January. We race to be the people we vowed to be back when 2024 was fresh. The stuff of ball drops and champagne.
But the grinding. But the January.
Glorious unbroken periods to think and work and create? NO.
Edginess to everything, poking and prodding and mushing us along, impaling us on time thieves? YES.
January is all swales and brambles, baby.
(I was going to say “copse” but “copse” is too close to “corpse” and lord knows January already nudges us to Zombieville.)
It’s not forever, for sure. Hopefully, we are in the waning period and life’s edges will smooth out just enough to still be interesting and also tolerable
For now, folks are stressed and tired.
I can see this in the traffic. If my commute every day is any indication, I am in exactly the wrong place, going exactly the wrong speed at any moment. This is, of course, according to the lane weavers, the tailgaters, the capricious turn-signalers, the spacially ungifted, and the phone-up-to-the-face-while-the-car-is-in-motion drivers. I assume they’re looking up the Rules of the Road, but what do I know?
It requires extra attention. It wasn’t so long ago that driving allowed for a certain “autopilot” and conversations or deeper thoughts than “Holy cow that dude’s a maniac!” Now it’s predicting the next bad behavior. My poor adrenals. (And sympathy to anyone in the car who is subjected to the noise my family refers to as “Mom’s Driving Gasp.”)
My audiobook listening has taken a hit. Hypervigilance about distracted drivers leads to distracted audiobook listening, the one benefit of multiple one-hour round-trip daily commutes.
I lose the plot, quite literally.
Which is to say, interestingly, these books made it through the cracks.
I find the books I need at any given moment. The ones I finish, therefore the ones I respond to, are a snapshot of my life and needs at that time (as are, I suppose, the ones I do not finish, but I only write about stinkers if the book actively harms.)
They are a snapshot.
They are my story.
This month, fittingly, some were about being on an edge, some about going through the edginess, some offered respite from that, and some on how to actively seek and preserve your peace.
And in between the driving and the writing and the reading and the living and the lane changers, there is a trying. Some moments flash a sense of purpose and swerve around a very boring, utterly typical life. Is that what books are for? MAYBE. I DON’T KNOW.
Perhaps I’m just supposed to make some sort of learned-person comment about constant motion, fragmentation, and the struggle to find mental space for growth and art amidst chaos and eternal laundry. MAYBE. I ALSO DON’T KNOW THIS.
Brief thoughts on some of what I read:
War of Art
“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.
Do it or don’t do it.” — Steven Pressfield
One of those “read it because it keeps coming up in various writing communities” go-to recommendations.
They were right. (Although I preferred Parts 1 & 2 to Part 3, any artist should consider giving this a thumb-through.)
An Unlikely Guru
Self-effacing, but not in a gross way. Charmingly eager. You can read my brief review here.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
I wrote about that here.
Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
Chilling, hopeful. A cry for us to do the work of this nation.
Play It as It Lays
Brutal. Almost hostile. Maybe that’s the existential despair and ennui talking. It’s bleak. It’s fragmented. Short-tempered. This one, for me, isn’t Didion’s best, but it is not to be dismissed.
Paris Review, Issue 246 Winter 2023
A rare miss for me in terms of most of the fiction. Edgy in some ways that made me bristle, which then made me feel crotchety. I do not like feeling crotchety. Redeemed by the poetry and the interview with Louise Glück.
Raised in Captivity
Chuck Klosterman knows how to enter a story. He finds the trap doors, he floats down in a bubble like Glenda the Good Witch, he bursts through walls like the Kool-Aid man. His pieces are distinctive, hilarious, and often swerve into mildly disturbing. Excellent if a little uneven.
Blue Nights
Aging, parenting, disillusionment, regret, grief, and the accompanying sense of fragility, presented with the calm of deep grief.
She slices and dices so keenly, so precisely that it takes a while to realize she is splayed open. Had she been any more nostalgic, any less crisp, the book would have veered into sensation rather than stark intimacy.
In Chapter 19, she talks about the struggle to put words on the page with precision and alacrity.
She names this “Frailty.”
Which is another word for what is underneath all of this in our Januarys. Perhaps we’re trying to speed and weave and tailgate to escape that as well.
At least that frailty fades. If it must reappear each January, maybe we can do better and buffer it with soft things and soft people and soft kindness.
Fortunately, January has rolled into the rearview mirror.
Safe travels on our February journeys.
Jackie Pick 