Dear life

Temperature: freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing…you need skates just to take out the trash. My choice? A pair of Icebugs. Fantastic. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear.

Drinking: chimarrão aka maté.

Eating: roasted tomato and garlic soup.

Watching: a procession of photographic travel memories march all over me. Thanks for the reminders, you sadistic algorithms.

Listening: closely to the ever-changing Covid rules and restrictions. Got my booster shot, never leave home without an FFP2 mask, will still get Omicron any day now, they say.

Reading: from the English TBR list: just finished Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard. (If you love Tolkien but hate him just a little bit for not writing more female characters, this one’s for you.) Reading Billy Summers by Stephen King. (An assassin embarks on one last hit; it's also a love letter to writers and writing). The only upside to this pandemic: I’ve been going at those TBR lists at breakneck speed. Heaven.

Writing: a happy 50th message. There will be plenty of those to write over the next few years.

Thinking: Oh, those Novgorodians, flexing their muscles, trying to turn back time when the present and the future pose a challenge you are obviously ill-equipped to deal with, why else would you be focused on things of the last century or are you just that clueless and callous, and that goes for all you gentlemen in need of manning up and stepping up and showing true strength and leadership not through sad displays of last millennium macho bullshit but a firm resolve to not let tomorrow’s adults inherit problems they had no hand in creating. Wanna be a big man? This world is aflush with opportunities for you to show just how colossal you truly are. Just leave the guns, ammunition and attitude at the door, please, it’s 2022 and this is the Get Shit Done Saloon. Hannibal’s Hatchets & Helmets is just down the road. You can’t possibly miss it, it’s right next to Burger Khan.

Feeling: both wanderlust and saudade, that bittersweet longing that always grips me around this time. North and south, the tropics and the Arctic, light and dark... Missing my sister about to turn forty, and isn’t it cool we’re both girls of summer born on opposite hemispheres, and oh the joy I felt when she was born, a little sister after a little brother, what more could a big sis ask for, and how I wish we could all be together to celebrate her and our beautiful, manifold extended family, this life that has given us so much to be grateful for.

See you on the other side

Seeking a friend for the end of the world year! Anyone else feeling dizzy? I have yet to meet an amusement park ride I couldn’t stomach, but this year, and the previous one, and the coming one (I can feel it), oh sweetie darlings, get me out of here is what I’ve felt like screeching quite a few times. But here we are, the lucky ones with enough breath in their lungs to bicker and bellyache, ringing in another new year, hoping for the best, expecting… What are we expecting at this point? That the Covid vaccine reaches everyone and the pandemic subsides? [If this is a test of our collaborative powers methinks we stinks.] That it’s not another record-breaking year for climate calamities? [And if you dare claim Don’t Look Up is a silly satire…you, me, outside, in five, no gloves, no guards.] That the war in Ukraine doesn’t escalate? [Is Putin obsessed? Possessed? Both? Desperate to be remembered for something other than robbing his country? Absolutely.] That Keeping Up with the Kardashians is truly over, for good? [No comment lest this was your favorite thing ever.]

You tell me. If you feel like it. Many a conversation over the past months has swiftly reached a can-we-not-talk-about-everything-we-should-probably-talk-about-because-it’s-just-too-much-right-now consensus. You do what you gotta do to get through. Constant hand-wringing makes your joints ache, and stress-induced high cortisol levels cause all sorts of health problems. Not trivializing anyone’s pain or problems, just acknowledging we are all stressed out because these are genuinely stressful times, and that it’s hurting us on many levels. We need outlets, we need respites, we need to cut ourselves some slack, and we need one another.

So keep in touch with people; this pandemic has given the perfect excuse and opportunity to reach out to those you haven’t spoken to in ages. A headcount of sorts. You never know what people may be going through all alone, and some are better equipped than others to help and comfort you should you need a shoulder and an ear. 

