the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 6
Last night, my housemates hosted a lil party in honor of their niece visiting from New Jersey. It was a very low-key affair; more of a group hang. Some dinner, some hot apple cider, some wine. Everyone fit around the couch; you could chat without shouting.
It's not quite Hanukkah, so it wasn't quite a Hanukkah party, but we did pull out the menorah and light some candles (no prayers) and then, basking in the warm glow, played a dreidel game. Dreidels are 4-sided spinning tops that have Hebrew letters on them ( נ (nun), ג (gimel), ה (hei), and ש (shin)) which mean something if lands facing up. Some of us have been playing dreidel games since we were kids (some iterations have been the focal point of certain newspaper columns) but I think the game we played last night is by far my favorite.
Maya and I invented the game a couple years ago, during a Hanukkah party in which she had procured a whole bunch of dreidels of varying colors. We drew up a matrix of colors (red, yellow, orange, and blue) and different things you had to do depending on what letter came up. Many were, uhhh, drinking-centric (Take a shot! Finish your drink!) but it was peppered with random other tasks or challenges. (Switch an item of clothing with someone! Do a dance for 30 seconds!) When it was your turn, you drew a dreidel from the bag, spun it, and then followed instructions.
That original matrix is lost to the sands of time and booze, but Maya and her niece made a new matrix for us last night, and one of the options, which I spun on my first go, was give an affirmation to everyone in the room. (or assign them a drink, but that's the cowards way out.) So I went around the room and said something I loved about every person there, or a way they made me feel, or a thing that I admire.
As I started, I worried I'd struggle with someone and it would be uncomfortable. But you know what? Once I got going, it was easy. I feel really lucky that I was in a situation where I could just tell people things that I find amazing about them without it being (too) awkward. Interesting, everyone grimaced slightly when I turned to them; we're not very good, I think, at hearing or accepting kind words about ourselves, which is too bad. I want to get better at telling people what I love about them; but I also want to get better at hearing those things when other people tell me.
Debris:
On Wednesday, at my tutoring center volunteering gig, Sabrina, a very cool 8-year-old told me she was going to draw a picture of me. "But," she said, "I'm gonna make your hair pretty." She was right. I got a haircut today. It looks much better. (She won't agree, she thinks I should braid it and put beads in it.)
I went to see the Nutcracker for the first time! It was really cute and fun. I took some very silly pictures. I also learned that the Home Alone music is from the Nutcracker! Who knew! (Probably everyone else.)
I went to Mexico on vacation, and it was ... the most refreshing vacation I can remember taking. I've been back for a solid week and I'm still pretty relaxed. I went on an REI Adventures trip because I didn't want to plan anything and it felt so good not to have to think about *anything*. Vacations are very good, yall.
What I'm reading:
Currently:
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo: I just started this one, but so far it's about a family with 4 daughters who are wildly different in age, and is shifting back and forth in time and point of views in ways that feel pretty different from other books I've read, but have been very seamless so far. It's a lot of characters to keep up with, so we'll see if that continues to be true. The writing is fluid in a way that I am really enjoying.
Recently finished:
The Trespasser by Tana French: I suspect I am going to make my way through the rest of Tana French's detective novels at a pretty fast clip going forward, since I've really enjoyed the first two I've read. The murder seems straightforward -- a young woman is found murdered in her house before a dinner date. Pressure is applied to the two detectives (the youngest and newest to the squad) to just charge her new boo, but they find it strange that their veteran colleagues are pushing so hard in that one direction when there's only circumstansial evidence. But all their other theories keep coming up empty -- is it possible that they just want this open-and-shut domestic to be more complicated than it is?
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: This book is intoxicatingly uncanny; Janina is the name of the protagonist, an older (unclear how old) Polish woman living in a secluded area bordering the Czech-Republic. We meet her during a punishingly cold winter, when she is grieving her missing dogs, helping a friend translate Blake, and looking in on the houses of those neighbors too wise or cowardly to spend the winter locally. She's a mess of tensions -- she once was a bridge architect, but now uses her slide-rule to write astrology charts and find patterns in the stars; she trusts in systems like the police, even as they write her off as an old biddy; she lives like a hermit, but has good relationships with many; she understands and thinks it's good that she has limits, but she rails against them. She is charmingly cranky and really agreeably fucks with people that she disagrees with. Oh, also, it's a whodunit and Janina thinks that the animals of the forest taking revenge on hunters.
Case Files (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu) by Meredith Rusu: Um, okay I got this from the library as a joke but I did technically read it. I thought it would be an actual story, but it's not, it's literally just facts about Pokémon. There is a very distressing picture of a very cute Detective Pikachu next to a fake post-it that says "How well does anyone really know anyone." Not recommended for grownups, heh.
Planet of the Nerds by Paul Constant, Alan Robison (Artist), Felipe Sobreiro (Artist): I went into this book predisposed to love it; I've known and loved Paul and his writing for, oh, fifteen years now? (See that clip I linked to in the second paragraph; that's him in 2006.) That being said, I think it's a great first original comic series for him; it explores what would happen if three jocks from the 80s were suddenly thrust into the present-day situation in a mechanic somewhat similar to Futurama. There are constant reminders that people are more than what that appear.
I know the holidays are a tough time of year for many of us. I hope everyone is staying warm and taking the time to do nice for themselves. I love you all so much.
-davida