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I read 107 books in 2022 (low for me)(writers read). Here's my faves (chronological order):

Matrix, Lauren Groff

The Sentence, Louise Erdrich

Winter in Sokcho, Elisa Shua Dusapin

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel

Razorblade Tears, S. A. Cosby

Fevered Star,  Rebecca Roanhorse

Siren Queen, Nghi Vo

Kaleidiscope, Cecily Wong

The Change, Kirsten Miller

Virology, Joseph Osmundson 

My Government Means To Kill Me, Rasheed Newson

Gilt, Jamie Brenner

Lark Ascending, Silas House

Indigenous Continent, Pekka Hämäläinen

Grievers, adrienne maree brown

Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey

Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese

Vibrant Years, Sonali Dev

Either/Or, Elif Batuman

The World We Make, N. K. Jemisin

(I don't buy books, this is all public libraries.) (See the pattern? What I choose to read tells its own story, let it always be interesting

Favorite TV of 2022

 

- Reservation Dogs (stunning, hits/heals me on ancestral levels)

- Andor (thrilling anarchist spy-fi, delicious Diego)

- Better Things (Pamela Adlon's accomplishments are peerless)

- The Bear (whip-smart, stellar writing/flow/cast)

- Atlanta (absolutely original, what a trip)

- Somebody Somewhere (so heartfelt!)

- Irma Vep (stylish, sexy, a great treatise on creative process)

- Rothanial (Jerrod Carmichal is one of the best in the game. Effortless)

- Abbott Elementary (pure joy, perfection)

- The Good Fight (Baranski & McDonald chef's kiss, relevant, surprising)

- Yellowjackets (spellbinding survival)

- Slow Horses (underdogs solving mysteries & sticking it to the man, yes please)

- Rutherford Falls (criminally underrated, Schmieding & Greyeyes are so so good)

 

Honorable mentions:

Station Eleven (technically 2021 but it wrapped in the Spring & deserves more attention)

We're Here

Drag Race All Stars All Winners

The Big Brunch

Ziwe

Reboot

Ms Marvel

She Hulk

Obi Wan Kenobi

House of the Dragon

(if yall would mask again, I could go out. Alas. Thank god for me there's streaming

The people I know who have hope about the world are the people who've always done and never stop doing movement/organizing work. The most cynical people I know tend to be the least engaged with actual work - lots of talk, no action. No shade, this is just math, test it! If you want to feel hope - take a risk, join a group, zoom some meetings, volunteer, phone-bank, canvass, work with the people doing the most and I GUARANTEE, voila, HOPE. I'm no hero, I'm flawed and have CPTSD & multiple chronic disabilities, the pandemic continues, threatening my life, I have lots of reasons to withdraw. I have limits, I respect them. And still I know that the work is medicine, community is medicine, and taking risks on behalf of trying to create a more equitable world is medicine. To be in service of something bigger than me is the best way I know how to be - in response to great tragedy and trauma. We can do it, we can. Small things are everything, local work is local healing, local healing is universal change - it matters, it grows. I just want to be able to keep showing up in this new year to the best of my abilities, for a dream of a world I won't live to see xox Get hope! Take action xox

Ceremony ©EAU

Deglutition Baby

When all your body is

doing is crying

for you to cry from the moment

you wake through all the threads

of the day, pull pulling ocean tide

drifts inside another even colder

ocean, silver

 

torrent of grief, wider than any river

you've ever seen and it's calling

you to dive, depths beneath

the pull pulling you to spiral, eddy

down with the red leaves, yellow 

leaves and brown, the brown

and white geese diving

for fish swimming even

lower, the temperature dropped and dropping

even lower, grief begs

you to fall. Shhhh. Tis the season,

 

tis memory, tis

the way, the only

way you can be to get

through the day because you have to

clean someone's house. So you

swallow. You bite

 

the water down, you do not let

your eyes betray you but they

must - they're red all the time! And time

passes, the house is clean 

now and will get dirty again and

pine needles, ornaments,

candy canes and chocolate

kisses you pocket cuz aren't they 

for everybody? Aren't you somebody 

who candy can be for? What's so formidable

 

is all that umber sorrow

has to go somewhere, if you can't let it go it 

absorbs back into the body it can't 

escape, into the liver perhaps - is that

why mine is swollen? Because I'm not

free and even if I were, the light

in the world for me seems

to have gone out. There is

 

