I hope you’re settled, or settling into the month of Janus, the Roman god who presided over doors and beginnings. The holiday stretch is always a rollercoaster for me. It comes with a Christmas I barely participate in, a Hanukkah I want to be more present for but always sideline, a birthday smack dab in the middle of it all (hello 35!) and a New Years that has now been my anniversary for the 11th year running.
This round was particularly fraught, marked by sudden death, debilitating illness, stormy weather - everything short of the locusts. But it also brought in belly laughs, baby folds and so many bodies of water. An abundance of fresh fruit and some rays of solar vitamin D in between the clouds.
The house we stayed in when the clock struck twelve had a swing hanging in the living room and we each took a turn swinging into the New Year. A great metaphor for what is supposed to feel like a leap ahead, where you inevitably swing back from the pendulum of your own gravity. Wherever you go, there you are.
Words came back to me in 2022 and I promise to show up again for the writing in 2023. The poem I keep returning to is from Langston Hughes, who wrote in 1977:
“Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean-
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.”
This year has contained a lot of bookends for me, exits and entries of dearly beloveds - perhaps for you too? What follows is some loving that sandwiched itself between these last weeks of the year.
Doctor Jim O’Connell has been tending to Boston’s rough sleepers for the last three decades. He first learned from the nurses in charge of the clinic to take a completely different approach from the one he’d been taught at Harvard Medical School.
He was told to take off his stethoscope and instead soak the unhoused patients’ feet. The practice was much more effective - people would finally open up to him about their ailments once the power dynamic was reversed and the doctor was at the foot of the person he was meant to serve.
Incarcerated journalist John J. Lennon gives a personal snapshot of what love and intimacy look like from inside the trailers where conjugal visits take place through the Family Reunion Program, or FRP.
Poetry, poetry, more poetry in 2023! I think all the time about Sam Anderson’s profile of poet Sharon Olds. “Her collection “Odes,” published when she was 73, began with an “Ode to the Hymen” and went on to include odes to the clitoris, penis, condom, tampon, douche bag, menstrual blood, stretch marks and testicles.”
A compelling case for hand-painting your walls.
The podcast Welcome to Provincetown hosted by Mitra Kaboli (and story edited by dear bud/birthday twin Gianna Palmer!) made my heart sing. The ten episodes bask in the joy of queer life, chronicling the lives of the people she meets over the course of one summer.
In 2004, a passionate vinyl collector named Dori Hadar unearthed a trove of soul records at a Washington, DC, flea market. He had never heard of the artist, Mingering Mike, and upon closer inspection, he realized the album covers and records were all painstakingly painted on cardboard, down to the hand-drawn liner notes, price tags - even the grooves. There were greatest hits collections and a Bruce Lee concept album and movie soundtracks.
Hadar, a criminal investigator by day, was able to track down the person behind the 150 made up albums. It was Mike Stevens, who always dreamed of becoming a soul-music superstar and lacking the funds to actually record any music, instead built an imaginary career out of paint.
Abortion in Mexico was a crime until it was legalized last year. Since then, Mexican feminists have been helping Americans, who have been stripped of their reproductive rights, gain access to abortion medication, as misoprostol is sold over the counter there. A new post-Roe abortion underground has emerged.
I have become mesmerized by videos robot jockeys on camels. Throughout the Middle East, the tiny robots have their own makeshift racing jerseys and camel whips and are remote controlled by operators that drive cars alongside the track. The robots have eliminated the use of young boys who were previously being trafficked and groomed for their small frame since the 1970s.
Brooklyn Open Acupuncture was a place of great healing and community. I used to work shifts at the front desk in exchange for sessions, and I learned so much about their incredible model, where treatments were offered in a communal room so practitioners could treat many people at once. A sliding scale allowed everyone access to this transformative practice.
I was devastated alongside the whole neighborhood when they had to shutter their doors at the beginning of the pandemic. But now a new community acupuncture is rising from their ashes, formed by Alice Forbes Spear and Jenny Kim Jacobson, and I can’t wait to book my first treatment. They are currently fundraising to subsidize even lower-cost treatments if you too believe healthcare is a human right.
And finally, one last New Years’ poem, in the form of a list of magical goals…
01.05.16
1. Misplacing the year is useful.
2. Pretext may grow into medicine.
3. Ignore numbers until they become secret persons.
4. Pour out this metal thermos. But it isn’t a thermos, that’s just an image to help you physicalize an intellectual process.
5. If you want to transform a book you’ll need ingredients.
6. Read lines from an enchantress when you want to be a bird.
7. Ingest liquid prose when you prefer to be fluid.
8. A good title only proves you have work ahead of you.
9. Remembering your potency impels me further. I want to be impaled by a poem.
10. Beginning is always precarious. Avoid snow-covered terrain and long-haired ponies. Avoid skipping ahead, as I’ve inadvertently just done.
11. Return to certain constitutional texts when you need protection.
12. Refuse to look at detailed maps. You don’t need to know the future.
13. Your headache isn’t fake — but pretend if you can.
14. Fantasize that for the next six hours you will not stop.
15. All pain will end almost immediately.
16. If you are able to endure forgetfulness.
17. Welcome imperfection as you would a cup of tea served to you by a beautiful, devoted attendant.
18. Your attendant will stay as long as you like.
19. When lost, reread these instructions.
20. Don’t speak.
21. Ecstatic impulse is now.
22. Continuously — you
Till next time,
ASK
lovely Ani- just heart warming on this gray day in Paris where I was compelled to wear a flu pink sweater ( OK, monoprix cashmire....)
Miss you and your sista and those parents of yours who you brought up so well. Soon?
“Read lines from an enchantress when you want to be a bird” 🕊️ thank you friend, for helping me grow my feathers 🪶