As another year draws to a close, it’s time for my annual tradition of sharing the things that made life a little more interesting, beautiful, or manageable throughout these past twelve months. While scrolling through my camera roll and peering into dusty browser bookmarks, I’m reminded that our tastes and needs aren’t easily categorized – one day, I’m seeking out antique porcelain dolls; the next, I’m hunting down mushroom-themed kitchenware or researching the coziest socks. So I have tried my best to organize everything but it’s sort of all over the place!
These yearly round-ups have become something of a diary for me, marking not just the things I acquired but the shifting interests and small obsessions that carried me through the seasons. Some are practical solutions to everyday problems, others pure whimsy; a few might spark recognition (“oh, you loved that too?”), while others might seem delightfully bizarre. That’s the beauty of these personal inventories – they’re as much about the story they tell as the items themselves.
Before I dive into this rather extensive list of needful things, I should mention that not everything here is a 2024 discovery. (Some I might have even mentioned in last year’s Needful Things!) Some are old favorites that proved their worth yet again, while others are new finds that quickly became essential. There’s no rhyme or reason to the order, just an honest accounting of the things that brought value, joy, or inspiration to my days.
❇ I bought the Scorpio coat from Lala because I was hoping to wear it to Asheville this past Thanksgiving, but for obvious reasons, the trip fell through. It’s still a great coat.
❇ I’ve always loved the look of Dr. Martens, but I find them complicated and uncomfortable. These Dr. Marten Chelsea boots are easy and perfect.
I’ve written before about my tendency to tolerate things rather than change them, but this year I really tried to not make my life harder than it had to be!
❇ I am on the phone all day for my day job, and I have a permanent crick in my neck from cradling the receiver between my ear and shoulder. I finally decided to join the future and bought a headset. I still hate to work, but OMG, this has made things a million times easier. I hate that my best purchase of the year is the most boring one, but it is true.
❇ Between the books, the knitting, the perfume, the books– and did I mention books??– my desk is a mess. I bought a little shelf to roll under my desk for my books. Second best purchase of 2024.
❇ This is a masking tape and Sharpie mount to stick on your refrigerator, so it’s always handy to date and label the broth you’re freezing. There are probably lots of uses for it, but that’s what I do.
❇ A scissor holster??? Seems like the silliest thing ever? Except when you stop to consider how often you find yourself asking, “Where’s the scissors?” They’re on the fridge, next to the masking tape!
SUSTENANCE & PROVISIONS
❇ We’ve been doing soup for breakfast for the past few years, and I like to serve some little sides to go alongside it. These savory, tangy mushrooms are so good! And re: little sides, I love these little scalloped dishes to serve them in.
❇ As someone who does not love pancakes, waffles, or biscuits, I’m forever seeking OTHER uses for leftover buttermilk, and this roasted chicken recipe was probably the best chicken I’ve ever made.
❇ I have been making this Thai coconut shrimp soup at least once a week for the past four months.
❇ I perfected my roast potatoes this year. I’m not a potato fan unless they are mashed into oblivion or have all their inherent potato-iness fried out of them, but even I can admit these are pretty okay.
❇ We’re already big fans of Çılbır, or Turkish eggs, so I was interested when I saw people talking about “Turkish pasta,” or basically a lazy or deconstructed version of a Turkish dumpling dish called Manti. We’ve been making it with Impossible Meat, which is what we had on hand to work with, but I can’t wait to try it out with lamb.
❇ Two YouTube channels for culinary inspiration: we love watching Beryl attempt to make dishes from different cultures around the world, and I also really enjoy Nushi Kitchen Life’s gentle, inspired Japanese meals.
❇ When Ývan broke his foot this summer, our schedule got a bit disrupted. The Korean grocery store is in a weirdly situated spot where the traffic makes me nervous, so I started ordering what I needed online instead. Sayweee is an Asian grocery delivery service that has amazingly fresh stuff and a really wonderful variety of basically everything you can want. I’m sharing a referral link where if you sign up for it through me, you get $10 or something like that.
❇ I tried two new lip masks this year, one from Fenty and this manuka honey one. The Fenty one is heavier and stickier, and this one is more…slippy. If you know what I mean? I prefer slippy over sticky.
❇ I’ve gravitated away from crazy lip colors over the past few years and mainly just stick with Black Honey but I love this beetle-winged Medusae lip sheer from Rituel de Fille.
❇ This very silly headband and wristband set that’s actually ridiculously useful for washing your face and stopping the water from dripping all over you.
❇ This sun and stars claw clip from Winona Irene that’s giving 90’s celestial decor and pyramid catalog.
❇ This summer, I gave into my love of Elizabeth W’s Té scent and purchased one of every product that they put it in.
❇ Every year, I sing the praises of the foot soak. Light candles,scent your tub, scrubyour tooties, and put on the softest socks afterward. It’s a good time.
❇ I sampled a lot of perfumes this year! Some standouts are:
– Stora Skuggan Hexensalbe smells like the Sleep No More witch’s rave (review)
– Diptyque Tempo is a patchouli that has walked the halls of Hill House (review)
– Arcana Wildcraft On the Wing is the broken-winged beating of the hollow heart, the devastating language of wounds, the darkness that embraces everything. (review)
– Filigree & Shadow Pieces of My Heart like standing at the threshold of revelation, where the raw, messy horrors of being human crystallize into a single, breathtaking moment of grace. (review)
DIGITAL DISTRACTIONS
❇ Poetic Puppets on Instagram is all muppet imagery juxtaposed with poetry, and it is beautiful and melancholic and funny and perfect.
