And the sun stood still
December 21 is winter solstice, a liminal space for thinking about some really, really hard questions
Instant coffee. Grapes. Dark chocolate. Olives. Botox because I can’t unclench my jaw. Sleeping with the cat in my armpit. Stravinsky. Tylenol PM. Anna Karenina. Chest pain. Unbearable nostalgia. Wanting to be loved and left alone at the same time. Wanting to stay home and run away at the same time. Wanting to be feared more than loved. Furs. Fats. Fires. Gin. Gelatin. Saunas. Red cedar essential oil. Hot metals. Angelica root powder capsules. Holding onto everything, because everything is dear.
Gone are the days of bougainvillea, linen, feeding stray cats, and 10PM sunsets. Gone are the days of sending risky texts without a care and making life happen. It’s the free-spirited feeling of underwear sticking to salty biscuit-odored skin. It’s the spectre of dreams and ambitions floating through the air and the smell of kisses and car tires emitting from the city tarmac. In December, gone are the days of leaving the house with no socks.
I long for a riot of flowers, sun-ripened heirloom tomatoes, enormous oxblood cherries with wet ruby burst-splits, a room full of warm bodies in skimpy outfits, a night so humid the air feels like a giant angel cake waiting to be eaten with my hands tied behind my back. I long for a neverending summer.
If summer is for summoning what you desire, then winter is for becoming what you endure. Maybe I do believe in the effects of mercury retrograde, maybe I don’t. But what I like about it is that it makes me feel like I live in a magical universe. How comforting is it to think that there are recurring pullbacks in nature, that taking a step back is necessary for the next leap forward? Maybe that’s why we still dream of people we try not to think about when we’re awake. Maybe that’s why memory replays old moments, not to torture us, but to see if we can bear to look again, and if the looking might change us.
Winter solstice: the longest night of the year, it literally means “the sun standing still”. Winter solstice is for remembering old stories: the time you lived on savings and didn’t know what you were going to do next—your taste in music a decade ago—the years you toyed with anorexia—the era that was defined by the joy brought to you by one best friend—Winter reminds us of the human condition, that we love and hesitate and protest and ache. Pay attention, and you’ll be able to travel through time.
The veil is thin. Portals open like keyholes. What you notice now will follow you for a year. Time feels permeable, blessings become negotiable, and the boundary between what you fear and what you wish for bends just enough for a miracle to slip through. Holy night, holy night!
At winter solstice, the sun stands still for tender, perilous questions that unravel the last week, month, or decade of my certainties, asking whether the life I’m living is smaller than the one I should be building.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!! 🎄 Thank you for reading—if you like what you see and wish to support my work, please upgrade to a premium subscription.
I asked myself about my identity a lot this year, giving close friends the license to be honest, seeing the mirrors in interactions that revealed who I could be, and questioning when I could be the unreliable narrator. The rest of this post is a list of 18 questions I’ve compiled over the last three-ish months that gets at this kind of reflection: