the perfect christmas

happy holidays

fanny tavastila

i have to admit something. usually i think christmas is pretty lame. all the hallmark holiday cheer, the same decorations out each year without fail - yes, the neighbors have had the same nativity scene for so long the heads of mary and jesus are pale from sun damage - and of course the major lead up to a day that simply passes like the rest of them. some ups, some downs, and overall still a real, rather than magical, day. (i've looked everywhere to find magic, travelled all over the world, but everything is real, i have confirmed, and you can't easily escape that fact).

but here's the shocker: im looking forward to christmas this year. my eyes sparkle in the strung christmas lights and my heart delights at seeing the snowflakes floating in the air outside my window.  i feel like frank sanatra. christmas music settles my soul and i watch the yuletide log on netflix with a hat and mittens on so i can actually feel the heat. nikki and i even bought a miniature (but real!) christmas tree and trimmed it with gold chains, dead flowers, cat toys, and other small mementos from around the apartment. i bring - no, i am - the christmas spirit. 

christmas commericals on youtube put tears in my eyes. i have turned the christmas tree into a shrine with my stuffed animal sheep collection at the base, to emulate snow. christmas is like a wave of pine scented candle washing over me. im literally watching polar express right now and i bought tickets i cant afford to the nutrcracker ballet next week. im reading a book about winter i received for christmas last year and my favorite chapter? the one about christmas, of course.

in that book, i learned that the holiday is pagan in origin, which i like. its about worshipping the cycle of the sun, illuminating candles in its name in the otherwise dark, silent night that is the winter season. channukah is also about lighting candles for this very reason. but this post is about christmas, obviously.

the author adam gopnik sees a dual purpose of the festival at play: that of reversal, and renewal. on christmas, we do the opposite of what we might consider rational: we dedicate the hours of the day to giving rather than receiving resources, and congregate with others of disparate interests and political dispositions, purposely. thus the observers of christmas turn the day into a holiday through a reversal of normal behavior.

but this process of christmas is also, in a way, suppose to renew us: george bailey realizes there's no place like bedford falls, and scrooge ends up giving tiny tim a turkey. they cast aside their obligations to the capitalist wheelhouse and lift their eyes to see they have a family, a community, one perhaps that's been there the whole time. george grasps the value of his average life, scrooge can finally give without receiving. on christmas there are miracles, and not only do reindeers fly, people transform into a better, frankly more likable version of themselves.

we're supposed to remember we're loved and that we love ourselves, which is something i personally think should be celebrated everyday, or at least i don't know how people live if they don't. i think that contributes to why gopnik eventually argues this reversal and renewal thing on the same day ends up leading to a lot of anxiety and holiday-induced depression. so wait, we can only find love and joy if we completely reverse the norms of the world we live in? well, that's uplifting.

he has a point. the myth that christmas will finally cure all the ills of the year, giving way to a brand new one only seven short sleeps away, puts a lot of pressure on us to make the renewal work. it puts a lot of pressure on us at the mall deciding what to buy our estranged family members so they believe our relationship exists. we are all striving to make it the perfect day. and for christmas sake, i would like for us all to let go of that.

this year i have let go of thinking that the same sun-damaged nativity scene on my neighbors lawn is lame. i have let go of how cheesy i think ugly sweater parties are, and i feel instead like being that girl in the meme whose eyes are like, really wide (over-attached girlfriend i believe) while wearing a wintry rudolph-themed ensemble drinking eggnog out of a solo cup. i've embraced all of its outlandishness, its stupidity and turned it into a joke, a source of internal laughter at every wreath, ornament, and bulb i see.

the greatest part about christmas is that it has so many expectations and traditions that it by necessity never fails to surprise us. you imagine it one way, and it goes another. christmas just magnifies this truth of life, that nothing goes as planned and that to live, to enjoy is to embrace what sometimes doesn't work out the way you wish it would. christmas may not be magical, but its our attempt at making it magical, year after year, for no apparent reason, knowing it fails, that brings out the best in us.

~

adela andea

my folklore

i recently returned from my second trip to europe. it already felt much more like home than my last journey; the things that wowed me the first time around had faded away - the age of the establishments, the price of wine, the roundabouts - which didn't so much take away from the experience but leave room in the frame for other details to come into focus. it's like revisiting a friend from school after years apart, someone you've known very well, and deducing who they are by what you knew then and what you know about them today. most of the time, you're not very surprised.

the purpose of the trip was to visit my cousin kevin o'malley who was appointed by sir barack obama as the US ambassador to ireland. a very regal reason indeed, that i did absolutely nothing to earn! kevin's been living in the white house-esque deerfield residence in dublin, our presidents' and ambassadors' favorite accommodation when in europe, so we thought we might as well check it out while it belongs to the family.

