#52 - all I want for Xmas is...

Some listicle action.

Dec 24, 2021

Hima in Northern Ireland dressed for a snow storm

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We thought we made it from London to Northern Ireland unscathed from Omicron’s manic rampage that brought the city into an emergency state over the six days we were there. What was suppose to be a quick stopover on the way to Ciaran’s hometown mushroomed into attending my uncle’s funeral after an untimely passing; meeting my 94-year old Ba and brood of cousins; cuddling pandemic babies; indulging in London’s obsession with veganism (this brunch was chef’s kiss and can’t go wrong with a ‘free from’ meal deal); huddling in cozy pubs discussing class politics and Kanye’s genius; drinking hot chocolate heaven; getting boosted by the NHS; and taking way too many trains. But two days into drinking six cups of tea a day in Downpatrick and after taking nearly a dozen tests since leaving Toronto, Ciaran’s brother tested positive for COVID just hours after having tested negative earlier in the morning.

We had driven up the Antrim coast to see the Giant’s Causeway, an ancient volcano eruption turned natural wonder that many now just called ‘the big rocks,’ and were about to step out for dinner from the B&B we were staying at when the double lines on the plastic stick appeared. Soon, we were back in the car wearing double masks and riding in silence with the windows down to somehow contain the spread during the two hour trip back home. It sounds dramatic, because it was. The dominoes fell pretty vigorously and on that car ride I felt the weight of two years of compounding health directives, public fear, crippling isolation, uncertainty and mass death.

I thought about the risk we had now put Ciaran’s parents in. If we should leave and how we would figure out the logistics of travel from the countryside. I thought about if the viral load was cooking inside of me; how weak my body has felt over the years and if I had the immune system to fight COVID. I thought about all the calculus we had done this year between collective responsibility and personal mental health without ever arriving at any satisfying conclusion. If we had travelled naively. I thought about all the twitter threads I had read on the debilitating impact of long-term COVID, and all the infuriating conversations I’ve had about a virus, a living organism of nature’s making that has killed millions of people, many poor, many racialized, being so arrogantly discounted as a human-made conspiracy.

The dizzying part of COVID is that you want to be rational and play the probabilities, but your mind can’t help focus on the possibility of being the aberration. Death is palatable when it is a symptom of age, but early death, even if destined, always feels like theft. We might accept that anything can change in a flash and that our health is invaluable, but it doesn’t make it easier to imagine contracting and living with a chronic disease. I can’t tell you how many headlines I have seen that go something like, I was a healthy 36-year old and now after COVID I have…’ which certainly does not help with being logical.

When we arrived back home, Ciaran’s brother went into isolation at the cottage across the street owned by their parents friends and we distanced across different sides of the house. After sending out Whatsapp messages to a handful of friends and rereading all the data coming out about Omicron, my anxiety starting to subside. By the morning, we had all sort of rapidly resigned to getting COVID, a sentiment more common now than a year ago, and hoped that our triple vaccine would see us through. In the belly of feeling completely out of control, the response was perhaps both a reality and a coping mechanism.

Once everyone’s health was accounted for, the focus shifted to Xmas. It was temporarily being cancelled with the possibility of postponement and everyone was gutted. I was mostly ambivalent because our health was my priority, but for families like Ciaran’s that live across different continents and islands, Xmas holds the space for finally being together without having to negotiate work, school and church schedules. It’s absence over the last two years has amplified its importance. Presence with each other is so deeply desired but ultimately rare given the paths their lives have taken them on.

Even though Xmas’s cultural hold on us is not surprising given the agenda of globalization, in-between the overproduced plastic does feel like closing the year returning to the part of us that is pure and really quite simple: love, food, giving, presence. Not everyone cares about Xmas, or even has the privilege of participating, but given its exaggerated sense of importance, it does seem to cast a light of clarity of who we want to be with and who we are missing to feel warm, cozy, held.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter over the past year, you already know what I want for Xmas.

Here, I will give you a hint:

The ab_li_hm_nt of im_eri_lis_ pa_ria_cha_ c_pit_lis_.

If you can’t figure out this fill in the blank, feel free to peruse my archives for clues (shameless holiday reading plug). I have no idea if we are tired from COVID or from the follow-on effects of said fill in the blank that at the apex of human vulnerability has shown its complete disregard for it. Or maybe it just never understood what it meant to be human in the first place.

Anyways, there are other things I want for Xmas too.

Bifold Doors

I learned this word approximately 7 days ago in London at Ciaran’s brother’s freshly renovated house and my friend A’s beautiful home and no other window treatment will ever do.