And is this a rambling post or what? Sorry, dearest denizens, but you are one of my shoulders and ears, so not sorry. [My sister turns 40 in a few weeks and we can’t get together to celebrate and you bet your sweet cheeks I’m mad and sad and feeling altogether bad.] And I promise I am here for you too! One of the nicest compliments I have ever received came from a friend in crisis. “You make me feel so calm,” she said. “Like everything’s going to be all right.” I sure hope I’ve been more of a calming presence than a firestarter. A benevolent, non-volatile firestarter? 😬

So, what do you think? Should we end this year with some karaoke everyone on a quest to find peace and common ground can relate to? Why the heck not! What are we singing? Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, the Santa Esmeralda version, for all the dancers out there. It’s been yet another roller coaster of a year, and all we can do is hang on to our hats and brace ourselves for yet another. I’ll hold your hand if you’ll hold mine. Deal?

With love and champagne kisses,

Dita

Love…thy will be done

There’s a beautiful fullish moon in the sky, just in time for the winter solstice. The snow we were promised a while back never came, but there’s still a chance we’ll get a white Christmas; maybe just an inch, a few centimeters of snow, but a crisp and clean backdrop all the same.

How do you intend to spend the next two weeks, dearest denizens? On the road? In a onesie? Omicron is threatening to gatecrash every home, workplace, and community, and governments, city fathers, mothers, and second cousins will have no choice but to reinstate restrictions and lockdowns in the hopes of buying time and saving lives. It’s the ghost of Christmas past in a new robe.

How much more? How much longer? How are we supposed to cope? I wish I knew, sweetie darlings. All I know is we can’t give in to the anger and frustration so many of us are feeling, and for valid, perfectly understandable and human reasons. One of the side effects of Covid seems to be the erosion of manners. And I know it’s always something, always has been. O tempora! O mores! Rock ‘n’ roll corrupted the boomers, television ruined my generation, and social media is messing with the next, all who dare participate, really. That’s the narrative. But it’s not without a kernel of truth.

A certain amount of entitlement seems to go hand in hand with the equality social media and comparable platforms provide, and where there’s entitlement there’s always the drive to have the last word, and where there’s a drive to have the last word there’s the temptation to view others as not so equal anymore but as inferior should they not listen and agree, and that temptation breeds another, the need to ridicule, hurt and humiliate. Is that the loop so many seem to be caught in at the moment, screaming at strangers, quarreling with acquaintances, severing ties and burning bridges?

I know I have felt anger and frustration, oh so many times, over the past twenty-two months. It’s a valid, perfectly understandable and human reaction. You’d have to be Jesus himself to put up with what life keeps throwing at you and never for a fleeting second think that fuck this shit, I’m done. Done with people; what a bunch of unthinking and unfeeling morons.

Never met Jesus, not sure I ever will, but I hear he hated on no one, at most reprimanded hypocrites and greedy bastards. We have no problem hating on people we don’t know and will never meet. Since it’s Christmas (even if you don’t observe it) why not do as Jesus did and try to love (or at the very least listen to and try to understand) people you don’t know and will never meet. It’s a tad harder than dismissing and despising them when you don’t see eye to eye, but we have so many issues to deal with, so many problems to solve, and it would make everything go faster and that much smoother if we did it together. I know it’s a lot to ask, I know I fail at it all the time, but I’m trying. Give it a try with me? It’s almost Christmas, and on Christmas you get to make a wish, and this is mine.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Temperature: -2/28.5 degrees with snow on the way.

Drinking: some belated wedding anniversary Pommery later on.

Eating: a test version of this year’s bûche de Noël, my son’s Christmas bravura. It’s a yes from me.

Watching: the posturing and grandstanding of budding and actual autocrats.

Listening: to their BS.

Reading: suggestions! Catherine Belton, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Luke Harding, Anne Applebaum, Masha Gessen, and anyone else who dares speak truth to power, such as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov were awarded “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” There are some 35 working democracies in this world, and north of 140 countries we can label deficient democracies, hybrid regimes or moderate to hard autocracies. Democracy and social peace may be the ideal but they are not the norm; they are under attack and in decline due to populists, demagogues, despots and oligarchs eager to divide and conquer. Each and every one of us plays a part in enabling their rise or expediting their fall. How we vote, how we speak and write, how we shop and handle our finances, how we treat and regard our fellow humans. Our actions and words matter. Our silence and indifference have an even bigger impact.

Writing: season’s greetings.

Thinking: all the posturing and grandstanding, all the BS, makes the lot of you look like dicks, only smaller.

Feeling: Up and at ‘em, sweetie darlings, tyranny isn’t going to fight itself.

December, sweetie darlings!

Have a good one!