Oh, dear reader. Merry, merry…
I wanted to write a note to you which conveyed ‘joy of the season’, or ‘best wishes,’ or ‘Have a Happy New Year,’ or ‘holiday’, or something,
or something. As the year draws its large, complicated body to a close, I find my heart expanding beyond measure. I love more people than I’ve ever loved before. People who I met and will not forget. People I did not meet and cannot forget. People whose poems I saw, whose bodies I saw. Those who are here and not here,
those who left us,
those who were taken. Murdered.
Those who are learning hard and crying in public,
who are disintegrated and re-imagined, reanimated.
I love, I love, l love.
I don’t know where this message finds you or how. On my walk, I recorded a voice note against a gradient backdrop, trees speckled in lime / deep forest green - clouds untranslatable. Of course, it was a mess; I’m transcribing instead. I thought about the merciless parallels of our shared realities on this planet - the indistinct parallels between joy and grief, between building up and breaking down. I’m trying to be better, but better often eludes me. This living, morphing attention to what is occurring, what is honest, is brutal and relentless. I speak out of turn. I move first, think later, or I overthink and don’t move quickly enough. I make assumptions. Oh, the fragility of the ego! I need more patience and understanding - a stronger commitment to love as Action. Where my heart is concerned, I’m always in school.
Still, I love. I love.
However you are spending the day/week/rest of the year,
whoever you are with or not with,
whether you are alone by yourself or alone in a group setting,
whether you are afraid, peaceful, mourning, love-filled, heartbroken, hope-full or decidedly hope-less, I wish you nourishment today; however you can find it. Grasp at it.
Yrsa xxxx
Soot sprites! A friend tried to make some TikTok pine cone cookie recipe and they looked much more like soot sprites so they rebranded 😏
Merry merry, and thank you for being one of my favorite discoveries of the year 🫶🏼🥰
Happy holidays! And your line - the indistinct parallels between joy and grief - spoke to me. A turn of phrase embodying the season of remembered joy in the midst of so much suffering.