❇ Here is a quartet of newsletters whose arrival in my inbox I always look forward to…!
– In New Bands for Old Heads, Gabbie shares new music for the sensibilities of people who stopped listening to new music in the nineties and early 2000s.
– In the 70s Sci-Fi Art newsletter, Adam Rowe shares incredible imagery and chatty, cheeky commentary about wild, weird world of retro science fiction art.
– J. Simpson’s Hauntology Now covers all the spooky books and movies and peculiar sounds and sentiments that people like us (whatever that means to you, you’re probably right) are interested in.
– Lady Whistlethreads is a gossipy scandal sheet of all the drama that’s happening on the writer/author side of social media. It’s not something you read to feel smarter; it’s a grab-your-popcorn thing.
❇ I used to keep a water bottle at my desk, but in my (probably perimenopausal middle age), I am peeing ALL THE TIME, so I am hydrating slightly less. Now, I keep a cute little carafe in the kitchen and grab a drink whenever I walk by it. Also, is my pee WETTER than it used to be? So much weird shit they do not tell you about getting older.
❇ Sometimes, Ývan has late-night D&D sessions, and after he broke his foot, I got into the habit of keeping the light on for him after I’d gone to bed. I didn’t want him lurching around in the dark, possibly breaking the other foot. My gorgeous mulberry silk Altar + Orb eye mask got a lot of use this summer and autumn!
❇ Thanks to Roses & Rue’s exquisite taste and keen eye for hauntingly beautiful antiques, this year brought an especially marvelous collection of treasures, each piece whispering its own cryptic tale while gracing my walls, adorning my vanity, and housing my most precious things
❇ Rebecca Chaperon’s artwork transports me to crystalline realms where playful spirits dance with shadows; her pieces are portals to kaleidoscopic dreamscapes, and I was lucky enough to commission a bite-sized version of one of her works for my Patreon (while the full-sized original graces my wall.)
❇ Alyssa Thorne’s midnight floriography speaks directly to my flower-loving heart – her lustrous blooms and kindred glooms capture both shadow and illumination in every exposure, each print a tenebrous twilight garden that I’ve slowly collected to create my own personal gallery of beautiful darkness.
❇ Open Sea Design Co.’s exquisitely moody stationery has kept me organized in the most darkly beautiful way possible – their witchy notepads, occult-inspired planners, and Victorian-themed notecards transform mundane to-do lists and correspondence into acts of everyday magic.
CINEMATIC SPELLS
Most of my intentional movie-watching takes place during October when I undertake my annual ritual of 31 Days of Horror, a month-long immersion into shadows and spooky stories that serves as my personal ceremony for ushering in the darker half of the year. Here are some standouts that left their mark:
❇ Oddity haunted me with its tale of a blind medium who arrives at her murdered twin’s former home with a screaming wooden mannequin in tow – a slow-burning Irish horror that masterfully builds dread through isolation, betrayal, and one extremely unsettling piece of folk art.
❇ In She Will, the mesmerizing Alice Krige embodies an aging film star who finds dark redemption at a Scottish healing center built upon witch’s ashes – a brooding folk horror that transforms trauma into supernatural power through misty woods and Clint Mansell’s ethereal score
❇ Abigailturned out to be exactly the kind of gleefully gory vampire romp I’d hoped for – what begins as a crime heist (starring Matthew Crawley and Gus Fring kidnapping a tiny dancer!) spirals into delicious chaos when their smol captive reveals her true nature, trading her ballet slippers for glittery sneakers perfect for a night of stylish carnage.
WORD WITCHERY
❇ Two collections of quietly unsettling stories captured my imagination this year: Kathryn Harlan’s Fruiting Bodies, where mushrooms bloom on human flesh and childhood fears take strange new shapes, and Mystery Lights by Lena Valencia, whose economical prose illuminates eerie vignettes of the American Southwest where cave tours go wrong and desert retreats harbor sinister undercurrents.
❇ Psychedelica Satanicaby Sybil Oxblood-Pope Pope was a delightfully deranged surprise – a B-movie horror romp in book form that follows two sisters dabbling in dark magic, featuring the scene-stealing Vinegar Bill (a wonderfully snarky demon-goat) and enough absurdist humor to balance out the infernal menace.
❇ Marina Yuszczuk’s Thirst weaves together two haunting tales – a vampire seeking refuge in 19th century Buenos Aires and a modern woman facing her mother’s mortality – through prose as lush and Gothic as du Maurier’s, creating an exquisite meditation on immortality, desire, and the shadows between life and death.
❇ Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House plunged me back into the overwhelming uncertainty of childhood through the story of a young girl and the thing in her closet that wants “inside her heart” – a masterfully sustained exercise in mounting dread that had me holding my breath and weeping with terror as I turned each page. (That’s not an exaggeration, this book scared me so bad it made me cry!)
❇ Susan Barker’s Old Soulspins an intricate web from an Osaka airport encounter into a centuries-spanning hunt for an immortal collector of photographs whose passage through time leaves broken lives and inexplicable losses – a patient, elegant horror story that gathers its power through accumulated testimonies of grief and predation. (This is a review for an advanced copy, the book publishes in January 2025)
❇ Elizabeth Sulis Kim’s anthology Spiritus Mundi explores how writers channel creativity through mystical means – from scrying to tarot reading, featuring standouts like Pam Grossman’s phenomenal “Invocation to Iris” and creating its own kind of magic by sparking uncanny synchronicities during my reading experience.