my brother and i, being young and, with the rest of the millennial generation, addicted to experience, decided to extend our trip on the front end with a stop in iceland. denny and i took two bus tours around the country, which we discovered is the easiest way for tourists to hit all the natural wonders without tumbling into an ice crevice or stepping on a boiling hot spring.

we drove by volcanic crags, mossy landscapes, and miles of volcanic beaches, learning along the way from our friendly yet mysterious icelandic tour guides about the legends of trolls and elves which accompany the sites. along the way, we stopped at a black sand beach, a park full of geysers and bubbling geothermal pools, and a glacier, taking in the nature you only read about in textbooks. we even strapped crampons on our feet, grabbed some ice picks and hiked said glacier, which was an informative experience if only because of what we learned about the iceland by doing so. the glacier holds within it an active volcano - one of hundreds in the ohio-sized country - which was roughly 10 years overdue and could have erupted at any moment during our hike. if the volcano were to erupt, it would take only about three hours for the lava to break through the ice cap and begin to melt the hundreds-year-old glacier, pushing rivers of icy waters out towards sea and flooding the surrounding area. apparently this sort of science is the most common way waterfalls in iceland are formed, and has shaped the country's history and landscape such that the icelandic folk have built their lands and life plans with this sort of eruption / escape in mind.

i made sure to take some of the landscape with me by picking my signature miniature wildflower bouquets, and photographing them in front of waterfalls. of the flora and fauna, i was particularly awed by the stretches of land completely covered by these lush, vibrant purple flowers echoing hill after hill, mile after mile throughout the country. despite being an invasive species, the lupinous add brushstrokes of color to an already magnificent landscape. between the cool blues, volcanic reds, deep greens and bright purple, the flowers help create a bold, surreal palette only witnessed in impressionist paintings or on the cover of my first children's novel, the canvas.

denny and i stayed in reykjavik, where we were tickled by the icelandic language and in particular, the street names. our favorite was "freyjugata" which we inserted into phrases throughout the trip, for example, "freyjugata try this fermented shark". through our visit to the viking museum, we learned that the language itself is only spoken by the 300,000 icelandic folk on the island,  is rooted in nordic tongues, and actively uses three gender pronouns. their progressive zeitgeist is reflected in its people, who are leaders in harvesting sustainable energy and in the arts, but are also daringly cooler than americans. they dye their hair targaryen-platinum, wear skin-tight leather, and proudly exhibit their tattoos. it's hot.

since denny and i visited in the summer, we weren't there for the northern lights, but we did experience the midnight sun. that we could be out at 3am in broad daylight, entertaining the late night musings of icelandic folk (complete with dancing, drinking and finer spirits), ensured we only slept a mere eight or ten hours in our four nights there. i had no sense of time but was living on adrenaline and the secret energies of the "hidden people" they believe to live in caves (and clubs?) there. in the end, the midnight sun extended our trip from three to five days, so i was quite pleased despite how utterly, extremely exhausted we were when we showed up in dublin.

where iceland was about nature and exploration, our trip to ireland was indubitably about family. the moment we stepped out of the airport and into my dad's rental car felt like a brand new, more luxurious adventure, with the familiarity of his driving (despite self-consciously navigating the left side of the road) immediately bringing us the comfort of home.

despite the strong urge to sleep for days, denny and i were immediately thrown into the excitement of the euro cup, with the ireland vs. france game neck-and-neck by the time we passed the first pub on our way back from the airport. seeing all the green and orange (hair) in the packed double-decker pub rooting and hollering for the irish team, full-steam nationalism bumping into me as i pushed my way to the bar, was precisely my first exposure to a room of all irish people. my expectations were immediately met, and exceeded.

seeing the streets fill with swaying, drunk bodies after the team lost meant that my sunday evening in dublin was only beginning. after a recharging dinner of grass-fed irish steak with garlic butter smeared on top, a pack of 20 or so members of the our family walked around a few blocks, pretending as if it weren't absolutely hopeless that we'd find something to do with the underage cousins other than go to another pub. unfortunately for them, we eventually found ourselves at a crossroad (literally, a few of us had crossed the road and others had not) where the children were inevitably being drawn back to the hotel by our grandparents, the rest of the pack inching closer to the door of the nearest drinking establishment.

talk throughout the trip centered around which sites, landmarks and towns each of the individual families were visiting on day trips, mixed in with a sprinkle of family gossip or who's-doing-what-now. the next morning my brother and i stood in line for a much-needed cup of coffee ("i'll just get the americano, they can't put whiskey in that, right?") before heading out to the currently ranked no. 1 golf course in the world, royal county down. it was a nice coastal links course, bordering a kelly green mountain range, where i probably lost more than 25 euro worth of golf balls.

my grandpa had played with us and when we returned to the family for dinner, our grandma said she had never, ever seen him happier, which is saying a lot for a couple who've been together for more than 50 years. as we stood in the living room of the deerfield residence, watching pop's cousin talk of their parents leaving ireland hopeless, penniless for a better life in america, i could only imagine the intense emotion of having all of your children together there, but now in a decadent, presidential room that obama calls home when he's abroad.

