december

what do you want for christmas? saphic yearning. wintering. rewatch of carol. frances ha too. seeing life in black and white. memories of 2023 paw at me, wanting attention and care. but all i’m giving them is neglect. admitting the end to a year is admitting that there are a bounty of things left unfinished. feelings not fully felt. words not yet said. for example, there is so much i want to tell you, but i am here, a hundred duties on top of me before i can scrap at some kind of meaning i’ve left swept under the metaphorical rug, dust-bitten and musky with unjournaled weeks, months. 

i’m carrying a lot. so, i think it’s boat totes and long coats. it’s looking at the minimalism in pastels. candy-colored joy in the open blankness of fairfield porter. coveting drive post-kitchen confidential in prep for the new year. dressing in effortless layers. keeping it simple. but playful. this is where loewe’s ss24 show comes in. it’s playful, but still means serious business. rushing into december as a walking dramedy is my business attire.

so much of writing is knowing how a sentence will begin or end. for example:

finally, i’m at terms with who i am.

i’m at terms with who i am, finally.

i’ve come to terms with who i am, 

finally.

where does finally go? and is it actually finite? if i cannot decide where finally goes, is this me admitting that perhaps there is more work to be done?

because i throw myself off with come to meaning i’m nearing arrival. why, in my blank confidence, did i situate with at? is it come to or at?

where am i in the sentence?

where am i in the world?

the illusion is that i’m put together. pristine. packaged. no assembly required. the delivery fully me. at brunch or coffee. at long talks, two or three wines in. i make it a point to mean, fully, what i mean.  

but really, there is a lot of drafting. plenty scrapped, bunches crumpled and amateur because i’m still learning.

wintering is a reminder that learning is ongoing. that patience is required in the day. for the bones to make use of the cold, to find movement, to hearth warmth.

how are you wintering?

still, i’ll drink my coffee cold. i’ll listen to the pop-noxious christmas mall tunes that plagued my childhood, build-a-bear workshop my way into stuffing myself full and sick with holiday cheer because the commercialism offers a confectionery flavor best desired when i cannot stand to see my organic self, what is left to rot to sweep up for the new year. 

desperately, i need to tell you that though i’m optimistic, though i plan and look forward, i’m a complete mess. i’ll self-deprecate and joke my way through rough-trade smiles to deliver a one-liner, distract myself with the writing so much so that enough sense is built into every word, every meaning.

do you have that weighted blanket over your inner-child? have you told your inner child bedtime stories? retold them? filled them with hope? filled them with wonder? my mother used to tell me bedtime stories, ones she made up, and though i never knew what they were about, it was the way she whispered them to me. whispered. lulls, swells, music. she grew up in a choir, and i could always hear song in her tone. even in the ways she scolded me. she was well aware of the tones of the world.

this month’s playlist includes very quiet sounds, but also sounds that bring cheer from afar. i’ve decided upon a city pop christmas. i want eighties confectionery glamour. none of the old-timey frosty claymation or bing crosby bullshit. i think it’s because i’m away. away from home and away from people i love. so, i want to be away from everything that i know.

i’m distant for christmas. 

this isn’t what i mean. i think what i want is distance. from the text itself. so it’s more cheerful. hey. the new year is here. just around the corner. new moments, new people. new ways of preparing the day with better habits, refined discipline.

for the last month of the year, i’ll leave you with these images:

fairfield porter -- an artist whom i’ve always admired for his quietude. through soft strokes and the way the light hits empty landscapes or portraits, you can tell he was quite shy. economic about his words. painted all his feelings in pastel colors. there’s a sweetness. a sadness too. his paintings make me want to go out to the country. house a dog. read thick hardbacks. actually drink folger’s coffee, hot.

also, i can’t stop thinking about the ss24 loewe show. there’s a beautiful, playful construction to all the garments. take a look at the tie-dye polo. take a look at all the coats, stitched up, so it’s long on one side and short on the other, to let the breeze through bare legs, when the autumn afternoon gets too warm. look at the long-pinned shorts. there’s drama. there’s comedy. dramedy. everything i love in any sort of presentation.

sometimes i think i’m too serious. or i don’t know how to make my writing funny. writing humor is really fucking hard. i’m trying it out in a current novella, but every time i write it out, it sounds too much like me. meaning mean. friends have told me that i’m not funny, i’m mean. i think it’s because i self-deprecate myself too often that i think i can do it to others, but i’m not mean-spirited, no, it’s just that in instances like these, i would say something i would say about myself about someone else, laugh about it, and they wouldn’t. so it goes.

i remember one lone christmas ago, i watched the uncut version of scenes from a marriage (281 minutes) where i sobbed and sobbed over wanting some kind of connection, ironically, when on the screen, i watched the destruction of a marriage, the very folly of belonging.

i was going to spend a majority of december with bergman films, but i think i require the exact opposite. something more funny. none of that swedish seriousness. but it’s the black and white i want to revel in. the words. lines. delivery. how his characters, so fraught with anxiety, can unravel and become so vulnerable. the characters in my writing require this. i want to give this to them. but good god they deserve a laugh or two.

i think i’ve rambled enough. offered enough. and hope that you come into december with much more joy than a bergman film. i hope you reread the mall elf story by david sedaris. and if you’re reading it for the first time, by golly i envy you. holidays on ice.

also, before you go, make sure to order adolescence leaves now!!! it makes for a great stocking stuffer and the 33% discount code (BLACKFRIDAY23) will be up, i think, until the end of the year. or whenever i remember to take it down lol

as always, 

be well

do good work

keep in touch.

<3

n