❇ The Sphinx and the Milky Way reveals Charles Burchfield’s intimate observations of nature’s hidden frequencies – from singing sunflowers to humming telephone wires – through journal entries that pulse with the same mystical vitality as his watercolors, offering a glimpse into the mind of an artist who saw magic thrumming beneath the surface of everyday life.
SONIC ACCOMPANIMENT
❇ Two albums dominated my listening this year: Chelsea Wolfe’s She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, a darkwave journey of industrial storms and gothic shadows, and Pom Pom Squad’s Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, which transforms similar themes of identity and self-reflection into sharp-edged pop – both artists wrestling with different versions of themselves through distinctly different sonic landscapes.
❇ A trio of singles cast their spell in heavy rotation this year – Haley Heynderickx’s “Gemini,“ London Grammar’s “Into Gold,” and Suki Waterhouse’s “Supersad” – each one a different facet of metamorphosis, where past selves whisper to future ones and sorrow transmutes into strange new shapes.
And there we have it – another year’s worth of treasures, trials, and transformations catalogued for posterity. As always, these lists feel simultaneously too long and not long enough; there are surely things I’ve forgotten, discoveries that slipped through the cracks of memory, or favorites that didn’t quite make it onto the page.
I’d love to hear what caught your eye this year – what objects of beauty or utility found their way into your life? What stories kept you up at night, what songs became the soundtrack to your days? Share your own needful things in the comments below.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I know I said I was done with the navel-gazing for the year, but I was obviously mistaken. This may be the final installment in what has admittedly been a rather self-indulgent series of origin stories – explorations of the fascinations and fixations that have shaped who I am, from my love of horror to my magpie attraction to shiny things. And it seems fitting to write about my love of the kitchen and culinary experimentation as the year draws to a close; with the chilly weather and the dark nights, it’s really the coziest time of the year to be thinking about it… and aside from that, it was someone’s question about where my love of cooking came from that sparked and shaped this whole series to begin with!
Thanks to that curious commenter’s question, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to examining these threads of identity over the past year, these passions that make me uniquely me. Perhaps it’s the looming approach of my fiftieth year that spurs this relentless self-documentation, this need to understand and chronicle the specific alchemy that created this particular human consciousness. Or …perhaps I’m just really self-absorbed?
I spend a lot of time thinking about how incredibly narcissistic it is to write so extensively about oneself. To document every quirk and peculiarity, to chart the etymology of personal obsessions, to treat one’s own development like some fascinating case study worthy of extensive analysis. It’s the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night sometimes – this constant need to examine, to understand, to put into words the how and why of becoming myself. The very existence of this blog, really, is an exercise in sustained narcissism. Who am I to think my thoughts about perfume or jewelry or cooking are worth preserving? What hubris leads me to believe my personal evolution merits documentation? And yet here I am, year after year, continuing to write these missives into the void.
As I edge closer to that half-century mark, I find myself thinking often about all the humans who have existed before me and all those who will come after. We share so many commonalities, so many universal experiences and emotions – and yet each of us is uniquely ourselves in ways that will never be replicated. One day, I will cease to exist. Will anyone remember that I was here? Will it matter that I spent countless hours pondering perfume and cooking and horror stories? Perhaps not. And yet something in me insists that it does matter, that leaving some record of this particular consciousness, this specific combination of passions and proclivities, serves some purpose I can’t quite articulate but feel deeply in my bones.
For someone who spends their leisure time consuming ghost stories, fictional horror podcasts, and gruesome Reddit /no sleep threads, who decorates their home with oddities and memento mori, who gravitates toward the darkest corners of imagined experience – it might seem strange that my greatest joy comes from making the coziest, most life-affirming things. Warm loaves of bread fresh from the oven, bubbling pots of soup that steam up the windows, crocks of tangy homemade pickles lined up on shelves. But perhaps it’s not so strange after all. The same anxiety that draws me to horror – that need to process fear through stories – dissolves completely in the kitchen. I’m still the person who approaches most of life with the hesitant caution of a medieval food taster at a suspicious monarch’s table. But put me in front of a stove and suddenly I have the unearned confidence of a mediocre white man explaining your own profession to you.
mawga & little sarah
This pocket of fearlessness started in my grandmother’s kitchen. Mawga never set out to teach me anything formally – there were no stern lectures about technique, no rigid rules about measuring, no scolding over messes or mistakes. Instead, I was just allowed to exist in her space while she cooked. I’d hover by her elbow as she stirred pots of chicken and dumplings, breathing in the steam and warmth, or sit cross-legged on the linoleum while she rolled out pie crusts, the air heavy with flour and possibility. Sometimes I’d help, sometimes I’d just watch, but always I was absorbing the rhythms of how she moved through her kitchen, calm and sure.
