I
enjoyed some new experiences this NYE. Less planned, and without my
partner. I went out with pal who also was also flying solo and we
enjoyed tequila drinks at Hazlewood, then sneaked into a nearby punk
show to ring in 2024.
Except...the
band stopped playing at 11.50pm.
We
drifted out to the listless streets and did our own countdown with
some reluctant sidewalk smokers.
Our
efforts to find restorative pizza also failed, so we hopped in the
car, got stuck in post-fireworks-and-Heart-concert traffic jams,
abandoned the car, and eventually found quesadillas and a reggaeton
dance party at a Belltown taco truck.
Life since Thanksgiving has felt like being on a trampoline. Every plan changes. Every day something has to flex, adjust, be canceled or rescheduled. Every outing is a calculation of risk. Staying home is the safest thing covid-wise but the deadliest mental health-wise.
We pulled off Hannukah just before the variant swept through, keeping the guest list tight, staggering 2 people here, then 3 people an hour later. Windows were open and distance was kept and the post-fete negative covid test was a relief. Our family’s grand plans for a holiday together began falling apart a week before Christmas. Snow loomed in the forecast, all up and down the highway corridor we’d be traveling. Omicron meant our destination was implementing new restrictions on gatherings and updating them daily. One person got sick, then another. We ended up celebrating as we did in 2020, at our separate homes and on Zoom. It’s a bitter pill in a year when it seems like that’s all we’ve had to dine recently. * To keep my spirits up, I’m still reading and enjoying media. Shang Chi was the feature film for Christmas Day. It’s wonderful! Funny and intricately planned and paced, from the way information is released to the knockout action scene on a San Francisco city bus. I need to watch again so I can enjoy the spectacle.
I just finished Casey Plett’s Little Fish, about a trans woman in Canada who finds out her Mennonite grandfather may have been gay or trans. The writing is raw and courageous. Plett mentions Torrey Peters in the afterword and I think this is a perfect companion piece to Detransition, Baby. Both books address pain head on and like massaging a bruise, make it hurt a little extra so that together we come to a greater understanding.
Another gem is Janet Mock’s Surpassing Certainty: What my Twenties Taught Me. This memoir by an acclaimed writer and executive producer for Pose is a window into a trans woman of color’s experience getting jobs, marrying, studying journalism and finding her place in the very white, very male world of publishing.
As we inch closer to 2022 I feel relief--bye bitch--and anxiety. I’m looking forward to writing and books and love and friends and good times and delicious cocktails. Don’t let me down 2022.
This may be the whirliest bunch of holidaze I've experienced in awhile.
2018 est arrivé and I am grateful and yes, a little pooped.
I had a slight pause after the Hannukah l'chaims, for a medical milestone (everything came out okay).
Then the aforementioned dog-sitting (and bonus days of cat-sitting).
Christmas Eve and--snow! And whiskey with good friends.
Christmas morning and--more snow! I fed the kitty and nervously watched the skies.
Fortunately, the roads cooperated and the fam was able to gather and celebrate for a few hours. Small gifts, a board game, some snowballs, a ton of food and some cranberry-garnished sangria.
Another happy hour over craft cocktails. And yes another happy hour two days later at a favorite spot with good pals, over nachos and frosty beers.
Finally, New Year's Eve, and a cold ferry ride up to Whidbey Island, to a friend's cabin for more whiskey, laughs and cheers for the new year.
Yesterday dawned cold and sunny. Gradually stirring from my cozy sleeping bag, I watched a woodpecker hop from tree to tree. A cute little pup cuddled in my lap. I drank hot coffee and hit the road and took in a sweeping, glorious vista.
It's a new year, calendar-wise, and I feel a hint of optimism.
So here we are in 2015 and it feels both fresh and familiar.
The days are surely getting longer, aren't they?
It's been a tough start. Tbh, I'm feeling lost, anxious, fretful, not quite sure where I belong.
Who's my tribe? What the hell am I doing with myself?
I rang in the new year with good people, partied late and slept late and enjoyed a brisk sunny afternoon restorative walk. The next day dawned misty and cold and I went to a friend's dad's funeral, sat among long-time friends and contemplated life and loss and love. I heard the priests talk about God and Heaven and I wondered, do people really believe this? I did, for a time. Can I begrudge them the small comfort of believing their loved one has passed on to dwell with others who have gone before?
I think I can. This fantastical belief, against all facts and sense, it serves as an insulation from the reality, that life is short and difficult and exhilarating and we'd best spend our time not listening to some tired old man's querulous ideological interpretations of mythological deities, but instead, helping each other, taking care of each other, loving each other, finding and bringing what joy we can during our brief awake time on the planet.
*
Then I go get coffee from ETG and find the front door window covered in plywood. A man broke in at 11.30pm Saturday night, and is on security camera rifling through the cash register, making away with a couple of rolls of quarters. 11.30pm on a Saturday night in Fremont--party central for much of twenty-something Seattle, and no one stopped or called the cops? Apparently someone else happened along and went inside too, to poke around. No coffee was stolen, none of the delectable pastries, not the enormous Kitchen Aid or the espresso machine. The antique mall was targeted recently too, the barista told me. A man in a trench coat walked out with a bearskin rug. Someone else made off with several of her rings. For crying out loud, Seattle, what is happening to us? Who the hell are we?
Reflecting on the year that's almost completed.
I know who I am and that's mostly good.
I have an idea of who I could be.
Of what I could do. It will take a lot of work to get there.
Some loneliness. Some lone-time-ness.
I hope to accept the scariness of what I'm about to embark on and do it anyway.
More soon. Today, I'm reflecting.
Happy new year errybody.
I welcomed 2013 with bubbly, a rowdy funk band and some late-nite drunk dialing.
And needless to say, a hangover.
But also with ideas, optimism, curiosity.
*
In yoga there are poses called heart-openers.
At first I was skeptical--so corny!
But it seems to me that there are worse things than an open heart, and sometimes the body can be the gateway to the mind.
So I guess here's to stretches and all that comes with.
Last week I re-read a journal I kept during the year before my divorce.
Damn those were tumultuous times. I moved out of my old house, then back in; went to one shrink, another, and another.
The only constant was how shitty I felt most of the time, and the certainty that I needed to be doing certain things.
Writing.
Taking pictures.
Finding a network of creative people.
Traveling more.
Chilling out.
Well whaddya know I've been doing most of the above.
But I've been thinking some more. Back in the day I filled sketchbooks with images ripped out of magazines, quotations, all the little bits that made up my life: Benetton ads, my own drawings, Christian Lacroix pearl-encrusted crosses, ESPRIT shoes, Len Deighton. A me-book. Today, armed with tape and pages torn from Citizen K, I started a new me-book.
I don't have much more to say in the closing hours of 2010. I'm too tired for profundity, too relaxed for resolutions, too cautious to rejoice, too lucky to wish for much more. Kwaheri to the old. Mal sehen (but optimistically), to the new.
