the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 19
Hello all my lil ducklings! I wanted to write again, faster this time, since my last missive was fairly down in tone and I'm feeling stronger (not physically, my arms are like wet noodles, I really should start doing pushups or something) and more buoyant.
Monday, tomorrow is winter solstice, which means it will be the darkest day of the year, but! The next day, there will be a little more light, and then a little more, and so on and so forth until summer. Darkness scares me, sometimes; I've been on paths in my past that led to months of darkness. But it feels right to me to honor the literal darkest day of what is probably the metaphorical darkest year of my life. (Probably others lives as well, although I don't want to presume or project.) It's important to dwell on the dark, sometimes, in order to feel the warmth of the light.
But tomorrow offers even more. Jupiter and Saturn will be aligned in the sky in the "Great Conjunction," a phenomena that only happens every twenty years. This year's conjunction will be the closest the two planets have been in the past 400 years. It seems unlikely I'll be able to see it -- it's been cloudy and overcast the past week, and we've had lovely intermittent snow. It still makes my heart feel very full, though, thinking about the slow, consistent process of these two heavenly bodies that lead to such magnificent ephemera. The fact that it will happen under the cover of darkness feels like it hardly matters.
Debris:
I went ice skating in Prospect Park on Saturday, and it was really fun to be out in the sunshine, gliding along the ice! And then I nearly wiped out because some ambitious kid decided to try to do a twirl or something and ate shit right in front of me. (He was fine.)
I walked 2.5 miles to get a donut from a new donut place. I ate ramen in 28 degree weather. NO REGRETS.
I've bought an awful lot of wool base layers recently to make the above possible, and I am enjoying winter much more than I have in the past. It turns out good clothes are good.
I am going to go snowboarding in January. I haven't snowboarded in about ten years and I was not good the last time I went so I am looking forward to having the sorest butt of all time.
What I've Been Reading:
Currently:
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black:
Vampires are real! They used to hide their wicked selves by limiting their number, but a reckless vampire decided to infect the whole world, so now they're out in the open but quarantined into "Coldtowns." Tana wakes up one morning after a sunrise party -- where the teens lock everyone into a house from sundown to sunrise -- in a bathtub where she drunkenly passed out. When she emerges from the bathroom, she discovers everyone else there has been torn apart by vampires; everyone, except her ex-boyfriend, who is tied up in a bedroom; he's been bitten but not killed. That means he's "Cold;" IE, infected with a deep hunger for blood, and if he tastes it, he will die and be reborn as a vampire. (Just roll with it! It's fine!) A teenage vampire is also tied up in chains right near him, so she bundles them all into her Crown Vic and heads to Coldtown, the only "safe" place for them. It turns out all of this is traumatic! Also why do half the books I read have plagues and quarantines in them? This book is from 2014! Anyway, it's pretty good and super dark but sometimes has some funny teen humor in it.
Finished:
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo:
I LOVED THIS BOOK. A fantasy heist novel! Who doesn't love a heist? A thief, a spy, a gambler, a wizard (kind of? she does magic), a demolition expert, and an angry anti-magic cop/convict (this character is hard to describe) all have to work together to bust a scientist out of the Ice Court, which is basically angry anti-magic prison. The book doesn't come out and say it, but I'm pretty sure they're all super hot! They're also all late teens so that's a bit creepy, but honestly, if the book hadn't explicitly said they were all so young I wouldn't have known. The thing about this book is everyone has a really great backstory that are all introduced in pretty narratively-coherent ways. Just a very fun, good romp that made me cry a couple times. It ends with a cliffhanger, but it feels more like a real narrative decision and not just a way to tack on a second book.
Legendary, by Stephanie Garber:
SPEAKING OF A TACKED ON SECOND BOOK. This is book two of the Caraval series, and honestly it's so much more of a mess than the first one. The writing is a little more flowery -- this one centers Donatella, the sister who is a bit more flighty and fun. Unfortunately Garber strays away from the fun, magical mystery of Caraval in this novel and gets real bogged down on some fairly boring "does he love me does he not" musings. It's a novel of people not really listening to each other and ultimately I got kind of bored.
Okay this one is short and sweet! I hope you all are hanging in there. I love you!!!!
davida