new year thoughts

I finally finished the paper proposal based on disability in Jhumpa Lahiri's Roman Stories I've been embroidering in my head for a while. It's going to two conferences. I don't know if I can actually travel to both of them--but those are bridges for later.

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Big A got a holiday bonus and I got to give away lots of it--most of it to PAMA and PCRF. But we dug up some more for Lansing organizations like the Refugee Development Center, our local queer community space--Salus Center,  and Nation Outside a Michigan-based advocacy group led by the formerly incarcerated. 

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I started a poem (and then ran out of steam): 

accidents constellate our past

hope peoples our future

we need imagination

to survive

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I survived 2024. I spoke up, and spoke my truth no matter how small my voice started or how repetitive I thought I would sound.

And I'm grateful for everyone who listened even when I didn't say the right thing or say things the right way. I hope 2025 lets me walk gently on this Earth in solidarity with other living beings.

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And now, as Rilke says, we get to welcome the New Year "Full of things that have never been.” Happy New Year!

Pic: Nu was hosting some friends for NYE, so Big A and I took a walk to the rooftop bar downtown. This party was loud, but the music and drinks were strong. I thought I was getting a photo of the fireworks on the skyline, but I think I got one of the the first emergency vehicle of 2025 instead. It reminded me a bit of NYEs past in NYC and Chennai as we walked past choruses of people wishing us a happy new year on our way home.

here we are now...

On the cusp of the last day of the year...

I have hopes for 2025--high hopes. Despite the election results and the impending inauguration. Why not? Imagination is free after all. But also, when I tally my efforts I judge based on whether on not I did my best. I usually am doing my best, so I tend to be kind to myself even if the results aren't what I'd originally hoped for. 

Right now feels a bit more stable than this time last year in terms of everyone's health (MIL may be mobile as soon as next week) and prospects, and I'll take that. The people in my life are my blessings and joys. The most important part is that I'm rich in human connections.

(And spiritual connections if my overcrowded altar is any indication. I tend to put everything people give me on it, plus it's a busy time of the year with both the nativity and the menorah out.)

Pic: My overcrowded altar yesterday. And I thought it was overcrowded two years ago... Additions have been Scout's picture, some new icons, the guide birds, and from this angle some of the holiday cards on the side table.

"Bitch, don't kill my vibe"

I was there for my family, friends, and community over the holidays...

but...

Gaza was never far from my thoughts. This is the second winter many families are spending in emergency tents that are falling apart. Many GoFundMes started for escape have now been reduced to appeals for tent repair or food. Israel bombed Kamal Adwan, the last functioning hospital, and arrested its medical director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, when he wouldn't desert his critically ill patients. More World Central Kitchen workers have died, and more U.N. workers have died. Amnesty International, the U.N., the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have all concluded that this is against international law, but people continue to be killed every day, and infants are freezing or starving to death. It all feels too much. They say Reagan was able to end the bombing in Beirut with a single phone call, where is the political will to end the bombing in Gaza? Incidentally, President Carter, who died today, was a real one for correctly calling the situation in Palestine apartheid. (I am grateful for all his anti-racist work, especially post-presidency, and at dinner today, we were saying how he embodied the best aspects of Christianity--service and love.)

I kept muttering Kendrick's song title to myself so I wouldn't say anything inadvertently because I knew people were just trying to get through a difficult year for themselves. For many of my friends, the US elections have left a pall, my MIL broke her foot on Christmas day, and Big A's cousin's wife died on Christmas Day after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just three months ago. Big A hasn't seen his cousin in decades, but they used to spend summers together. Reading the eulogies about MS, I wish I had known her--she seems to have been a wonderful person who was a master gardener and friend to the houseless. 

Anyway, I'll save my disquiet so I can fight another day. 

Pic: Today's rainy weather didn't help my mood or anything; but here's a memory of yesterday's blue sky. 

life is for everyone

oh friend, pain is trying
I so regret all  the things 

I didn't do with this body

in all its many instances 

and interruptions of love

to how my mother calls me

Kanna, my eye, and claims 

she loves both  her children

the same--how can I choose

between either eye--she'll ask
 
how sentimental  these stories

we tell ourselves, despite haste,

the blade clenched to scapegoat 

joy, awe--spliced by anxiety as

faithful as any real physical law

Oh friend, in  the heart  shapes

of our language, I hear how we

are larger  than  you, than  me, 

how survival means we live... 

not forgetting what we live for

_______________________

Note: On our walk today, Big A talked about his swollen, arthritic finger joint and it reminded me of when Lisa had posted a picture of her RA flare and broke my heart when she noted how it hurt when she held hands with her youngest because he's too young to know not to hold "too hard." And that got me thinking of friends and family who must consider/monitor/battle health conditions and how we all do our best with the bodies we've accrued over the decades. But also how the body is a stand-in for "more." I loved this article on how Kindness improves our health.  