Those lessons in confidence followed me into my twenties, even when everything else felt uncertain. In high school, with my mother’s specific brand of alcohol and mental illness-fueled chaos, everything was tumultuous and fraught. I comforted myself with a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. In my early twenties, I shared an apartment with a flaky musician while trying to navigate community college (it took me ten years to get my associate degree; classrooms make me very anxious.) Money was tight – my fast food job barely kept the lights on – but I became surprisingly good at transforming leftovers from family dinners at my grandparents’ into completely different meals, and an impressive number of hamburgers and fries would mysteriously make their way home from my shifts, becoming the foundation for whatever inspiration struck. When you’ve successfully turned three-day-old fast food into something not only edible but actually satisfying, you start to trust your instincts in the kitchen.
any old focaccia recipe
My thirties brought a different kind of solitude. Living away from family, trapped in a toxic relationship with someone who was rarely there, the kitchen became both my refuge and my laboratory. My then-boyfriend’s picky palate and nasty temper could have made me timid, could have crushed that confidence I’d developed. Instead, in the long hours alone, I threw myself into increasingly ambitious projects. I made butter from scratch just to see if I could. I spent days perfecting homemade udon noodles, testing and adjusting until the texture was just right. Each successful experiment was a quiet rebellion, an unshackling from the cage I’d found myself in, a reminder that in the kitchen, at least, I answered to no one but myself.
Now, I find myself in a kitchen filled with laughter and appreciation, sharing my culinary adventures with someone who approaches each experimental dish with genuine enthusiasm. Yvan compliments everything I make, even my failures. He’s allowed me to edge him out of the kitchen for the most part, but he has actually taken over Christmas cookie duty – not because my cookies aren’t good, but because baking demands a precision that I can’t seem to submit to. I simply can’t be confined by exact measurements. Don’t stifle me, recipe! This works beautifully for soups and sauces, less so for baked goods and pastries that rely on proper chemistry.
The contrast kind of amazes me sometimes. The same person who lies awake rehearsing minor social interactions, who needs to gather courage just to make a phone call, who has a panic attack at the mere thought of making a left-hand turn – that person will confidently modify treasured family recipes without a second thought. For big family dinners, I’ll attempt entirely new dishes for the first time. I’ll cheerfully ignore precise measurements in baking recipes, because come on–I know what’s best, I do!
This kitchen confidence has become such a fundamental part of who I am that I sometimes forget how remarkable it is – this one space where anxiety’s grip loosens, where uncertainty doesn’t feel threatening. It’s a gift from Mawga, really, though she never explicitly set out to give it to me. By creating a space where I could simply be, where mistakes were just part of the process, and perfection wasn’t the goal, she helped shape a part of me that knows how to move through the world without fear.
As I write this final piece for the year, I have two loaves of sourdough doing their slow rise in the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell you exactly how they will turn out. They’ll do whatever they want to do, and it will be okay. I trust that whatever emerges from the oven will be, if not perfect, at least interesting. And really, isn’t that the best way to end a year? Not with rigid expectations but with the courage to try something new, the confidence to accept whatever results, and the comfort of knowing that in your own kitchen, you are exactly who you need to be.
And perhaps understanding exactly who you are and how you came to be that person sometimes requires writing neurotically detailed 5,000-word blog posts examining your curio cabinet of compulsions and preoccupations! Look forward to more of those in 2025!
All photos in this post are by me, of food I have made.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I often find myself writing these long, meandering posts on social media – you know, the kind where someone in the comments invariably responds with “ma’am, this is a Wendy’s” (or at least my brain does, after I stop and read the train wreck I’ve just posted to Facebook or whatever) and then halfway through I remember: oh right, I literally have a blog for exactly this sort of rambling introspection. You’d think after maintaining a blog for over a decade, I’d remember that’s where these thoughts belong. But no, sometimes they just spill out wherever I happen to be typing.
Like yesterday, when I posted this:
As someone constantly riddled with low-grade, persistent, and utterly nebulous anxiety, it can be hard to tell when you’re having a good day. I go about my life – writing blog posts, working full-time, cooking dinner, maintaining relationships, doing all the regular human things – and underneath it all, there’s always this dull roar of existential dread. Just constant enough to fade into the background, just loud enough to never quite forget it’s there. And sometimes I think how lovely it would be to just… fall apart. To let everything go to shit and fester in my own misery. But I can’t. Maybe it’s being the eldest child, maybe it’s generational repression, maybe it’s just how I’m wired – but I keep going. I keep functioning. Not because I’m especially resilient or brave, but because I literally don’t know how to stop.
Today was one of those days when I got to wear all of my favorite clothes, layered simultaneously. Living in Florida means these precious few cold days are especially welcome – I spend the entire month of July (the worst month for existential dread) dreaming about cardigans and turtlenecks. It might sound trivial to someone else, but those who know, know. It’s a balm that feels like both safety and joy – I guess we call these glimmers now, these tiny moments when the world feels a little more manageable. When I can finally envelop myself in the warmth and textures of this cocoon I’ve been craving, something shifts ever so slightly.
Maybe it’s the gentle pressure of layers, like a wearable weighted blanket, or the way each piece of clothing becomes another small boundary between my skin and everything else. It’s not about modesty or protection from the cold – it’s about creating space between myself and the world, building a soft fortress of fabric that helps me feel more anchored in my own body. I don’t know why I’m always searching for another layer to add, another soft barrier to wrap myself in, but I do know that on days like this, when I can finally dress the way my body craves, something inside me settles just a little bit.
The anxiety doesn’t go away – it never really does. It’s more like turning down the volume on a radio that’s been playing static in the background of your life for so long that you’ve almost forgotten it’s there. Almost, but not quite. Because even when you’ve learned to function around it and built all these little coping mechanisms and comfort rituals, you’re still aware of its presence, humming away beneath everything else. Not debilitating, not stopping you from living your life or doing your work or maintaining relationships – just there, a constant companion you’ve learned to work alongside.
