areligious jam-based advent diary: december 6-12
December 6th - Apricot-Lavender Spread
Elected to go in with the cracker on this one for fear of being overwhelmed by lavender, but it turned out to be completely inoffensive, though not a particular favorite. I ate this plus several plain crackers then went to the eye doctor about the pink spots in the whites of my eyes that the steroid drops were meant to clear and did a bit but not entirely. Now I have to go to a different eye doctor, to an ophthalmologist, one who is “highly reputable, like, all the doctors know him.” I get the impression from my eye doctor (“my” eye doctor, I mean. She is the eye doctor I chose based solely on her proximity to my apartment when my eyes first turned red in October. But I have now seen her several times and have accepted that we are on a journey together.), who laughs incessantly throughout our brief interactions and told me that the drops she prescribed for me are the same ones she gives to her dog, that there’s nothing to be especially worried about and so I am not especially worried. What I am, however, is spiritually uplifted, exalted, moved, by MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG FILMED LIVE ON BROADWAY!! which we went to see in theaters at The Americana on Saturday afternoon. Jonathan Groff is one of the best people to have been obsessed with as a teenager if you wish to make audacious brags about your excellent judgment for decades to come. My prince!!! My only context for Merrily was this extremely tender and affecting little documentary about its disastrously bad and painfully brief first Broadway run. It used to be streaming on HBO and isn’t anymore which sucks but even if you have to pay a rental fee I recommend it very much for some quiet afternoon when you’re feeling the need to be sad in a warm and hopeful way. After, we stopped in for a drink at, well. I really hesitate to use the word restaurant, and “bar” also does not quite apply. There is, anyway, a handful of tables you can sit at near the Christmas tree in the main courtyard of that particular Rick Caruso mall, and we went there in the still warm December evening air to maybe or maybe not be served refreshments. The pizza we ordered on a whim to complement our gin & tonics hit the table twenty minutes before the cocktails did and was topped with half inch thick unseasoned potato slices. When the tree lights turned on people around us clapped. It was a good time.
December 7th - Caramel-Coffee Spread
This represents possibly my first Did Not FinishTM toast slice since a long-ago time of great unhealth or at least whenever I last went out to breakfast and got and egg and bacon plate with potatoes and all for a long winter’s rest that came with toast as an afterthought not strictly speaking meant to be eaten. I’m saying it was bad. Perhaps I knew it would be, which is why I prepared the peanut butter toast as a back-up. And why I put some flaky salt over the caramel in an attempt to bring balance and appeal to a frightening dish. No dice. After this failure, I walked to Amoeba Records to finish some Christmas shopping. There were too many men in band tees roaming the store for me to feel truly comfortable but obviously that is their designated habitat, and it would be unfair for me to object to their presence in it. While the sun disappeared bit by bit I watched the Todd Haynes-Julianne Moore joint Safe and wrapped presents and applied eye drops and had no lunch and touched my toes and had a handful of Hershey Peppermint Hugs and washed my face and looked gleefully at the [REDACTED] that I bought for my friend’s soon-to-be-born baby and had three more Hugs and wrote with three different colored pens on one page of a journal and hung on the pull-up bar in grey sweatpants. I’ve developed calluses on my hands from the bar hanging, calluses Megan was shocked and appalled to discover because, and she’s right, I really do not hang on the bar that much. Except for the brief interlude at Amoeba, I was wearing grey sweatpants during all of this. Just so you know.
December 8th - White Nectarine-Peach-Lemon Verbena Spread
Made this as a peanut butter sandwich to take out the door to the bus stop and it really slapped. Delightful, gentle, fruity. After work, I got stoned and read Tam Lin first in the bathtub and then in bed. When Megan got home and found me tucked under our duvet pink-faced and clammy like a teabag clothed in napkins for later, she observed that this did not really look like my kind of book, which is fair because you cannot tell from looking at the cover that it is a campus novel set in Minnesota.
December 9th - Madagascar Vanilla-Caramel Spread
Okay, I really wasn’t sure I could stomach even a bite of this one. Not to be a sugar Scrooge or whatever but I cannot possibly have this on my toast or honestly anywhere near my mouth at all before nine am. Immediately, I planned to leave it for the evening, when twelve plus hours re-entered into the horrors of existence would more than likely have beaten me down enough that I could enjoy and even savor a little spoonful of sweet poison. That would have been fine, but Megan had the better idea of attempting a sort of caramel apple snack situation, so I brought an apple to work along with the little jar and around three PM I hacked the thing open with a plastic knife, sawed it into submission, and slathered the resulting pieces in vanilla-caramel spread. The first two or three slices were quite nice. The next two tasted okay but brought with them a sort of sinking feeling. I ate the rest of the apple naked. Sorry to this spread. You’re perfectly nice, I’m sure. It’s only that I am old and I like salt.
