Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I appear to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and limp and lifeless hair. Perhaps this would only be of interest to my biographers because the rest of you are getting tired of me mythologizing my mental state. One day, you will be able to read about Zeus and Jupiter and My Mental State all in one book by Joseph Campbell. I will be so proud that all of my campaigning has paid off, and then I will turn you into a heifer or a pine cone.

And blah blah blah and whoop de do. What I really want to write about is a holiday party I went to last Saturday. I actually went to two holiday parties, the first a staid gathering that I had to leave early to go back to work, and the second a punk-rock bacchanal featuring a deafening pageant of “A Christmas Carol.” The former was thrown by my ex-boyfriend, and the latter by the denizens of the Cider House,* with whom I am connected through my dear friend Cara.

Cara and her gang are some of my younger friends, whose antics I don’t often have the energy or favorable circumstances to participate in. Further, many of my employees happened to be there, so the moment I walked in, I was treated as some sort of elder statesman by everyone but Cara, who gave me a warm hug and dragged me onto the dance floor to gyrate to the tangled chords and flashing lights of a noise band that happened to be performing in her basement. Another band followed, during whose set I drank a sludgy punch that tasted like bathtub gin and looked like nuclear waste.

And then came the pageant, written and starred in by Cara, who stole the show as a moderately intoxicated Scrooge. There were more people in the performance than watching it, and the frequent carols, more shrieked than sung, transformed the crowded basement into a sweaty mosh pit of holiday doom. The final song--presided over by a giant, menacing angler fish--was unrecognizable as any earthly sound, much less “Joy to the World.”

It was pure genius, as well as one of the only times I’ve felt truly alive in months.

* Which, apparently, rules.