This pattern of normalizing discomfort isn’t new – I wrote about it years ago when I realized I’d spent decades believing I didn’t deserve basic conveniences or comforts. It was about learning to pack snacks for long car rides or keep painkillers in my bag instead of just suffering through headaches. Just like these layers of clothes I’ve always wrapped myself in, these were all ways of coping that I didn’t even recognize as coping. The shape of the adaptations varies, but the core remains: that deep-seated belief that my discomfort isn’t quite real enough to address. I’ve never been diagnosed or medicated – not out of principle, but because every time I’ve tried to describe this constant background hum to a doctor, I find myself automatically downplaying it, making it sound manageable, bearable. Maybe it’s shame, maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s just what happens when you spend so much time trying to convince yourself that everyone probably feels this way, that it’s not really a problem if you’ve learned to function around it.
It’s strange how adaptation becomes second nature. Building elaborate systems of scaffolding around a shaky foundation becomes normal. The layers of clothing aren’t a solution – they’re just another way of existing alongside something that never quite goes away. Sometimes adapting to discomfort feels easier than figuring out why you needed all these layers in the first place.
And because I know someone will completely bypass all of this emotional excavation and existential pondering to demand “WHERE GET CLOTHES???” – yes, I’ll list the items below. Though, I have to laugh at that particular brand of comment that barrels past all the vulnerability straight to the shopping links. (To be fair, I’m also absolutely that person who will read someone’s gutting personal essay and think, “I feel you deeply in my soul… also where did you get those boots?” At least some of us have the grace or self-awareness or whatever to acknowledge both the emotional weight AND our fashion priorities.)
I suppose I should mention what prompted this particular spiral: a Patreon subscriber canceled their subscription. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and if I continue to maintain it, it won’t be the last. But what they didn’t tell me about running a Patreon is how I’d spiral with rejection and self-loathing everytime someone cancels their subscription. People’s financial circumstances (and interests) change! The economy sucks! A thousand other things unrelated to me or my writing! BUT HEAR ME OUT what if I should just crawl into a hole and give up on everything forever???
So I mean, obviously, I won’t give up on everything forever. Eldest daughter and all that – the perfectionism, the compulsive need to keep it together, the deeply ingrained belief that falling apart isn’t an option because someone has to stay functional, someone has to keep up appearances, keep the plates spinning, someone has to make sure dinner looks Instagram-worthy even when everything else is crumbling. Might as well be me.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
A commenter recently asked if I would be doing a video showcasing my favorite things from the past year. While that particular roundup will manifest as a written piece here on the blog (because attempting to recall and articulate twelve months’ worth of treasures in a video format would result in a rambling mess of “oh! and this! and that! and I can’t believe I almost forgot about…”), it did plant the seed for something else: a shorter video featuring some of my recent acquisitions.
The timing feels particularly appropriate as we creep ever closer to the holiday season. We all know the peculiar anxiety of last-minute gift shopping – that frantic search for the perfect present when time is running out and inspiration seems to have abandoned us entirely. Perhaps you, too, have found yourself desperately scrolling through pages of suggestions that feel hopelessly generic, wondering how to find something special for that person in your life who prefers their gifts with a touch of shadow, a hint of mystery, or a whisper of the arcane.
I confess there’s also something deliciously self-indulgent about holiday shopping for others. You know the ritual: one for them, two for me. After all, how can we truly recommend gifts if we haven’t tested them ourselves? At least, that’s what I tell myself as I add items to my cart, justifying each purchase as “research” for future gift recommendations. It’s a slippery slope from “this would be perfect for so-and-so” to “but first, let me make sure it’s as wonderful as it seems.”
What began as a simple “look what I bought” video has transformed into something I hope you’ll find more useful: a carefully curated guide for those seeking gifts for their favorite shadow-dwellers. Whether you’re shopping for the friend who conducts beauty rituals by candlelight, the loved one who collects Victorian curiosities, or the companion who reads tarot while sipping botanical spirits, you’ll find something here to intrigue and delight. Let’s explore these treasures, shall we?
Passe-Partout necklace by Under the Pyramids, as seen worn in my YouTube video
Perpetua necklace by Flannery Grace Good, as seen worn in my YouTube video
While the items above represent my recent acquisitions, I would be remiss not to mention several perennial favorites that deserve a place in any gothic gift guide. These are the treasured pieces and reliable sources I return to again and again – items that may not have made it into the video (as they weren’t recent purchases) but which have proven themselves worthy additions to any dark soul’s collection. Some are single items that have earned their place through years of use, while others come from sellers and artisans whose work I’ve collected over time, each piece adding to a carefully curated cabinet of curiosities. Consider these time-tested additions as you plan your gift-giving this season…
Adornments & Artifacts:Flannery Grace Good creates bold, soulful jewelry pieces that speak directly to the heart – each creation reflecting not just masterful craftsmanship but the warm, wickedly clever spirit of an artist who pours genuine love and understanding into every piece. Under the Pyramids crafts portable magic in the form of talismans, amulets, and magical symbols, each piece handcrafted in recycled silver to serve as wearable vessels of power and intention.
Bloodmilk’s creations emerged from the liminal space of grief, beginning as personal talismans of psychic armor and evolving into a collection that weaves together Victorian spiritualism, dark romanticism, and profound personal narrative. Each piece serves as a physical reminder – of love, of self-reliance, of mourning, of the fleeting nature of beauty – crafted with an understanding that jewelry can be more than adornment; it can be a tangible manifestation of our most nebulous dreams. Alexis Berger’s hand-fabricated glass jewelry captures the luminous beauty of Art Nouveau and the Belle Epoch, with translucent lampworked beads creating pieces of timeless elegance, and Parrish Relics melds medieval grandeur with Pre-Raphaelite sensibilities in time-worn amulets that look as though they were unearthed from some ancient, flower-strewn cloister.