no bottom? Because the grip

you must sustain to keep the whole thing

together, the dam

from collapse, is

relentless, a feat

of engineering only trauma

survivors get. Yeah yeah, survive

 

to tell people all the horrible

shit they don't wanna hear, they want you to keep 

quiet or vanish. Varnish those 

wounds with maple syrup and

honey, it hardens until tears 

fall, salt-

water a melting and a fire. Burn me

to the ground, I'm already ashes

anyhow 

Onward

You know the parable of the mustard seed in Buddhist teachings? A grief-stricken mother begged Buddha to resurrect her dead child. He told her, I’ll do it if you can bring me one mustard seed from anyone in your village untouched by death. She walked the village from end to end, knocking on every door, speaking with every neighbor, and returned empty handed. In the process, she learned – I’m not alone. The sharing of grief rooted her in community and gave her the strength she needed to bury her child. This is a kind of resurrection, accessible to us all – beyond mutual aid, this is mutual divinity.

What do I know of grief? Tears soak my face, throat clotted with a fist, gut howling, insomnia, toxic bones. I’ve lived in the bowels of it, alone. And grief’s medicine, what of that? For many of us, it’s always been connection, a reaching out when hands are burnt and every nerve screams hide. It’s meeting on the stoop, street or internet, to share, witness, be seen. Grief shatters armor and in that fragility, we’re vulnerable, receptive. Openly honoring our grief, naming our trauma, is a sacred act of catharsis that builds relationships – in this way, a broken heart gets bigger. The medicine for all that ails us is sourced in community; engaging with it, we create the tools we need to endure. No doubt, trauma is here – personal, collective, compounded in this time of relentless cultural and climate crisis. How do we shift from the paralysis and overwhelm of trauma into action? Listen to our community: the bridge is grief, the way through is together.

Today’s another day that’s bleeding from a night I couldn’t sleep, twisted in rage for 19 children murdered at school by another lone gunman. Except he wasn’t alone, an entire culture of white supremacy and patriarchal misogyny armed him. We’re not surprised the police were useless, that the system doesn’t protect us or our beloveds. This after the mass murder of Black elders in Buffalo and Taiwanese churchgoers in California by white supremacists, all while politicians launch ruthless attacks on reproductive freedom and trans people, during a devastating pandemic. It’s horrific, exhausting. I can go a long while without breaking down, but some days hit hard, and I can’t stop crying. Stress flares my disabilities, helpless snowballs into hopeless, and I yearn to disappear. But in these dark hours, I remember – my people have been surviving oppression and organizing against it forever; their example teaches me how to sustain: care for your body, honor your grief, be in community, listen, love, keep working, keep on.

So I carved out some time to rage, rest, process, and it gave me the energy to launch back into calling politicians, supporting fundraising and outreach efforts, and campaigning for grassroots leaders. The work can feel small, but I know it’s big, because I was able to pull out the mower and cut my neighbor’s grass. It was knee-high and her grandson couldn’t play in it, their mower’s broken. I plowed through, leaving a cloud of dandelion fluff in my wake. I took a break and we spoke of the shootings, shook our heads in misery. Pam wanted to pay me for my labor, but I couldn’t accept. When another neighbor, Jimmy, helped me a few weeks back and I offered to pay him, he said, “This is what we do, we’re family.” He came by Pam’s when I cut the mower off, and we all carried the trampoline back to the center. Her grandson’s out there now, making joy.

(previously published in Geez Magazine, Fall 2022)

Checklist/winter

1. Making a pot of black cherry jam
2. Low and slow
3. Ornamental
4. Wood smoke clouds
5. Pull the vinyl out
6. Spin me round
7. Sleigh bells ring
8. In my hand
9. Vanilla meringues swirled with the black cherry jam
10. Walnuts, hickory nuts, acorns
11. Toasted bread with butter
12. Soup then gumbo
13. My perfect rice/love language
14. Marshmallow fluff/peanut butter fudge
15. Sweets, yes, too
16. Digging into summer 
17. Rachmaninoff, Nat King Cole
18. Flannel sheets
19. Wool, fleece
20. Kitty cat purr
21. All we are is wintering
22. The cold like fire burns
23. Into clarity
24. Cane/sugar fields/burning memory
25. Don't you think you know me
26. Don't I know you don't
27. Here where memory is a body to tender
28. Into to heal and hope
29. I came back to remember
30. How there was sweet in the broken bones
31. All I ever wanted
32. Remember/try
33. Degrees

let's sing some songs