areligious jam-based advent diary: december 1-5
It’s December and I press myself into the first whiff of winter chill — as wimpy as said “chill” is in LA, I am undeterred, I wear jackets and pretend I’m not boiling — circling tired limbs up and around an ache below my sternum as I listen to stupid, jangly songs and grow weepy. The weepiness is often pleasurable. I love to burn the old year and wish it could go on always. I love to burn the old year because part of me wishes it would go on always, the pageantry of farewells, the specialness of gathering with treasured friends against the darkness in rooms brightened by string lights and candles, the almost erotic nothingness of when the holidays are over and the new year has not arrived. I am, admittedly, a Capricorn (and, for yet further pathologizing, a New Year’s Eve baby), if that means anything to you. Possibly it is related. I don’t actually know. The end of things is just romantic to me, so sorrowful and solemn yet washed in twinkling light. It’s December and bursts of color flicker over wet blacktop on my street and in my mind. I enjoy the winter holidays; this is not technically a crime. I crave festivity. I feel better with chilled pink cheeks. It’s clearly my father, the great Christmas enthusiast of my life, working through me. I like that and it makes me bashful and I feel both warmed and sorry somehow. Each year it’s more obvious that I have inherited his prickly sentimentality—the world of feeling ignored and avoided until I am crying over a Bing Crosby song. We are staying in California for Christmas, so I allowed myself a foolish indulgence and bought the Bonne Maman Advent Calendar. Even now the world trembles through the humiliating aftershocks of Treat Yo Self. But oh well. I’m not a great person yet but I could be worse. I do try, or I do try more often than not. And now I’ve got these jams.
December 1st - Wild Blueberry-Maple Syrup Spread
This was just okay. Which is fine!! I’m trying not to turn this jam calendar into this inappropriately emotionally weighted thing. It’s fine to begin Advent with a mediocre spread, even if it made for a somewhat inauspicious start to a long and tiresome day. The charging cord I normally use while at the office broke last week (okay, well. I was born without the shame that might stop me from saying that it broke INSIDE of my phone, leaving a tiny sliver a metal inside the charging port which I managed to remove only with the aid of a $30 pair of miniscule purple babydoll tweezers bought at CVS on my lunchbreak—and not before having a panic attack and crying for thirty minutes about how I didn’t want to go to the Apple Store.) and I forgot to bring a new one from home today so I couldn’t even numb my woes with inane phone games, mindful as I had to be of the draining battery. We saw the new Knives Out movie at The Egyptian and it was amusing and our popcorn had so much butter on it that I could feel my throat growing sticky, turning into pale gold rubber, and the Catholic church & attendant people and concepts at the film’s center are so hilariously Protestant and presented in disguise transparently because of how ugly American Evangelical churches are and that’s fine, too. It makes sense. Most of all, I love Josh O’Connor. He can’t be beat. Too charming, almost, and then those ears.
December 2nd - Fig-Cardamom Spread
This made for a mild and pleasant start to the day. The leftover Thanksgiving rolls I was using as my jam vehicle were on their last leg, dried to fragility and deteriorating into so many off-white pebbles under the weight of a butter knife. But I sipped water and pushed through. I’m a fig-head, so no complaints here. This week I’ve been listening to the novel Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips during runs and on my bus commute to work and back. I can’t say much about it without spoiling much of what it has to offer but it takes place in Russia and involves, but is not exactly about, a child abduction. Each chapter invites us into the life and pains of a new woman. Some characters connect glancingly with one another, as people do. Even—especially, in certain cases—the more quotidian stories (a young woman seeing an old best friend for the first time since high school at a drunken New Year’s party, a new mother fantasizing about construction while getting her neighbor to babysit) riveted me. When the book ended, I was disappointed not in the ending as written, which surprised and upset me, but that it was over at all. It’s a good feeling, anyway. To be so wholly enveloped in a story that its removal is a loss. I worked late on Tuesday night and was so happy finally to get home at eight thirty and drink a glass of ice water bigger even than my massive potato head. To wash dishes while thinking about this book and wait for my girl to get back from her friend’s place and kiss me.
December 3rd - Plum-Pear-Star Anise Spread
You wouldn’t slurp this by the spoonful, but I liked it very much alongside good butter and on my ridiculous, cardboard-like grainy bread. The star anise comes through quite subtly but is a welcome addition in an otherwise milquetoast fruit spread. Sorry to the pear community but I don’t really get what you’re up to. Plum, of course, innocent. We finished Celebrity Traitors UK across just four days of couch time and it’s an extreme hoot. It made for a particularly surreal and joyous experience for me because, as an Ugly American and notorious comedian-phobe, the cast is 90% people I’ve never heard of in my life, 4% people I am vaguely familiar with because my girlfriend likes Taskmaster, and Stephen Fry. Beautiful, ridiculous, very dumb. Now that we’ve seen the finale, I am left with nothing more but to fantasize about an alternate universe where Celia Imrie and Tom Sandoval could interact and ideally do one of those classically foolish singing tasks together.
