It is mid-December and last night the sun set the earliest it will all year, at 4:15 pm. Today it will set at 4:16, which means although the sun is still rising later each day, and the darkest day of the year is yet to come, our evenings are growing, imperceptibly yet surely, longer.
Why am I telling you this? Because I am seeking light, of course, as we are all seeking light during this year to be remembered. This year of sorrow and isolation. This year of stillness and radical reflection.
Sources of light on this eleventh day of December in this year that will be remembered:
1. Grace Paley, whose birthday is today. Grace, who wrote, “Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.” Yes.
2. The pile of books that surround me. I am enforcing a book-buying freeze for the rest of the month (now that I have already purchased books for all my loved ones) because my house is full of unread ones, and living with all of these unread books is, I realize, like living in an attic full of squirrels. They crowd the desks and floor and tables. They move around at night, chattering and twitching. There is no rest, I realize, in a house full of unread stories: voices dying to be heard.
So here is a list of the books I purchased this year that I have yet to read or finish reading, which I plan to do now:
1. The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
2. To the River by Olivia Laing
3. Last Things by Jenny Offill
4. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
5. Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
6. The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
7. Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phllips
8. Breaking Into the Backcountry by Steve Edwards
9. One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle
There are others, I know. Hiding in corners in other rooms. But these are the ones haunting me. Taunting me with the memory of need and compulsion and curiosity, which so quickly leaped to the next thing, without ever settling in.
I am looking forward to settling in. Me: so good at leaping, so quick to hunger. What does settling in look like for you? And which books on your shelves are dying to be read?
xx
R