Better late than never...as I type I'm watching the minute hand round the clockface, headed for midnight, after getting home from an early extended-family birthday party for Fellow Traveler. (That also explains the relative brevity of what is to follow.)
Disclaimer: I am a nerd. As you will soon find out.
1. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass: One of my favorite literary characters of all time, I loved Alice so much as a tiny child that one day I nearly sent my mother into cardiac arrest when she found me nibbling on shelf fungus from a backyard tree, and I calmly informed her that I was trying to make myself bigger and smaller. (Mom later said it was a good thing that I'd narrowly missed the "turn on, tune in, drop out" generation.)
2. A Middle-Earth Elf: Not Galadriel or Elrond; just an anonymous Elf hanging out in Lothlorien. I've always had a fascination with elves and faeries and such, and Tolkien's Elves are more evolved and multidimensional than the typical folkloric elf.
3. A Merry Person: For some reason I seem to be drawing from my childhood bookcase tonight. I loved the Robin Hood stories; loved the idea of a self-sustaining alternative community dwelling in Sherwood Forest, thumbing its nose at oppressive authority while aiding the needy. And I like eating wild game; one could do worse than communal meals of venison and humming ale around the fire.
4. Jerry Seinfeld's anonymous teevee neighbor: Not from a memorable episode of the series, mind you; just a random neighbor who is periodically invited into Jerry's apartment to talk about nothing. (I once dreamed of being in a similar apartment with Jesus, who while being Jesus was dressed in Seinfeldian jeans and sneakers. Jesus was talking to a group of us, seated around the kitchen bar, about something, not nothing, but was doing it in such a wry, deadpan way that I kept wanting to hear more: "I could sit here and listen to him all day." Which is, of course, when I abruptly woke up.
5. Northern Exposure's Marilyn: For those of you who don't remember that quirky dramedy about a village in Alaska, Marilyn was a taciturn Native American receptionist in a bare-bones (so to speak) doctor's office staffed by a fish-out-of-water New York physician who'd reluctantly relocated there. Marilyn's groundedness, her self-possession, her calm in the face of a frenetic and befuddled boss, the gravitas of the few words she chose to utter on a given day -- Marilyn was like a Zen master in a fur parka. I'd like to feel like Marilyn for 24 hours, I think.
Hmmm...that was fun. Maybe I should write here more.
