(Some sort of wordplay about the Three Wise Men and their Camel Lights.)

1-3-10, 7:01 pm, getting ready to watch Oliver Stone's The Doors. Drinking spicy tea.

Laying in the snow with my twelve-year-old brother; "It's so quiet out here," he says. "People in the city don't get it, do they?" Pause. "I feel kinda bad for them." Pause. Double-pause. "'Course, it's their own fault that they live in the city." "Yup".

A long walk in the twilight snow, hand-in-hand. Three brothers, sweetly oblivious, reverent in the silent fall of snow. Smoking cigarettes in the dark, dry barn, huddled in the manger like the Magi, curling tobacco smoke our incense. Snow angels, wet and cold down your neck and your aching back. It's all a peaceful lunar landscape, with the house backlit in iridescent blues and whites.