13 December 2002 - 01:29

My work is (kinda sorta) over for the term. We had a holiday (well... christmas, really) party tonight and some people actually came (yay!). We baked cookies and Nootropil made merengue puffs and we had music and wine and Christmas shows. The last few guests just wandered away.

We watched Nightmare Before Christmas which of course I think is wonderful. The music is great, the claymation is gorgeous, the characters are well developed, the dialogue and theming.... Mmmmm, it is a good movie.

...And yet, I can't stand the moral. The end of Tim Burton's masterpiece always leaves me heartsickly dissatisfied.

I identify strongly with Jack's feelings about Christmas. I think his impulses are good. I find his character very believable except for when he has ruined Christmas and goes through a very accelerated period of melodramatic mourning and decides to set things right and be excited about Halloween.

Well, I mean, it might happen, because he's a kind of manic character, but I don't believe that it would last, that the restlessness in his soul would stay quiet for long. Not even with Sally, because that's a different sort of restlessness and a different sort of joy.

Of course I am thinking about dolphins. I came to the "world of dolphins" as an outsider; I was delighted to discover the whole complicated thing. It was all new and exciting and I collected information and became enthusiastic. Now I'm at the bit where Jack is back home trying to figure the whole thing out. I also know the stories and the rhymes. I also try to break things apart into bits and look at them scientifically. Or artistically. The "dolphin puzzle" is as vague and intangible to me as the "christmas puzzle" is to Jack; I couldn't put the question into words (if asked, I could give a very good show, but without explicating everything I feel and want to know). It's not a single question. It's the problem of combining disparate and alien-yet-familiar things into a unified whole that is sensible and can be understood, or at least somehow described.

It is a problem that is as completely real to me as Christmas was to Jack. It is a problem that I stay up late at night studying, that I spend hours writing hoping I'll write out some kind of answer. One that I dream about, and one that I ask people about, suspecting I'll meet someone who answers with a key.

Of course, I've not yet gotten farther in the process. I haven't displayed Jack's hubris in supposing that I have been trying to hard, that in fact I really know the answer, that I am the one to take over and unify things in the eyes of the world.

But I can see that clearly in my impulses and future. And I know the odds are that I'll fall flaming out of the sky.

Is it better not to risk it, and simply stick with what I know? Time for my third glass of wine.