Another year gone by.
After three years and three pandemics we tighten our global resolve to beat the virus(es), curb inflation, stop global warming, and end a senseless attempt by oligarchs to annihilate an entire county and kill the millions of people who live there.
We have no way forward but through change. This is the way it has always been: we adapt to survive. When the old ways no longer work, we innovate. We partner with our friends (and in so doing, help ourselves), building strength in numbers. In solutions. In ideas. Eventually, the momentum will turn, and change will come. As it must.
The only constant is change.
As a writer, this is a lesson we already know: we can’t keep writing the same story. We constantly look for new ideas; explore new worlds; seek to understand where our futures will go and how it will look. How will these changes affect our lives? Our politics? Our ideas and goals?
In that vein, I changed up my reading genres this year. Thanks to Roku, I enjoyed the televised milieus of Michael Connelly’s LAPD Detective Harry Bosch (on Bosch) and Ann Cleeve’s DCI Jimmy Perez (Shetland). Connelly’s books already take up a good portion of real estate in my bookshelves, but I hadn’t discovered Cleeve’s work.
After reading a dozen or more of her novels, I can say her her Jimmy Perez series, starting with Raven Black was my FAVORITE READ BY NEW-TO-ME AUTHOR this year. While I think the television series for both authors is better (in a different way) than the books, the Shetland series doesn’t capture the island culture and politics of the series quite like the books do, and Connelly’s Bosch series has better characterizations/relationships in secondary characters and builds a stronger sense of immediate danger better than the novels. Honorable mention goes to N. K. Jemison’s The Fifth Season, which (to me) wasn’t exactly enjoyable as much as admirable.
FAVORITE CLASSIC: I reread the entire Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling this summer, one right after the other. Twenty-five years later and it’s still magical; it still works. Oh what a wonderful world she built.
FAVORITE READ BY FAVORITE AUTHOR: Hands down, Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series, particularly the third book, The Golden Enclaves was the best ending to a series I’ve ever read (a place previously held in my heart by Robin Hobb’s Blood of Dragons). Having just finished rereading all about Hogwarts, I was wary that this was just another magic school trope, but it is/isn’t in the most acerbic/stunning way. In fact, Novik’s three-volume Scholomance series got better with each book, and I sobbed (for lack of a better word) with both joy and horror the entire last third of the book, an emotion I have never experienced before. Utter cruelty and brutality in a single thought. The pinnacle of heroism in a single word. Novik’s Temeraire series made her an auto-buy author for me, but this one is just…Wow.
The lesson to me is to keep evolving. Keep exploring new ideas. Live a life of constant learning. Keep in touch with friends and keep making new ones. Value new experiences; good or bad, you will learn something new. As we learn, we change. As we must.
Oh, and keep reading.
With it, a ‘storm in a generation’ has begun a thorough tour of most of North America, just to remind us all that in the timeline of eternity, the Ice Age was mere moments ago. Oregon isn’t known for harsh winters, but it was 18 degrees this morning, with sustained winds of 40mph.
Be well. Be warm. Dream of the sun to come.
Until this weekend, I had not been to a shopping mall for more than 3 years.
Gotta say, it’s a big mall, and I hadn’t been there in a long time. There was a lot of traffic. The Nordstroms wasn’t where it was in my memory. Neither was Macys. In fact the place I thought was Macys was closed up and dark, and there’s now a big foodie court in the parking lot where the cars used to park. I figured Macys must have been a pandemic casualty. Such a shame.
And the noise. Somehow, after three years of online shopping, I’d forgotten how loud everything is at the mall. Virtually everyone on their phone or calling to their kids or significant other from the escalator. Children screaming incessant bloody murder louder than a car alarm at 4am. And I must confess, stepping onto an escalator for the first time in three years was a bit intimidating.
But not where I thought it was. I must’ve driven in from a different direction. Apparently, Nordstrom is on the opposite side of the mall from Macys. I tried to tell myself that maybe Macys had moved to the other side of the mall during the pandemic. But that didn’t seem likely. The Cheesecake Factory was still right next door, where it always had been.
