My head hurts, my eyes ache, and I am long since ready for the day to be over. I am afraid of my houseguest. Afraid of this incipient illness. Afraid of my blog, for God's sake. A woman wrote me for advice, and I wanted to scream "you're fucking asking me? Well then, honey, you're just looney toons, and my advice is, pray! Anyone who'd take advice from me is in a bad, bad way." Actually, I did advise her to pray. I never can resist giving advice, which is pretty comical, since I can't remember that I've ever in my life taken any.

That makes it sound like I thought this woman a pest. Au contraire, I am completely, hopelessly in love with her, though I've never met her. This is not an uncommon condition for me. I'll take two aspirin. Remind me in the morning, and I'll say: who?

But she wrote me such an amazing question, about how to deal with beauty, and its spillage, as if she really thought I'd know something. I vapored on about ego and sexism and what not. Wholly inadequate to the question. Dear God, my head hurts.

Our real sins -- my real sins -- are so hard to reveal, so hard even to understand. There was something dreadfully wrong about answering as I did, and I don't even know what it was. I only know that it was wrong, somewhere, somehow. Maybe it was even good advice, who knows? But the motivation behind it was corrupt

Or maybe not. Maybe the sin is now, in this moment, this twisted looking backwards. Just as likely. More likely, in fact.

Enough of this. It's not the time of recrimination -- it's the time of thanks. Have a good Thanksgiving, all you Americans out there. And God bless all who are abroad and houseless, all who are laboring on the sea, all soldiers far from home.