Garments & Sacred Spaces:Altar + Orb creates clothing and decor inspired by lunar mysteries, Victorian aesthetics, and the shadowy corners of nature, perfect for those who wish to wear their mysticism or create atmospheric spaces. I can personally attest that their sweaters are the best I’ve ever owned – managing to be both spooky and delightfully cozy, which is really the ultimate combination. Their blank books are equally stunning, providing the perfect vessel for recording all of your haunted thoughts and midnight musings.
Scent Stories:Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has spent decades crafting literary and mythological inspiration into wearable art through their vast catalog of atmospheric perfume oils. From Lovecraftian horrors to Victorian gardens, their scents tell complete stories. Arcana Wildcraft combines ancient perfumery techniques with wild-harvested plants and magical practice, creating process-oriented perfumes infused with elements of alchemy and witchcraft. Seance Perfumes draws inspiration from Victorian spiritualism and the metaphysical realm, creating fragrances that bridge the rational and emotional worlds, while Poesie Perfume crafts scents inspired by literature, wanderlust, and the romance of bygone eras.
Literary Treasures: Victoria Mier’s Beyond the Aching Doorweaves Welsh mythology and Slavic folklore into a darkly romantic urban fantasy. Iris Compiet’s Faeries of the Faultlines provides a stunning artistic journey into otherworldly realms, while The Sphinx and The Milky Way shares Charles Burchfield’s fascinating naturalist observations. Una Maria Blythe’s Muses No More: Portraits of Occult Women illuminates the often-overlooked stories of female occultists throughout history. For those who walk in dreams, Naomi Sangreal’s Little Hidden Doors offers an artfully crafted guide to exploring one’s dream landscapes through a lens of creativity and compassion.
Sonic Spells:Chelsea Wolfe’s She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She provides a darkwave journey perfect for winter nights. This latest offering weaves together industrial rhythms, gothic rock, and ethereal vocals into a tapestry of transformation and self-discovery. Moving between haunting ballads and electronic storms, the album creates a world where vulnerability and strength coexist in shadow, making it an ideal soundtrack for those long dark nights of the soul.
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2024 was not a year of big things for me; there were no books published or big projects I was involved in or working on. With this freed-up brain space, I wrote more than ever before on the blog, for a whopping total of 130 blog posts: I wrote about the artists I love, I kept track of and shared my thoughts on the books I read, I watched scary movies and wrote about what I saw, I rambled at length about fragrances, and I mused existentially on all manner of nonsense.
And so, after all that, I’m taking a little break! Nothing serious over here at Unquiet Things while the year winds down, no essays or explorations or examinations of the profound or provocative – just cozy musings and year-end meanderings while I recharge my creative batteries. Over the next few weeks, I plan on sharing some bookish gift ideas and the favorite and needful things I’ve enjoyed this year, along with the usual month-end perfume reviews, quarterly reading roundup, and book reviews. And that’s all she wrote!
Yet even in this softer, slower season, I find myself collecting little moments and observations like magpie treasures. Here’s what’s been gathering in my winter nest…
Stories & Sounds
Reading…
I have just reviewed my NetGalley shelf (a site where you can get ARCs in exchange for reviews) and noted all of the things I was rejected for in the past six months. Most of the titles have now been published, and I have either found library copies or put holds on them. I know we only have three more weeks left in the year, but that doesn’t mean I am not going to try and read 30 additional books! In the meantime, here are things that I have read this past month:
I’ve just emerged from the strange, unsettling world of Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield (forthcoming February 2025), where the mundane task of harvesting sugar beets in Minnesota becomes a surreal descent into spiraling depression. What begins as a more or less straightforward story about seasonal work to escape debt becomes something far more devastating – and weirdly compelling. Through Elise’s eyes, we experience not just the physical labor of the beet harvest, but the exhausting weight of existing in a mind that’s constantly at war with itself. Sarsfield renders disordered eating, self-loathing, and crushing anxiety with such stark familiarity that you find yourself nodding in recognition even as you wince at the truth of it. It’s all threaded through with a caustic, mean-spirited humor that somehow makes the relentless internal monologue bearable – even darkly entertaining. When mysterious voices begin emanating from the beet pile and workers start disappearing, you’re not quite sure if you’re witnessing a psychological unraveling or something more sinister. The genius is that both readings work, and both are equally horrifying.
Absolution by Jeff VanderMeerconsumed ten solid days of my December reading life – unusual for someone who typically juggles 5-6 books at once. I had to clear my literary deck entirely to give it the focus it required. While I wish I’d refreshed my memory of the previous stories to better grasp its intricate web of connections… ten days, and all I got was the briefest glimpse of something vast and incomprehensible that will needle at my brain forever, a maddening fragment I won’t even be able to articulate by the time the next book comes out. Which is probably exactly what reading VanderMeer should feel like.