Pic: KM and JB's wonderful collection of menorahs at their Hanukkah party. I wish I'd gotten a picture when they were magnificently lit up.

in the end if there is no end

I meant  to write  about sunlit Delphi,  the old gods secret in the shadows

but here in Michigan, the old  gods are past, and the sky does what it does 

whatever we dream will be better than this, better than here, better than now

I set out a place for my guru to sit in, laid out offerings of flowers and fruit

the grit of river sand, screams from my childbirths, and grief from our fights

I never knew the words to prayer, or I've forgotten, yet wait for fortune to fall 

for lives are libraries of restored light: take all you want, we're still returned here

 our words, oceans bending to belong in every mouth; other words lie under ours

 could this be our quiet power, our godly levitation--loving and freeing at once?

_____________________

Note: I know what I want the last line to do, but it's not doing it right yet... I'll keep fiddling. 

Pic: The Red Cedar this afternoon--icy, grey, and deserted. The snow has receded, temperatures are climbing, and everything seems wet, grimy, and sodden. 

What it is/What is it

* At stopped by this morning and helped me address and stamp the remaining holiday cards and I got to hear more about their time in Seattle a couple of weeks back as we worked. I loved the story of how they were going to do a last-minute visit to the Kurt Cobain memorial bench before their 12 am flight back when they met someone interesting... it was such a meet-cute--Cinderella-esque midnight deadline and all!

*  Nu, At, and I took our Flu and Covid shots! (Big A got his at work ages ago.) We got the Novavax, and so far, so good. I've not fallen apart or taken to my bed like a Victorian lady... yet. 

* Hanukkah started last night! This is yet another year I'm using birthday candles for our menorah. I'm good at making them stick with a bit of melty wax, but it's not ideal. Big A's the one with Jewish heritage, so I'm going to put him in charge of getting the Nerot next year. 

*I've jumped back into work via email, phone calls, and light editing again. Is it too early? It feels too early.

*Pic: The whatsit I got at the thrift store when I took Nu to shop on Monday... I love birds and found this lidded container irresistible especially because it cost all of 6.06 and was also "on sale" so I paid less than 4.00 $. It says "Made in Italy" on the bottom and is so intricate... and impractical. Like what would one put in it?! (Nu's tongue-in-cheek suggestion was soup.) A reverse Google image search suggests it's a "trinket dish." I might use the bottom as a cache pot for a plant and the top as a frame for mint, moss, or a succulent that could grow out of the openings? Ideas?

from the other side of Christmas

I'm not sure how it happened, but when Nu came down for Christmas--and while I was still listening to carols and checking on the Christmas breakfast pudding--Big A decided to tell them how much baking soda you'd need to mix with cocaine to make crack. 

But the rest of Christmas was more traditional (for us, anyway). Big A was off Thanksgiving this year, so he's working over Christmas--this is the standard E.R. scheduling tradeoff. But the kids have learned to accommodate celebrations around his schedule over the years. I started to wake the kids up when A was on his way home from work after his night shift so when he got home and decompressed for a bit, we could go to cider, stockings, presents, and then Christmas pudding brunch, lazing around, snuggles, napping, movies, biriyani, and so on.

It kind of felt like the nicest Christmas in a few years. The kids have had a couple of rocky years recently, but we're on the other side of that now one way or the other. It's also our second year of Christmas without Scout--no one approaches his level of enthusiasm for Christmas, which will always be bittersweet. 

I put LifeStraws in everyone's stockings including my own (during an anxiety-prone week is my guess). I'd wrapped everyone's presents long before I left for Greece. That was a while ago and I lowkey forgot some of the details, so I was nicely surprised as people opened their presents too. Ha. As for myself, my massage budget has been replenished, and I've been promised a trip to the Grand Canyon in October! I'd mentioned to Big A that I had poetry accepted to three anthologies this year and that I'd like to maybe get a book of poetry out into the world in the coming year--and I got a stack of autographed books of poetry including Mosab Abu Toha's for inspiration. That was the sweetest present.

Pic: Nu being a silly Christmas elf, and all of their siblings--Max, Huck, At--looking at them adoringly. There's a sliver of Big A still in scrubs in the corner and the clutter of opened and unopened presents all around them. 

P.S. In the comments to yesterday's post, Nance used the term "sanitation worker." I'm not sure if it was intended as a gentle correction, but it worked as one. It immediately sounded like a more courteous term, and when I looked up how the relevant union refered to themselves, it seemed the term of choice. So it will be what I will use going forward. As the better Maya said, "Now that I know better, I [can] do better."