Sliding Folding Doors London | Bifold Doors London
| Aluminium Bifold Doors

A cupboard full of pottery

I am sort of obsessed with ceramics and want everything ever made by Solem and Yasmin Falahat, all of which basically sells out in minutes.

230 Pottery - Pomegranate ideas | pomegranate, pottery, ceramics

Every corner of my house filled with dry flower arrangements

This was my Pinterest obsession this year and I can’t get enough of Mitsu, Gunnar, Strange Love Flowers and Paruluman. Dreaming of a flower farm and home that is a dry flower forest and someone to teach me how to make these on a romantic Sunday afternoon.

For people to stop saying everyone has ADHD

Please consider the impact of diluting the impact of a debilitating neurological disease that bleeds into every part of your waking existence (if you can stay awake) because you need to justify being distracted by Instagram for 5 minutes. Please consider what it takes to adopt a stigmatized label so you can somehow explain what it means to live with an invisible disability. I didn’t always know I had ADHD but I also knew there was something that made it very difficult to exist in a neurotypical world.

For folks to read: I AM BECAUSE WE ARE: An African Mother's Fight for the Soul of a Nation by Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr

This book launches in three weeks and though I am biased because it is written by a dear friend, I have read a lot of books and what makes this one special is that Chidi was deeply called to write her mother’s story after her tragic passing. As someone affectionately connected to spirit, she was able to connect with her mother’s to see the book through, sharing astounding inner details of a remarkable life grounded in an unwavering belief, faith and sense of integrity. Dora really is a model of feminine leadership and after reading the book I felt really connected to her despite never meeting her.

Jewellery in unlikely places

I’m going to have to own Bhavya Ramesh’s entire collection. Period.

To stop equating money to survive/thrive with needing capitalism

Capitalism is a system designed by colonial power, scaled through imperialism, and reinforced through patriarchy and racism. We are all living in it, means we inevitably must participate. The end of capitalism will require us to hold a vision for something else, even if we don’t exactly know what it is, while slowly detaching from the false safety offered by capitalism. This means not lamenting and wasting energy every time you shop at Amazon and Zara, which in some cases may not be a true or feasible choice, but rather being mindful of what alternative choices you can make within your means and being ruthlessly honest about what you realistically need to thrive and contribute versus how you might be perpetuating capitalism through needless accumulation (if in fact you do believe capitalism must end). This is HARD work and I still consider myself very much in process. We all possess a unique positionality (power x identity x privilege x access) that affords us to contribute to systemic change in different ways and I would love for us to focus on the big prize.

Someone to sit beside me for a year and teach me to paint

My ADHD is really showing (ha!) but I can’t help but want to learn all the things. Watching Joy Broadbent paint over this last season was magical. On warm days, she would drag her easel out into the piazza between our studios and let the brush take her inside ethereal forests. When I asked her where the images came from, she replied, I don’t know, they just come. Her show, Holy Ghost, is currently on at 62 Geary. There is something that sounds really soothing about been taken by the brush but it requires getting over the fear of painting like a 4-year old, which is my current status.

We can’t ‘individual’ our way out of the pandemic

If all we take away from these harrowing two years is that we share this planet and the space between our homes and that we depend on each other to like eat and watch netflix and have coffee then that might be good enough. If you leave the pandemic still thinking this is only about you, your body, your safety, your family and your health, well I’m sorry: you simply did not understand the assignment.

I still want to be friends with Solange and see Sade in concert

I also would really love a friend like Cathy Park Hong that I can just be in a melancholic darkness with, and sit in the mess of it all without having to positivity or solution ourselves out. I think that would oddly be really healing for me.

I hope everyone who wants to access psychedelic therapies for their healing are able to

Psilocybin for Major Depression and the Rise of Psychedelic Medicine

I’ve written about psychedelics a few times before. Most recently, I have been regularly microdosing psilocybin, and it has really helped me manage my anxiety, with some knock on effects on the ADHD that has opened up access to more peaceful space. The research and legalization is happening rapidly and so many friends who work in the space feel positive about how mindful practitioners and leaders are being (so as to not follow the trajectory of cannabis) and that makes me hopeful that folks will be able to get the mental health support they need and want.

I think that’s it. There is probably more but I am satisfied with this list and I have to go make dinner. I hope that you, your family and community stays well even if you are infected. I hope you feel held by someone or some force bigger than you through a confusing time. I hope that you catch that passing feeling that maybe everything is going to be alright, or at least, exactly how it is suppose to be.

Much love and Merry Xmas!

Hima