our pleasure in December
how we found joy in the holiday season
Happy Holidays!
This time of year can be a lot of fun, and it can also mean a lot of stress. We hope everyone found time and space to prioritize their pleasure—you deserve to feel joy and satisfaction. Here’s a look at how we found pleasure this month: what we read, watched, listened to, did, and ate.
Emory
I’d already read Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo a couple months ago, but I’ve been slowly reading it aloud to Jozef, and we finished it this month. I felt such deep, intense sympathy for the brothers at the center of the story, Ivan and Peter, and for their various romantic interests: Margaret, Sylvia, and Naomi. I found myself thinking often of The Sound and the Fury’s Quentin when reading Peter’s sections—and thinking of myself when reading Ivan’s sections. I loved it.
I’m reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer for the first time. The book is one of Jo’s favorites, and he actually went to an event sometime in the past year to hear Kimmerer speak, so I already knew it was fantastic before picking it up. The prose is so lovely and lyrical, which I deeply enjoy. I’m not very far into the book, so I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it in a future newsletter, but for now, I’m just enjoying the peace I feel while reading it.
Jozef
I also loved Intermezzo. Sally Rooney’s complex characters are all flawed and still sympathetic, even at their worst, and the picture she paints of their lives is beautiful, even on a backdrop of grief and suffering. In my cohort of ’s Grief Studies class, we discussed how the singularity of our experiences with grief is the only thing we all hold in common and how spiritual self-inquiry allows us to connect with our grief and in turn, with others’ grief too. This paradoxical tie that binds is a throughline in Intermezzo as Sylvia navigates disability, Naomi housing insecurity, Margaret familial tensions, and Peter and Ivan the loss of their father. I already know this is a book I’ll return to again and again.
Over the two days preceding Christmas, I read Hwang Jungeun’s Years and Years translated from Korean by Janet Hong. It’s a short read that packs a punch. The poetic, sometimes fragmented prose feels like being inside a memory. We have two other books from Open Letter Books that Emory won in a giveaway (Rina and Wafers) and I’m looking forward to reading them as well.
Emory
I love Christmas—and I love the Christmas episodes of Bob’s Burgers. I saw a TikTok the other day where a guy was talking about Bob’s Burgers fans being scary because they never turn the damn show off, and he’s right. I’m always (re)watching episodes! I think their Christmas episodes are particularly funny—and sometimes emotional—so I get excited to watch at least some of them each December. One year, I wrote up a review and ranking of all the holiday episodes to date; you can find it here.
We saw two movies in theaters this month: Gladiator II and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Every year, I convince friends to do Vulture’s Movies Fantasy League with me—we create our own mini-league—and this year is our strongest showing, though none of us are winning all that many points. We’ve been going to see some of the movies we’re excited about on our rosters; as you can imagine, I wanted to see Gladiator II, and our friend V was excited about Sonic because she’s loved the Sonic games/franchise since she was younger. So, to the movies we went! Our friend E even got the official Sonic popcorn bucket—when we commit, we commit.
Jozef
Finishing my masters degree this month didn’t leave nearly as much time for watching things as usual, but the ambience/music/focus timer videos on YouTube that sustained my writing deserve an honorable mention here. Also an honorable mention, since it was last month and not this month, is A Real Pain, another film we saw with friends in our movie league. The film centers on two cousins, David (Jesse Eisenberg, who also directs the film) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), visiting Poland after their grandmother’s passing. I was genuinely shocked to learn that the script was not written with Culkin in mind, his performance was that genuine and moving. The ways the two men make meaning of their family’s experience of the Holocaust, their grief over the loss of their grandmother, and the ways they choose to live in the wake of those events could not be more different, and the emotional range of the film are part of what make it so powerful.
