The longest night
And the promise of light to come
I hope your solstice is exactly this cozy.
What I’m Reading
The same thing as everyone else: This absolute doozy in Elle about the journalist who fell in love with the worst person in the world. And of course there’s a follow-up.
Want to read more about bad people in worse relationships? Here you go.
Sister Helen Prejean on the cruelty of the death penalty.
Elizabeth Breunig on the very human desire for vengeance, and how it can’t be sated with state-sponsored executions masquerading as justice.
A real-life mystery in fiction-world.
What I’m Writing
GEN: The Joy of Low-Stakes Outrage
CNN: McConnell deserves no praise for finally recognizing reality
CNN: American over-policing in action
The Guardian: Republicans are trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn democracy itself
Views
Tomorrow morning, those of us in the Northern hemisphere will wake up having slept through the longest, darkest night of the year. And in 2020, the year’s shortest day feels like a little blessing — fewer minutes awake in this barrage of the terrible, and a promise of light to come.
I really loved this piece about how the solstice is a reminder that we are tiny bits of matter in an infinite universe, and that we exist and then cease to exist in the blink of an eye. There is magic happening in the sky, conjunctions and alignments that won’t come again until all of us have long turned to dust; we are puny, impermanent, insignificant things. In a year when so much has felt so huge and heavy and threatening, that perspective, so much higher than birds-eye, is simultaneously humbling and sobering and comforting.
On a more mundane scale, the last few weeks have offered a series of small promises that we are tip-toeing our way back to normal life, however in need of improvement “normal” was. The Biden victory may not have been a left-wing dream, but it was a tremendous relief. The Trump team’s repeated losses in court, and the president’s inability to foment his much-desired coup, may have reflected an alarming decline in America’s strength as a democracy, but we seem to have walked back from the precipice. Online, people are getting extremely heated about various low-stakes issues, which certainly feels like a sign that we’ve collectively, if subconsciously, moving on from the past four years of constant chaos and legitimate fear. A Covid vaccine exists, and people are getting it.
What’s being asked of us now, during these flinty cold days and long black nights, is to hold on a little longer.
That’s a big ask. Maybe you’re doing ok, but I sure am not. I am exhausted by this, anxious all the time, deeply lonely, missing friends and loved ones, and really missing novelty — something different, something to look forward to, a little pleasure like a glass of wine at a busy bar or a bigger one like walking off of an airplane in a new place. I miss the magic of seeing a friend I haven’t talked to in a while and remembering why I fell in love with them. I miss walking past people in New York City without the anxiety of seeing someone not wearing a mask — what does that say about their politics, this city’s health, all of our safety? — or the worry that I’m walking too close and stressing someone else out. I miss being able to move through space with appreciation and observation instead of surveillance and mistrust.
I am grateful that fall had such a long tail in New York this year, and that we were able to comfortably be outside through November, and even a few days in December. I’m also finding it’s a relief to hole up in the cold, to not feel quite so much like I’m missing out on life by being inside. When the demand is to just get through it, but the getting through it still feels so hard, I am glad the days are short and the nights are long.
I hope you have a warm and restful night, that you sleep long, and that you wake up to sunshine.
xx Jill