it offered a lot of perks, rolling around the country with the ambassador. when we arrived in our hometown of westport, we were greeted by the mayor, who formally but intimately welcomed us "home". we learned that the o'malleys have a long history in westport, starting with king owen "blackoak" o'malley and his daughter grace, the "pirate queen", taking names and owning all of the "territory of the owls" in the 16th century. my brother, stepbrother and i hiked halfway up the summit of croagh patrick, the mountain where st. patrick famously drove the snakes out of ireland, and later learned that the mountain, the bay we looked over and the surrounding islands were once entirely ours.

my great grandpa's origins were much more humble, however. my grandpa's brother passed away earlier this year, and we spread his ashes in the moss, stone, and wildflowers on the farm where their father grew up. i picked a wildflower bouquet, and all the older ladies of the reunion followed suit. i was just doing my thing, but i realized that the act of collecting a piece of the land, feeling the ground with my hands, was perhaps the most powerful way of connecting to it. it's not going to get more real than that.

our last night on the official reunion circuit, the ambassador treated us with a private concert by the chieftains, who were described to me as "#2 in ireland to U2". the irish are a very musical people, and i found it interesting that hired musicians play their sets sitting on bar stools rather than stages and drink their guinness among the crowd. i was both mesmerized and vulnerable listening to their gentle, haunting songs of drunk parents and leaving home, but the irish know better than to leave a bar sulking.  before even the bartender gets misty-eyed, the band has begun to play a cheerier song, one that has drinkers clapping the tables and shouting the lyrics of the next anthem. the chieftains, a bit classier than your average pub group though still irish, told us it was the same set that they played for joe biden, in private, the week prior!






the reunion part of the trip checked off, my dad, stepmom, brother, stepbrother and i drove down the west coast of ireland, stopping along the way at the cliffs of moehr and the burren, a neolithic gravesite. it's chilling to think of who stood on the same ground in 10,000 b.c., what they looked like (i picture cloaks and furs), and how they buried their dead (we are not afforded such rich, honest history in the young US). we crossed river shannon on a ferry, witnessing a double rainbow over the same waterway by which vikings had entered the country in the 10th century. we then headed south through limerick to the town of tralee, and then to the colorful, coastal town of dingle, where we shopped and ate on our last day as tourists.

but what i learned over the course of our stay in ireland is that eating, drinking and driving around with my family of all people wasn't the only thing that made it feel like home. despite an american upbringing, and never having visited the country, i felt an inherent belonging there, as if i were finally surrounded by people just like me. it was a far greater number of far more familiar people than i'd ever be surrounded by in a public space in the US, that was for sure. i'd never considered myself "ethnic" so the idea of a "homeland" never really swam around in my head - but through my wanderings there i had time to marinate in the fact that both grandparents, who i am very close to, were raised by irish catholics. they even had irish accents, which, of course, is the truest test in degree of foreignness. sure, a lot has gone on since the early 1900s, and i sure as hell don't even understand our parents' generation. but from a historical perspective, 100 years is so little time, a millisecond of life. i learned that many of my childhood obsessions and favorite things are common in ireland - sheep are the unofficial national mascot, and the country subsists off a hearty diet of meat, cheese, and potatoes. they love to tell stories, golf, and be merry, and drinking is a national pastime.  i've started to believe this isn't all a great coincidence, and that my biology, tastes, tendencies must come from those who came before me. and, those people belonged to the emerald isle.

featured artist: mike worrall

floor time

im in love with this idea of floor time. when i have a bit of spare time, i love to spread out all over the floor, spilling my body, thoughts and craft over the hardwood, the area rug, the fur blanket. i crawl and stretch around, like some sort of low hanging spider, assembling collage pieces or whipping my sketchbook with watercolors or doodling my little sheep story along.
i forget how energizing elongating your limbs can be. i listen to music, letting it in one end of the stretch and out, longer, on the other. it begins to take on the form of dance, sometimes, the way it rises and falls with the sounds. how could it not? where does that boundary lie?
in all motion i stay close to the floor, using it as my only axis. the floor feels safe, grounded. it reaches the boundaries of the home, fills in the way water fills in a container. it’s stable, subtle; it is the only consistent structure throughout. skyscrapers of cabinets and towers of shelves break the floor up into different seas, inlets and canals; couches are like landmasses and tables are islands. everything rests on the floor. down here, i am with everything.
when the last item is packed and this apartment is empty, the floor will still be here. it’s the thing we all share. the place from where no one can fall. a resting place, a place of leisure, a sprawling bare surface. it sits there, wherever i go, ready to have me undo myself all over.

anne von freyburg

maybe i’m starting to understand why carl andre pulled so much attention to the ground in his work

~