Welp, here we are; week 100 of the pandemic, by my count. Friends have gotten sick. Friends have died. In two years, it’s morphed from COVID-19 to Delta, and again to Omicron, which by any other name should have been a bee-bop dance craze. As in, “Doin’ the Omicron jive, man; like everybody’s doing it!”
So there I was last weekend, entertaining myself with a little virtual browsing on Amazon and Etsy (as we do now), when it happened: the cutest pair of shoes on the planet smacked me upside my virtual face and said, “Lookie here, Sista.” In my size, my color. I didn’t even have to think about it.
And as I skip out of the checkout line, they’ll nod to themselves and make a mental note to do a little shoe shopping of their own. And as I prance past the customer service desk and out the door, they’ll hear me humming a happy tune.
FAVORITE READ BY FAVORITE AUTHOR: This year’s best read was so good, I went out and bought it. I had to have it. The reviews for 
FAVORITE CLASSIC: Every year, I make it a point to read a few classics–this year was no exception. This was a childhood book I bought on impulse in the best book store in 
I made a conscious decision this year to step away from December 25th. It was not a choice made from a place of cynicism or stress any other negative place; I grew up with Christmas morning and shrieking with excitement at the sight of the tree with presents piled high beneath, followed by a cheerful and boisterous holiday breakfast and generally followed by an ‘outing’ of some sort, if the weather was fair. Oftentimes, my dad would pack up my three sisters and I and head off to the beach to ‘get the wigglies out while your mother takes a nap’. If it was raining, he took us up to the local college dairy to pet the new calves and ooh and aah at the size of the big Holsteins. By the time we got back, the wigglies were well and truly spent and we were once again reasonable tolerable children.
And then, as it happens, life goes on. Our parents passed away within a few short years of each other. The big house was sold. In the past 20 years, we’ve gotten together as a family just twice, and it was awesome. But impossible to sustain on an annual basis; there are just too many of us now. And we all accept this. We’ve all begin new traditions of our own.
The last few years in particular, I’ve actually looked forward to the day to the day of ME. I dedicate the whole day to setting up my calendar, updating my 5-year plan, and making resolutions and goals for the coming year. I put on my favorite winter music and review all the blessings I’ve received in the past year. I even set up a little altar in front of the window where the first light of the day will appear (if it’s sunny); a couple of candles, a few crystals, and a little carved stone bowl with an offering of wine. I am not sure who it is for, be it the old gods or past lives or the Force, it really doesn’t matter; it just feels right somehow. For me, the solstice has become the best day of the year.
The pending arrival of the fall Equinox brings to mind all the coming colors of the fall season and reminds even the most tech-savvy among us of the persistent influence of previous ‘before times’ (and yes, there have been many). Dark times, they were indeed; before the current pandemic and all the previous pandemics, going back to even before the Black plague. Times before civilization as we know it, before recorded history, before the even written word, this time of year was characterized by symbols that are still in use today.
Late summer beings the harvest and the time of plenty before the shorter days and long lean nights of winter. We have welcomed the symbols of harvest since the time of first farms: the cornucopia, scarecrows, sheaves of corn and wheat. In neolithic times, sacred bonfires burned (and beginning in the 9th century, the Celtic festival of Samhain) attracting bugs and flying insects which in turn, invited bats to gather.
The sobering momento mori (a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’) skeleton symbol infers death, sacrifice, danger, or (in the case of the Jolly Roger) bravery, toughness, ferocity, warning, and victory (it was not until the 1850’s that the skull and crossbones became associated with poison).
In particular, I am fascinated by the Ouroboros, the ancient image of the serpent or dragon eating it’s own tail; depicted in Egypt as early as 1600BC and meant to embody the never-ending cycle of the sun across the skies. The symbol has been been depicted in Norse, Aztec and West African cultures.Alchemists used it as a symbol of magical power by alchemists expressed in the formula, ‘solve at coagula’: an injunction to dissolve and congeal; in other words, loss and restoration of form, a basic rhythm of alchemical transformation. Plato described it as a self-eating, circular being as the first living thing in the universe — an immortal, perfectly constructed animal. The wheel of time; the relentless march of seasons