Listening…
It’s December so that pretty much means if I am at my desk working or writing, it is 24/7 Hildegard von Bingen or medieval chanting, while in the rest of the house, it’s old-fashioned Christmas carols. But I did see that Pye Corner Audio has got something new forthcoming, and I sure do dig their eerie hauntological electronica; I have really been enjoying Babyrose’s sublime psychedelic soul and also this release from Black Swan, 20 pieces evoking “the experiences of a spirit navigating the physical world it left behind.” And lastly Blood Incantation’s prog rock/death metal album Absolute Elsewhere album is a journey.
Watching…
I am still having a hard time watching much of anything at all, but I’ve been in the mood to see something beautiful, something visually stunning. Think The Fountain, The Cell, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, all those sorts of things. I polled my social media friends and compiled a list –none of which I have watched yet — but if you are interested in this sort of film too, I thought I would share all of the suggestions. A significant handful of people mentioned The Fall (the Tarsem Singh movie, not the detective show with Gillian Anderson). This film has been on my list for years now, and I finally watched it last night. AND WOW. Baby Lee Pace! And a friend told me that the girl grew to be a very cool pole dancer, which is neat. Also, I want to knit up her sweet little cardigan!
But as you can imagine, searching for “the fall” + “cardigan pattern,” while it turns up some lovely autumnal patterns, yields nothing actually helpful to my search. Anyhow, here are some other “beautiful movies” that folx mentioned if you’re looking to add to your list. Some of these I have seen, but others I’ve not even heard of, and since I don’t know what you’ve seen or haven’t (or truly, what is even your definition of “beautiful”), I have included all of them…
Loving Vincent (2017) // La Belle et la bête (1946 + 2014) // Tears of the Black Tiger (2003) // Poor Things (2023) // Russian Ark (2003) // Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) // Prospero’s Books (1991) // Orlando (1992) // Barry Lyndon (1975) // Night of the Hunter (1955) // My Neighbor Totoro (1988) // House of the Flying Daggers (2004) // Pan’s Labryinth (2006// Interstellar (2014) // Baron Munchausen (1988) // The Girl on the Bridge (1999) // Conclave (2024)// Days of Heaven (1978) // Midnight in Paris (2011) // The Green Knight (2021) // A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) // Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) // The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) // Anastasia (1997) // Melancholia (2011) // The City of Lost Children (1995) // In the Mood For Love (2000) // The Secret of the Kells (2009) // The Company of Wolves (1984) // Amelie (2001) // Blade Runner (1982 + 2017) // Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Hearth & Home
We held Thanksgiving at our house this year. Which is funny, because I initially wasn’t even going to be here for Thanksgiving; I would have been visiting one of my sisters in Asheville. But with the storm and the damage, we thought it best to hold off until next year. So somehow, I went from doing nothing over the holiday to hosting the whole dang affair. Ývan took care of the turkey, and I made the mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (from scratch, using smittenkitchen’s recipe), cranberry-apple compote, and sourdough dinner rolls. My father-in-law brought stuffing and apple pie. No pumpkin or pecan pie this year, THANK GOD. Ugh. Not my favorite stuff.
Not usually being the ones left holding the leftovers, I took the opportunity to try a bunch of new things and experiment. We waffled the mashed potatoes (success!) and the stuffing (not so much) using this tiny waffle iron that I’ve had for years but never actually use. We made turkey salad (whiz up turkey, onions, and celery in a food processor and fold in mayo and seasonings; eat on crackers or wraps or whatever.) We made a huge pot of broth with the turkey carcass, some of which we froze, some of which we used to make soup with the remainder of the green bean casserole, and some of which Ývan used to make a big batch of congee. And then, finally, with the leftover compote, I have been stirring spoonfuls into boiling water and making tea with it!
Current Enchantments & Little Lights
❄ There are only a few months out of the year when I can really wear my knits, and that time is now upon us! Last night, it actually got down to 36° F, and now it is absolutely freezing in my office; my hands are too cold to wield a pen or a needles, so it’s time to pull out the hand-knit mitts! These are the Campestral Mitts by Lauren Rad (and the sock-in-progress up there is also her pattern.)
❄ It is the time for layering! I am happiest and most comfortable when not an inch of skin is showing. This is the season for wearing a turtleneck under a dressover some leggingswith thick socksand a scarf and sure maybe it looks a little eccentric, like a wacky macaroni necklaced kindergarten teacher, but I don’t care, I love it!
❄ My winter fragrances! I can smell like a Rust Cohle McConaughlogue with Lvnea’a Deer Mother, or the forests teeming with undead Green/Black MtG deck of Dasein’s Winter Nights, or the snowy yokai sneaking off for a ciggie on a winter’s evening while peeling a tangerine with long, sharp silver fingernails of Ikiriyo’s Yukion’na. I have a BPAL included in this winter line-up, and while it is no longer available limited edition scent, this year’s Yule scents are now live!
❄ Not necessarily winter-related, but I am having a long-awaited, much-needed Fuck Off, World! Weekend. Ývan is away at PAX Unplugged doing a whole bunch of nerdy stuff, and I am at home, doing a bunch of intensely introverted homebody stuff! Like peeing with the door open! No one can stop me! I ate so many Cool Ranch Doritos yesterday that I injured my tongue, and I stayed up til 2:30 am watching movies, whee! Today, I am being more responsible, and I am crossing things off my to-do list: pinning and blocking out a two year’s worth of knitted shawls, repotting a little tea tree plant, sending some perfume samples to a friend, and writing out all of my Patreon cards for December. Well…that was the plan anyway. It’s already 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I have spent most of the day writing this blog post. Ah well! The purpose of the FOW!W is to accomplish as little as humanly possible, so by all accounts, I am winning.
