flights

Years ago, a few months after I moved west for the first time – and traveled west for the first time actually – to be with the girl I thought at the time was my true love, I happened to spend my first Christmas alone.

She dumped me for her ex-boyfriend weeks after I moved. It was a painful but essential lesson, but it’s an old story now, and I’m over it.

The story I’m trying to tell right now is about Christmas.

I had just moved from New York City to Tempe, Arizona. I was broke, but even if I had had the money for a plane ticket, I was not in a festive state of mind.

So I borrowed a little camping gear and planned a trek into the Chiricahua mountains. I spent a very cold Christmas alone there. It was so cold, my bottles of drinking water froze inside my backpack, inside my tent. The sun set at 5:30, and I lay sleepless in the dark for hours. It snowed while I slept, and I woke to find a silent and magically transformed world.

Last Christmas, I found myself alone in sweltering Bangkok.

My first and last Christmases alone. One cold, one hot. Despite the unforgettable settings, I felt bereft and alone.

Last night I went to see Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, a film about – among other things – being alone. It follows a collection of sad characters, all sadly in love with people they can’t have.

Apparently even the Chinese director understands that nothing deepens one’s loneliness like Christmas. The holidays come and go in the movie, year after year, and characters who can’t be with the ones they love, or manage to love the ones they’re with, settle for whatever companionship they can find, because – as one explains it – people need a little more warmth than usual at Christmas.