Emory
I listened to Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers while working on a paint-by-numbers kit and found it to be deeply moving. I’ve always been drawn to narratives set during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s—in part because the more things change, the more things stay the same. Characters use protest chants that we use today, just with a different president’s name; they attend meetings for activist groups in keffiyehs; they engage in the same tedious, disappointing debates about whether they should advocate only for their identity groups or for everyone (in this case: should slush funds for HIV-positive people to pay rent be available to non-queer folks? Should they fight to get beds for women in AIDS wards?); through it all, they struggle with affairs, breakups, crushes, jobs, friendships, diagnoses, deaths. Makkai’s novel—a National Book Award finalist—reminded me that my struggles are our struggles, are the struggles of generations before me, will likely be the struggles of generations after me (especially if we don’t fight like hell for the future). And it reminded me, too, that there’s so much beauty in the struggles, in the act of fighting like hell.
We just had an eight-hour drive to get to my parents’ place for the holidays, which meant we listened to a lot of music: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, the record, Short n’ Sweet, fruitcake, WE ARE, and some of my playlists on shuffle. Of everything we listened to, the one thing I want to write about is Spotify’s “This Is George Michael” playlist. While the vast majority of his music isn’t Christmas-related in the slightest, I do think of and enjoy listening to his music around the holiday, which is also the anniversary of his death in 2016. Personally, I think George Michael is a horrifically underappreciated artist. His vocal richness and range reminds me of Chappell Roan’s, so much of his work explores the tension between Christianity and queerness, he made the kind of music you need to dance to… I could go on. And maybe I will in a future essay!
Also, his music had been playing when we saw this weird effect of the sunset that kind of seemed like a portal to hell opening up? Which feels very gay and appropriate somehow.
Jozef
My Grief Studies friend Coco makes full moon playlists and this one was on repeat for me this month.
Emory
Jo and I have both been playing soooo much chess. It’s the Intermezzo Effect for sure. The bed & breakfast we stayed at for our belated honeymoon had a chessboard in one of the common rooms, and since we were the only people staying, we spent plenty of time there losing to each other. We had to pick up a cheap board on our way back into town after the trip so we could play at home, plus we made accounts on chess.com so we wouldn’t have to wait for each other to be available to play. (My username on there is emorywrites if you want to play with me! Fair warning: I’m terrible.)
I’ve also been doing lots of crafting. I finished my first painting this month, and I’m really proud of how it turned out—and appreciative of Jo’s help as we brought my vision to life.
Jozef
I left my PhD program with my Masters this semester and I’ve been job searching for the last two weeks. I love teaching and research, but I had to take serious stock of the working conditions in higher ed, especially as Emory and I plan for pregnancy. The American Association of University Professors reports contingent faculty make up 70% of instructional staff in the US currently, allowing universities to inflate their bottom lines by keeping qualified, talented faculty in low-paying, insecure positions where they often lack benefits like shared governance, insurance, and compensation for time working outside the classroom (more on this another time). I’m excited to be looking for jobs that align with my values outside of higher ed (or at least outside of a student worker role). Expect updates to come!
Emory
Movie theater popcorn is a special treat, and we got some when we went to see Gladiator II and Sonic 3.
Our friend V makes the most incredible lemon bars, and she brought them to our monthly craft club. I ate… more than my fair share. And each one of them tasted fucking delicious. No regrets!
Jo got me a Terry’s dark chocolate orange as a grocery store treat, and I enjoyed every slice. Don’t worry, I shared with him. My biggest advice to anyone and everyone: find a partner who brings you back treats when he goes grocery shopping.
Jozef
I’m still thinking about the gochujang caramel cookies I made for our craft club— they’re the perfect sweet and spicy combination to warm up cold winter days. (Thank you to V and N for getting around the paywall to deliver the recipe to me!)
We’ll also make one of my favorite dishes, chipotle lime chicken and rice (with double the called-for seasoning), for Emory’s family this week. I love cooking almost as much as eating and this recipe is easy without feeling simple.
I’m excited to branch out into more cuisines in the new year now that our new home’s kitchen is almost fully functional. Our friend N is a great chef and we have weekly dinners with him and his partner A where he introduces us to all kind of new foods. For Christmas, A got him two cookbooks: Simply West African: Easy, Joyful Recipes for Every Kitchen and In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean. I’m hoping he’ll teach me some of the recipes.