December 4th - Cherry-Violet Leaves Spread
From jump with this one I was vaguely afraid about having a LEAF on my tongue as a LEAF on my tongue seemed like absolutely the sort of thing I’m ill-equipped to tolerate on account of my agonies. But no! It’s fine. Almost disappointingly un-leafy, even as said un-leafiness was likely what allowed me to enjoy a smear of inoffensive and ordinary cherry jam. The iced coffee pictured in the background of this photo was shortly thereafter delivered to the bedside of my beautiful girlfriend. I am not allowed to drink coffee anymore because I’m trying to respect myself and that means—among a few other things, but not very many—no longer willfully shitting acid on and off for anywhere from one to eight hours each day because of coffee. There was a SUPERMOON and I took bad and bleary pictures of it with my phone while walking home from the bus, stopping repeatedly on the sidewalk to try and get her in focus. I took bad and bleary pictures of the moon for so long on the sidewalk on the walk home from the bus that a teenager in sagged jeans and a Spider-Man sweatshirt veered into the street to get around me.
December 5th - Apple-Caramel-Cinnamon Spread
Today was my LONG RUN morning because I’ve become a person with LONG RUN mornings. Right now, at the baby-stepping beginning of my attempt to cultivate running as a fun and beneficial personal hobby, a long run for me is, like, six or seven miles. I woke up at 5:15AM, dressed, stretched, and ran seven. Unfortunately, I guess I didn’t drink enough water (I drink a LOT of water, like , several HydroFlasks across a workday & more after, but am finding that what was a lot is now a bit less than what my body wants) yesterday or this morning before leaving the apartment because by mile four all I could think about was drinking and drinking and drinking more until I drowned. Lips groping fishlike for stray moisture in the air, I kept running anyway and that is kinda the point of all this. Going on despite wanting very badly not to. Doing a little more & a little more all the time because the brain and body like to be challenged. Feeling thrilled and proud and purified when it’s over. Sorry if all of this is sounding too Catholic but I fear even the freest must do their praying some place or at least I hope that they do because I can’t stop. Their ministrations. My ministrations. It’s good. We skipped the toast today because Megan made breakfast burritos. I ate mine deconstructed sans tortilla because though I am in many ways almost spectacularly healed, I continue to harbor an aversion to certain “BAD” foods which comes and goes without explanation. Since I was still happily taking down a full plate of bacon, cheesy eggs, and tater tots with salsa, and because I’d had toast all week, and given perfection won’t be coming, it seemed prudent, even wise, to allow myself to be temporarily stupid about the big, scary carb blanket for the sake of enjoying the meal without agitation. Full brag, Megan is a genius chef, and it was a wonderful breakfast, one I topped off with a couple tiny spoonfuls of stewed apple scooped from the tiny jar with my favorite tiny spoon. It tastes like a McDonald’s apple pie, something I haven’t eaten since I was very small and sitting at a sticky table in the playland on Northampton Street with my mom and her father and so, I mean, what am I going to say but thank you, great work.
Also, this week: an essay I wrote about The Haunting of Hill House was published on The Rumpus. On Tuesday, I paid to ensure a girl in foster care can buy herself K-pop CDs via One Simple Wish and, more importantly, many other people together generously fulfilled every wish on the site for Giving Tuesday, a thing I don’t really know the origin of but, yes, sure, great. Being even a small part of the successful campaign to clear the website of wishes and earn the organization a $100,000 donation (which… I keep coming back to this while doing laps around my office building with my sweater peeled off and perspiration on my lip and before bed or in the shower, like. I do understand this is a fundraising ploy but the idea of there being a wealthy benefactor who is like, “WELL, I would love to donate some of my riches to help foster kids, but first you must answer my riddles three.” is incredibly funny to me) so as to ensure that as many children in foster care as possible have something special, something they chose themselves and that somebody else cared enough to get for them, just in case they need a reminder that they’re not alone or unloved is really meaningful to me and it has had a buoying effect throughout the week. There are already many new holiday wishes on the site and I really recommend taking a look and helping out if you can. We will be going to the Snocaps show tonight to pay our respects to the vaunted Crutchfield sisters because my girlfriend, again, a being inordinately gorgeous and hugely enterprising, had a Stubhub credit through her credit card and was able to get resale tickets after the original sale sold out before I was even permitted beyond Ticketmaster’s loathsome waiting room. On top of this, I just brought a gas station fountain Diet Coke back to my desk. It was never my intention to end this post on a series of boasts but I’m not sorry either. I’m looking up.
Congrats on The Rumpus Publication!! And, completely jealous of your jam sampling — they look delish!!!