December 10th - Wild Blueberry-Lychee-Rose Spread
An unimpeachable product, this! Significantly better than the Wild Blueberry with maple syrup. The rose either does not come through or else my palate is insufficiently skilled and cannot pick it out but either way, in practice, to me, the lychee provides an acid the blueberry requires and with its own slightly floral notes perhaps disarms the rose. Bright and pleasant and well-suited to be hoovered down with butter on bread in six or seven bites after a morning run. I ate the toast so fast that it could not be photographed. Try not to be too disappointed. It’s been so warm here all week and it’s making me ill in body and mind. Eighty degrees in December. Disgusting. Between the heat and the chronic, yes, but this week particularly trying bus delays I’ve found myself in quite a bad mood about LA. Then I remember it’s the city of my girl, where she comes from and where I found her and my rage cools to a simmer. I did come here of my own volition. It has served me well in the ways that matter, given me things I did not know to ask for, dream of. It is almost always easy to accept these gifts in exchange for losing most opportunities to shiver and stare into the middle distance with self-important pensiveness, heady exhales floating away like smoke. Also, Yoshinobu Yamamoto plays baseball here. This is where Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” takes place. And on Friday I’ll see the ocean. You can’t see the ocean just anywhere. You can see it in many, many places, obviously, right, a ton. But this is one of them and until the end of everything, I guess, there will be that.
December 11th - Pineapple-Rum-Vanilla Spread
I read something this morning about how sitting is killing us and this is not new information, but this particular interaction with that concept has, for whatever reason, managed to light me up with fresh fear. Consequently, today was huge for pacing while looking at my phone, which probably is only barely better than sitting, the brain-eviscerating power of the screen undoing whatever small gains come from briefly getting off my ass. That being said, I did unfortunately discover a good new phone game. It’s called Solitaire Association and because it demands a small amount of thought I have convinced myself that it is not as bad for me as the other games that I use to numb myself for ten to thirty minutes at a time multiple times a day for itchy two to five day periods—then I delete them, you see— every other month. This morning, before preparing scrambled eggs, I ate exactly one bite of this pineapple concoction with the small spoon pictured above. And it was fine. I don’t know what you’d reasonably do with it, but it tasted nice. Office Holiday party tonight. (Sorry, by the way, for the disorienting tense changes throughout these missives. This will not improve or change going forward but I do apologize.) Megan will arrive for free sushi and an open bar, and we will speak to the young people who work at the same place that I do, many in positions of greater responsibility and power. I’m off alcohol all week because when I made a promise to myself in September, swearing I would start getting up early and going outside and running around on the craggy, deathtrap LA sidewalks until I felt less depressed, part of that promise, or the gun to the head that I organized in order to help me to keep that progress, is that I signed up for a 10K race which will take place this Saturday. As is probably self-evident, the idea was that if by December I had not trained enough to be able to run six miles and had to sheepishly beg off from the race, I would be embarrassed and have wasted money, and thus to avoid such fate I would, hopefully run. And I did! I ran a lot for someone who isn’t particularly good at it. And now I am going to go to Santa Monica and run six miles with fit Westside people dressed up as Christmas trees and grinches. What was I getting at? Oh. I’m not drinking! Not ideologically or as a lifestyle, but just not until after the race, at which point I will almost immediately be having a beer. But today it’s club soda only even though work is paying and thus there is a certain moral obligation to imbibe grandly. Because of my health. Because my body is a temple all of a sudden or at least a wonderland.
December 12th - Red Currant-Raspberry Spread
I’ve been clamoring for raspberry, for red berries, for something a little tart. This one is still more sweet than it is anything else but it’s pretty much a 10/10 for me. Woke up late. Ran a little to shake my legs out. Washed my hair. Then we drove to the post office and successfully shipped out all of our holiday gifts and I didn’t even cry about the long line or while trying to tape up the boxes. The woman working the USPS window had a manner that really soothed me; she treated us like we were stupid but like that stupidity was only a fact and not offensive to her. I appreciate a matter-of-fact service provider. This afternoon Megan and I will begin our staycation by the sea. In advance of such good fortune, I am spending some time with this document which outlines ways to support the courageous individuals currently on hunger strike in British jails as an effort to demand immediate bail, the deproscription of Palestine Action, and an end to the UK operations of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. If, like me as of roughly two weeks ago and most of the time, you’re a bit out of the loop on this developing situation because, in equal measure, mass media and the monied powers behind it seek to keep you from knowing AND because phone addiction and general brain rot and fearful fits of apathy and the bone-tired feeling of great sadness all are very natural and must be fought against where possible and so you missed this news, anyway, I’d recommend reading this piece. The Google doc I’ve linked to above provides numerous ways to make some small effort toward the cause. Their dedication and bravery invigorates. There is not and will never be a free world without a free Palestine.
I am happy to hear Bronwyn from RHOSLC is moving forward with the divorce I’ve been agitating for since the moment she appeared on my TV screen. Happy to hear Jacob Elordi say he hates AI and, “I would much rather kiss on the beach, and read a novel, and be sunburnt.” Same. Absolutely yes. And more importantly, bring back young people being pretentious!!!!!! We have spent a number of years in a crisis for lack of such ideals and the pleasing attendant posturing. Happy to debut the incredibly dumb shirt I made for the Christmas run tomorrow lmao. Love you forever, Ari, love you forever, Comfort Colors t-shirts, love you, basically, most of the time, world.
