Good Luck in the New Year

 

Dear Friend,

Are you lucky too?  I sure am!  What I have, right now, is three (count 'em!) new books by three of my favorite authors!  I really don't know where to start!  One thing I have decided, is to start in the new year; to save them gleefully for another few weeks.  It gives me something to look forward to in 2026.  Which yeah, if it is like 2025 at all, well, it's going to be another fascist hellscape of a year with only the shocks and stings of new awfulnesses to mark the days by.  So, Happy New Year anyway, and I hope, I really hope you have set aside a little thing to make 2026 a year for you to look forward to, even if it is only what's left of the chocolate from the holidays.

closer

 

Dear Ones,

Your song of the day is here!  You know, I think, that is is a favorite song of mine, from the old days; but I love Lola Young's rendition at least as much as the original.  Still, you will have your own opinions and so here is the old song.

The other day, my Dad, who does say the darnedest things, was maybe feeling a little lost, in a kind of fast paced conversation about the characteristics of the living Generations (i.e.: Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, Z, Alpha).  Anyway, he wasn't threatened by anything these other generations had or said or did, except for the one Great Sin of the X Gen, which is, and this is nuts, that the music is/was "terrible."  

Now, you, perhaps, in your healthy, regulated discussions with your father,  might have said: "give me an example," or, "wait, let's define 'terrible' in terms of music."  But, I, I have been being trained for years to say nothing, to be good, to shut up, and admonished not to 'be so sensitive,' so of course, I said nothing.  But I have been thinking on it for the last month, and you know, I don't think he even listened to but a handful of songs from my youth, and beyond that, his great loves in music are strangely displaced in time and space: he loves Dixieland jazz from 1930 to 1950.  Now, he was born in 1946, so, mathematically, his teenage music would have been 1960 to 1970, or maybe 1958 to 1968.  I know what you are thinking, he must have an 'old soul,' but I think maybe he has a bad case of the Nostalgias.  

Nostalgia, as a disease, is running wild right now, and you have to be careful not to catch it no matter how old you are.  One early symptom is commenting on the (astounding) price of a thing, any thing.  If you hear yourself saying out loud something about the price of eggs or gasoline, you should drink a lot of water and get yourself to bed and stay there until you have found some music you like from this year, even if it is cover version!

checking it twice

 

Dear Reader,

Look at this thing I found!  The Stinging Fly!  It sounds like it was made for us!  I ordered a year's worth.  It seems to me to be the kind of thing you might want to give to a friend.  

For your young folks, I hope you will read them this book, The Magic Pudding.  It's all about a koala named Bunyip Bluegum- I am sure that you and anyone you know, will love it, at any age.  This is not a gift that would require money, this reading to your loved ones (see link above), it is a gift of your time.  If you live far away, maybe you could buy a copy and mail it.... 

This year's handmade gift from us will be Sriracha sauce- we wish you a spicy year!

seasonal glums

 

Frosty's traumatic impermanent permadeath*

Dear Ones,

Does the end of the year bring a glumming?  A heightened awareness of temporal fragility?  For me, it does; in spades.  For one thing, I am always sorry to see a year go by, even if it was a dud of a year;  I just do not like feeling that there is less and less of anything, especially time.  By time I don't mean time, though; I mean chocolate chip cookies, walks at the beach, floats on the river, cups of coffee in the morning.  I mean that I am sad when I think of how few car rides might be left; how few pies are left to make.  Moon rises.  Knitted sweaters.  French films.

Running along parallel to this discomfiting remainder, are the repetitive 'traditions' of the holidays.  The sticky sameness of our un-adaptive and drear 'traditions.'  I think, and I look forward to your thoughts on this, that our holiday celebrations are closer to a form of mass hypnotic psychosis than an expression of kind togetherness.  

Between these two ominous ghosts, Loss and Ennui (not to mention Ennui's twin, Excess), what, in these last weeks, could be salvaged or savored?  Let's mull that over with spices and orange rind, while we listen to the song for today.

*Yes, I do think watching children's cartoons like Frosty without any contextualization by a qualified adult could have a lot to do with the way I feel about this 'joyous' season!  And, in the spirit of the ghost of Excess, here's another.

in the wet

 

in the stars, in the cards

 

Dear Days Remaining in the Year,

I have a song for you, for today.  Aselestine.  

If there were more time, I'd write to tell you how I am feeling, but the days left are so few, it feels silly to bother.  I am trying to write this mountain of greeting cards, and there is nothing really to say about all this darkness and hate.  For years I have been thinking we will get to a place, a place in the future, where we will look back and say, Whoo boy!  What a terrible time that was!  It's so great to be here and think back on that time; like a fading nightmare.  A place you leave and it just gets smaller and smaller in your rear view mirror.  But thinking on the future feels indulgent and foolish.

There is one thing, I guess, that feels worth the saying:  I am sorry for the times I hurt you.

no doubt

 

Jack Stauffacher

Dear Letters,

I think I may have mentioned this book before; may have entreated you to read it already.  I know I gave one of you a copy of it.  I still hope you will take a look at the conceptually fascinating Alphabetical Diaries.

It's not just that it doesn't fit into our expectations of narrative; it defies all this continual page turning.  I was startled mightily by it, because when I am tearing up and painting over and gluing down the shreds and fragments of my own journals, I think that my silly words are a narrow little existence; I think that no one felt like this, no one one filled 100, 500, 1000 pages with their aching self doubt and their limitless self loathing.  But that would not be true, it seems, from reading Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries.  

It felt so good to me to know that someone else wanted to try to contain themselves, to try to improve, to reform, to rehabilitate.

Here, for today, an ABC song about singers, When Smokey Sings.  The thing I like best about this song, is the little musical reference to ABC's really big song, Be Near Me.  Of, course, I also love that 'she threw back the ring.'