collections: a semi-seasonal reset

We’re in the double digits now and that’s a modern miracle. I was going to spend this collection writing about something else, but then I read “i can’t stop thinking about this” and, well, these are some things i can’t stop thinking about:

• in the pantomime: the winter olympics are nothing without canadian ice dancing royalty
• cosmic operas: florence + the machine lyrics are something else
• tossed and turned: i promised some people i would write about hacky sack

💌

collections: a semi-seasonal reset

New year, new letter.

When you reset for a new year, you have to scrape-off and discard the decayed remainders of the last year. When you’re stripped clean, you’re reminded that there are a few things you still enjoy doing below the caked-on layers of being too busy to do something. I’ve found the temporary vigor to write about nothingness again, and for that I am thankful.

• listen up and let me tell you a story: six wives reclaim the musical narrative
• the library card: plastic keys to an infinite universe
• sunbursts and marble halls: your reality is effervescent

💌

Last year ruthlessly settled into this year—2022 rolled in and receded a bit, and I finally found a Sunday afternoon to ruminate on the year we just left behind. More than anything, 2021 left us: a once hopeful reprieve that spiraled and thrashed in a final disappearing act. In that year-long unease, this is what I read, wrote, did, and resolve to do more of.

a year in review

In 2021, I watched thirty-one seasons of tv and twenty-four films; read approximately twelve books; and mindlessly tabulated myself in other ways: like first adult apartment, seven spice jars and fourteen sauce bottles, and six strands of christmas lights.

an ordered list of things i really loved this year.

in summary

• shows: thirty-one
• films: twenty-four
• books: twelve-ish
• audio: mostly taylor’s version, 33 tracks
• lukewarm disappointments: gossip girl (hbo max)

see scrapbook 2021 for all the other stories from 2021

In a past-life, I would write a series about the seasons. I’d use those installments to mark the passage of time and wax poetic about the seasons evolving and bleeding into each other. That as one season ended and another began, we’d keep moving forward: because the seasons would keep changing even as we asked (kindly) for it to stop. Each new season beautifully distinct from the last, but resolute in their transient familiarity.

As the twentieth year of the millennia turned into the twenty-first, the days turned into months and the months have become a year and some change. Just like the rest of us, the seasons are scathing, bitter, and weary.

I read something about the seasons this past year that I’ll think about forever: “the seasons no longer mark the passing of time but various failed bargains with nature.”

I’ve failed so many times.