In Sum: November 2021
Ah, here we are, rather unbelievably, at the introduction to the season of liminal spaces.
Airplanes.
Lengthier reply times.
The time between Thanksgiving & Christmas, Christmas & New Years.
Parents’ & in-laws’ houses, where you are back to being kids but not quite (breakfast is made for me but I still have obligations like work, buying Christmas presents, filtering through my inbox to find anything important amongst Black Friday sales, the incessant demand to CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME rather than just exist and enjoy the world already around you).
Can we all collectively agree that this time of year wears a bright shiny jacket of performative busy-ness & gOtTa GeT iT aLl iN, when in reality it’s quivering at the knees wondering if it can just have a cookie and a lie down already?
The end of November is weird – it’s like we all kind of just want to skip the majority of the following month (I mean, what is the week that includes December 15th? Doesn’t it feel like that week is a lost cause / a party black hole / a collective inhale & exhale all at once??)
But when we were kids, wasn’t the lead-up to the holidays the best part? Whether it was a religious holiday, a secular celebration, or just the time off from school we were looking forward to, I always felt like that liminal space between was the juiciest part. One of my intentions this month is to try and cultivate that gratitude again for the fuzzy, cozy, undefined edges of December.
But first, some moments from November -
The buses will keep going, but you have to be at the bus station.
I heard this on a podcast while out on a Long Walk, wrote it down in my notes, & now have no idea who said it or what podcast I heard it on…
But, I find myself still circling back to the sentiment. When considering creativity, luck, chance, the flow of ideas – the buses will keep on following their bus route, but you won’t be able to catch them if you aren’t at the bus station.
What bus station do I want to be at? Am I there already? If not, what are the steps I need to take to get myself there? And once I’m there, will I be patient enough to wait for the right bus, and not just step on the first one that pulls up?
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The plant I keep moving around to keep it in the sunlight — kind of like me, I guess. Constantly re-adjusting, maneuvering, positioning myself near the sunlight. In the hopes that I keep growing. Or, at the very least, just don’t die I guess.
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“You know how I love a spontaneous intimacy with a stranger to make something new.”
+ the rest of the accompanying photo thread from Miranda July.
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I prefer my football taken on Sunday late-afternoons, as an ASMR-inducing drone in the background while I lay on the couch, nose in a book or my newsletters, sprinkled with random moments of unintentional comedy from the commentators & the occasional odd stat that has nothing to do with football (see below):
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I was waiting for the bathroom, probably somewhere over the Rectangle States (Colorado & Wyoming), when I overheard one flight attendant talking to the other about a house he wanted to buy.
He talked about when he was going to fly there; they compared screenshots of their work schedules.
Another reality in the sky. Another universe tucked amongst the clouds.
*****
On another Long Walk, Sunset Edition.
Overheard a USPS worker on the phone while he was delivering packages:
“We are hiring people, but they’re not sticking around. People are getting so burnt out so quickly, they are quitting because they are afraid it’s gonna be like this all the time.”
How long until we realize we can’t blame everything on supply chain issues?
*****
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WHAT I READ:
This New Yorker article made me cry
“What if millennials were unintelligible to their parents simply because they have resigned themselves to precariousness as life’s defining feature?”
Advice for writers, from writers
“In my experience, growth—personal growth, creative growth, professional growth—tends to happen the way that one of Hemingway’s characters says he went bankrupt: Gradually, then suddenly.” - Mason Currey, advice giver in this article and author of one of my favorite newsletters
This piece on AI, which blew my mind (it’s very long, but trust me - just reading the first few chunks will make you feel very smart & convinced we are already in the metaverse).
Every inch of Brendan’s Dawes’ website, an artist who explores the aesthetics of form & code.
How I wish I could spend my December - watching the entirety of the Criterion Collection in sequential order.
WHAT I LISTENED TO (that isn’t obvious, like Adele’s album & my Spotify Wrapped):
Jamie Varon on Sophia Bush’s podcast, Work in Progress – um I think this changed my life?
Whoever is doing the music supervision for Sex Lives of College Girls is doing a really great job.
This year I feel particularly desperate to get away from the post-capitalist plane of reality that we are no longer just operating on – it’s more like we are careening forward at such an unsustainable pace that it feels like reality is no longer reality and just a heightened state of liminality itself.
But what are we in between? Here and there? Or are we just there now, but we don’t like being there so much? how can we reclaim agency over what our ‘there’ looks like?
Those are some things i’ll be pondering this December. Starting with letting myself unplug from the way things are and plug myself back into just being. Neither here nor there, but home in my body and with those I love most, however small that circle might be.
Love for you & yours,
xx
mm