December is the waiting month.
The thing about being ADHD is that I have an inability to efficiently switch gears between tasks. If there is even one scheduled event on my calendar for the day, then the hours leading up to the event are spent mentally preparing for it, while the hours following are spent mentally recovering.
All of December feels like the preparation and recovery from the holidays.
Maybe it’s because I always spend the last weeks of the year traveling. I usually come home to Los Angeles for the New Year because that’s the day my family goes to visit my grandparents’ graves, but this year we also sojourned to New Jersey and NYC to see Bear’s family and some of our last remaining NYC friends. This time we went had a fabulous dinner at Le Bernardin and also went to see Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd.
Bear and I used to live in NYC and every time we go back, it’s a nice exercise in what if. What if we moved back? How would we live? Where would we live? What would we do with our dogs? I don’t think it would be fair to either Castor or Pollux to move back to the city, as they are both country bumpkins, but still, it’s nice to dream every once in a while. Ah, fur-children.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What you might have missed
5. What I’m reading
6. What I’m watching
lexical gap: Dustsceawung 🧩
This month’s lexical gap comes to us from Old English, a dead language, yes, but one that retains one of my favorite features of Germanic languages: compound words. Dustsceawung literally means “the contemplation of dust,” but metaphorically refers more to the understanding that “from dust we came, and to dust we shall return.” Memento mori, as it were. As the last word of 2023, it feels somewhat fitting.
this creative life ✍🏻
I’ve been working on GUARDIANS 3 on and off for all of December, but mostly off, since I’ve in the waiting month and my ADHD makes it incredibly difficult to be in a state of anticipation. I’ve got a synopsis due to my editor in January for the book and I need to get that straightened out soon-ish.
what i’m reading 📖
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. Yes, I’m years late to this one. I will admit that I was skeptical at first, mostly because I didn’t think we needed the villain origin story of President Snow, but this installment in the series (if it could be called that) is more a philosophical meditation on human nature. I enjoyed this quite a bit, and am curious about the movie now.
what i’m watching 📺
May December. I…well, “love” is the wrong word for the emotions this film stirred in me, but I definitely feel strongly about this movie and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s probably first piece of media that has struck me in all of 2023, which is somewhat depressing. Last year I had Everything Everywhere All At Once and RRR to spark my creative interest, but 2023 was something of a barren year for me. Here’s hoping there’s more and better in 2024!
Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. If you know me, you’ll know that I have something of a hyperfixation about cults, and I thought this would be just another one to watch to pass the time, but I was rather taken aback by this one. It isn’t as though the subject matter is all that different from other cult documentaries, but what really struck me is the lens of empathy and compassion through which everything was framed, especially when speaking with the survivors. Highly, highly recommend. Now I’m going to seek out everything else Hannah Olson has done because I love her directorial eye.
Escaping Twin Flames and Desperately Seeking Soulmates. These two documentaries are a bit more in line with other cult documentaries I’ve seen—for as much compassion and grace they try to give the survivors, we can’t help but indulge in the lurid fascination of watching a train wreck, as it were.
My Demon. Will this finally be the Korean drama featuring Song Kang I enjoy? Time will tell! But things are looking good so far—the dialogue is hilarious and witty, and if there’s cheese oozing out of every trope, the drama is self aware enough to play into them with a deft touch.
other things of note 💾
Gomes, Di Carlee. “The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire.” Specchi Oscuro, Dec 2023.
Brewis, Harry. “Plagiarism and You(Tube).” hbomberguy, Dec 2023.
Nayler, Ray. “AI and the Rise of Mediocrity.” Time, Dec 2023.
Alter, Rebecca. “Hbomberguy Didn’t Want to Make That 4-Hour Plagiarism Video.” Vulture, Dec 2023.
That’s all for this month! As they say, see you next year!
사랑해,