The liminal space - #70

Closing time.

The sun is low but big, bursting with energy only for us. Temperatures are in the high 30s. We’ve been excluded from the greater North American freeze, and with warmth comes work. Come Monday evening, we’ll be embracing our first big storm spanning seven days and as much as four feet of snow. Forecasts like this are such flirts. No follow through. But even daily dustings mean daily clouds, and daily cloud coverage means our best heat source will be elsewhere. The house will be cold, and we need to ready the fuel stores. 

Behind the house sits a massive pile up of firewood. We’ve loaded the wood shed, but burned through the supply on the patio, so that will need replenishing. And once that is replenished, something else needs replenishing: me. 

It’s Christmas Day upon sending, and it’s a holiday I celebrate with great rigor. Garlands! Lights! O’Henry bars! Stockings! Piles of increasingly ethical presents! You get the idea. But one other special tradition I celebrate is the Great Sigh. Sometime on the 25th of December, maybe in the morning with a luscious cup of overly creamed coffee, or perhaps in the low sun of the afternoon out in the snow, I feel my body put something down. The week between Christmas and New Years is the closest Americans get to a summer holiday or a gap year, and most don’t even get that. Still, emotionally, many of us categorize it as the week nothing happens — a liminal space shepherding you gently into resolutions and Januarys, all the Januarys that ever existed with their new financial statements and grandiose resolutions, their packed gyms and cold nights. 

For me, it is the final week before I turn another year older. My birthday is December 31st, a tax baby as they say in the States. I know 15 people with my birthday, or knew, as many have come and gone from my life at this point. I don’t expect to feel celebrated this year, or even very much acknowledged. It’s hard in a new place. Hell it’s hard in an old place; it’s the last day of the year and everything is expensive. You’ve no opportunity to feel special because everyone is trying to feel special, to feel like the year was worth it. Perhaps that’s why I’m not particularly worried about feeling special on the day — this year was worth it.

In last week’s newsletter, I wanted to include something that I forgot.

I meant to tell you I was taking this week off. I meant to say thank you for being here and being so gracious with me and for being open to a newsletter that doesn’t offer productivity tips or market research or even very good recommendations. Most of you are here, I presume, because you carve time out in your life for art — good art, bad art, attempted art, etc. And I cannot get over how special that is. 

Ben and I were invited to a party on the 23rd (one with people our own age!) and were instructed to bring a wrapped gift, valued at $20 or less. Are you familiar? White Elephant? Yankee Swap? Gray Rhino? I wanted to bring something middle-of-the-road. I didn’t want to get a gift so delightful people noticed, nor so bad that people laughed. I wanted to assimilate into this friend group, not barge my way into it. 

We were able to attend the party because for the first time, we’re not celebrating Christmas with anyone but ourselves. We’re at home, alone, going to things in our town — a town where seemingly no one else goes home to celebrate either. A party here, a ski there, a cocktail or two on Christmas Eve. It feels like we live here, like we’ve lived here.

At the party, I felt the sirens of youth, calling out about adventure and opportunity. Maybe it was all the smooth skin, the strong shoulders, the vibrancy — every person there more adept at several sports than I would ever be at any, their bodies giving away their hobbies, their callings. I get drunk on tequila and hope, imagining a world where I climb mountains too, big ones, scary ones, but I wake up with a hangover and thinning hair and a novel. 

Today, all that calls, all the waits, is the pile of wood. It’s heavy, pinyon and oak. When it was a pile of aspen, it was an easy job of throwing and stacking. This wood calls for more arduous labor, but it comes with its gifts. It is a finite task with a clear finish, and then it provides, provides, provides. That is, in many ways, what this newsletter is for me. An essay, every week, that provides. It provides me with structure, with practice, with community. 

I meant to tell you I was taking a break this week not because I needed one but because rest is something we take before we need it, a lesson I am still trying to learn. You drink water because it is good for you, not because you haven’t drank any all day. 

We’ll wrap this one short and sweet, as there are many holidays abound. Here’s what I will be doing with my precious liminal time.

I will skate ski until I am exhausted. 

I will write at least one song you’ll never hear.

I will finish my friend’s first draft of her novel.

I will write 20,000 words in my own.

I will spend several hours on playlists.

I will stay in bed as long as Cooper and Finn do.

I will walk Snoots in the snow as long as he likes.

I will rearrange my office.

I will be grateful for another year, even if it’s not celebrated, even if it’s lost in time. 

We don’t all celebrate Christmas on this email list, and for that I’m grateful. Grateful to have built friendships through the comments. Grateful to enjoy practicing this work. Grateful to have my writing be a conduit for emotions not just for me, but for some of you. 

I’ll see you in 2023, one year passed and one year older. If this week is a liminal space for you too, I hope you can find the song to play on repeat in your headphones. I hope you have 20 minutes to yourself in the dark to listen to it over and over. I hope it shows you what you need it to, what you want it to. I hope that these arbitrary constructions of time offer you the structures to bounce off of, that finding yourself in the same old things can show what you things you want to change, but also what things you love.

And if you’re new to the Shangrilogs community, here are the pieces that resonated the most this year:

• Have you lost it? Finding mental health.

• The pulsing drive of fear. Who might I lose when I make another person?

• So you want to live in a cabin in the mountains. The real talk part.

• Can I run from this? Growing up with guns.

• Is this making friends? Taking chances in a tiny town.