1328","title":{"rendered":"Otherness & Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"img_4219\"<\/a>Why do you live in a strange country?
\nTo feel stranger.<\/p>\n

It’s a wonderful time of the year to feel strange, especially if you don’t celebrate Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re sensitive to alienation opportunities, it gives and gives. \u00a0Instead of simple confusion, consider throwing yourself in headfirst. \u00a0Cultivate a Rimbaud moment – derangement of the senses, an experience that takes you from the familiar into the vast unknown.<\/p>\n

I chose a rainstorm as my perverse time to see what this year’s Christmas shopping was like.\u00a0 Not any rainstorm – a time when large drops were driving and slapping at the diagonal. \u00a0Umbrellas were inverting like, well, Christmas trees. \u00a0What a good time to join the other grumbling shoppers with their boisterous ho-ho.\u00a0 Then looking for certain specialty items, I drove around empty brick warehouses looking at the offices of accident lawyers, uniform shops, pawnshops.\u00a0 Inside the yogurt pot of my little car, I was listening to French songs (a tobacco-rough chanteur whose words were wistful and accompaniment sentimental).\u00a0\u00a0 I was looking for dried rose buds in an herb shop that borders the cemetery.\u00a0 To make a fish tagine with quince and rose buds. To each her own obsession!<\/p>\n

Since political correctness has been killed off by our new Santa in Chief, I dare to say that I come by this rightly.\u00a0 In childhood, my family made an annual excursion to view the rooftop blitzers and fritzers and Santas in the\u00a0 goyishe part of town, mother and father in the front seats of the car, daughters in the back.\u00a0 We’d point and laugh at the Vegas-bright lights and maybe feel a little jealous, maybe not.\u00a0 We did go out for Chinese on the day.<\/p>\n

This year Hanukkah falls at the same time as Christmas, but timing isn’t the point.\u00a0 It’s that the mainstream is not a friendly place these days. \u00a0It’s not Trump’s fault that the scales of Happy Holidays have fallen off and we are back to Merry Christmas.\u00a0 It’s fine.<\/p>\n

It is the time to wear one’s alienation proudly.\u00a0 The normal is not normal at all.\u00a0 Je est un autre,<\/em> I is an other – Rimbaud’s famous declaration – is right on time.\u00a0 And by the way, to those who oppose the mainstream with true good will, Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do you live in a strange country? To feel stranger. It’s a wonderful time of the year to feel strange, especially if you don’t celebrate Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re sensitive to alienation opportunities, it gives and gives. \u00a0Instead of simple … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-lq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1332,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}