What have you all been up to lately? Are you leaning into winter’s slow pleasures or fighting against them? Also, should I watch my Cool Ranch Doritos consumption more carefully in my 40s? Asking for a friend (the friend is my tongue.)
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As I prepared for this interview about Naomi Sangreal’s Little Hidden Doors, I found myself drifting through the landscapes of my own recurring dreams. They arrive unbidden, like persistent visitors who know where I keep the spare key: there I am at Checkers, my first job at fifteen, somehow still on the schedule thirty years later with unclaimed paychecks waiting for me; or I’m at the health food store I worked at while I was living in New Jersey, eternally trying to close up as customers mysteriously materialize through locked doors and darkened spaces. Sometimes I’m struck with the heart-stopping realization that I’ve forgotten about a phantom apartment somewhere, with ghostly cats waiting to be fed. But perhaps most luminous among these visitations was a single dream about my beloved tuxedo cat, Inkers, who appeared to me on a childhood path after her death, leading me through an impossible doorway in her own throat – a dream that spoke to the ineffable nature of loss and the labyrinthine corridors of grief. These dreams, persistent and precious, seem to embody what Jung called “little hidden doors in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.” They’re exactly the kind of ethereal material that our interview subject suggests we should embrace, rather than dismiss as mere midnight wanderings.
Little Hidden Doors: A Guided Journal for Deep Dreamers by Naomi Sangreal is an enchanted threshold into the mysteries of our sleeping minds – a luminous sanctuary where dreamers can unfold the origami of their unconscious thoughts. My own copy is heavily annotated, its margins filled with midnight revelations and sunrise insights, and it has become one of my most frequently recommended books, as well.
Through an alchemical blend of psychological wisdom and soul-stirring creative prompts, Sangreal becomes our gentle guide through the labyrinth of dream interpretation, translating complex Jungian concepts into whispered revelations that feel like secrets shared in twilight. In our meandering conversation, we wander through shadowed corridors and sunlit chambers of dream exploration: from the quiet rebellion of honoring our nocturnal visions in a world that prizes constant wakefulness, to the shimmering potential of lucid dreaming as a practice ground for transformation. We pause to examine nightmares not as terrors to be fled from, but as dark messengers bearing gifts of insight, and explore how the gossamer threads of dreamwork weave themselves into the tapestry of our waking lives. Sangreal’s voice – both as psychotherapist and intuitive wayfinder – illuminates our path as she shares her own dream-touched stories, including a pivotal vision that beckoned her toward her calling as a counselor, while offering gentle lanterns of wisdom to those just beginning to map their own dreamscapes.
Unquiet Things: Your book title, “Little Hidden Doors,” evokes a sense of mystery and discovery. Can you elaborate on what these “doors” represent in our dream life and psyche?
Naomi Sangreal: The title comes from one of Carl Jung’s renowned quotes, “The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.”
Jung describes how our ego consciousness remains small and separate, whereas through the dream we have access to this multidimensional and timeless experience of primordial wholeness. I see these doors as opportunities and inklings, ushering us as we might follow our curiosity through the corridors of an abandoned mansion; we choose which rooms we enter and the deeper we go the more treasures we may find. Dreams are incredible intrapsychic doors into our deep psyche.
You mention that paying attention to our dreams is revolutionary. How can this practice of dream engagement serve as a form of rebellion against what you call “wake-centricity” in modern society?
Revolutionary in the sense that dreams show us what we don’t want to know or see, what is disavowed and unallowed. They are raw, unfiltered and untouched by the social norms, rules and regulations of morality and waking consciousness and by interacting with them we can make contact with truer aspects of ourselves that may not be accessible or embraced by our waking external circumstances or environment. Dreams can offer us transformative experiences and life-changing ideas that we may not have access to in daily life. They share problem-solving wisdom and new insights that we can bring into our lives and our communities to create change.
You discuss the concept of the anima in your work. For those unfamiliar with Jungian psychology, could you explain what the anima is and why reconnecting with it is important in our current societal context?
In Jungian psychology, the anima archetype speaks to the inner feminine principle and the animus to the inner masculine soul that is not yet made manifest. According to Jung, the anima and animus are the contrasexual archetypes of the psyche. They are built from feminine and masculine archetypes from the individual experience as well as experiences with parents and collective, social, and cultural images. These inner figures seek to balance out our otherwise possibly one-sided experience of gender energy or personality expression and call us toward expressing our deep soulful wholeness. We are all both, but sometimes express varying levels of one or the other outwardly at different times. Our inner experience compensates to ensure the balance of our nature, which often is completely unconscious.
Marion Woodman states, “The tragedy and the danger of a patriarchal society is that too often it suffers the terrible consequences of leaving the feminine soul in both men and women in a repressed and abandoned state. Wherever this happens, the ego, unrefined and undeveloped by intercourse with the inner feminine, functions at a brutal, barbaric level, measuring its strength paradoxically by its power to destroy in the name of an inhuman ideal.” Perfectionism is a patriarchal plague. In inviting the anima into consciousness, we can harness her creative potential and enliven the Eros within, calling us toward the rebalancing of feminine power.
You introduce an intriguing perspective on nightmares, suggesting we invite these scary elements into our space. Can you walk us through this process and its potential benefits?
Our shadow can appear in nightmares as perils, gargoyles, tricksters, unsightly beings, or maybe just someone we don’t like. These figures are often helpful guide-look posts at a crossroads showing us exactly which way we need to go. When we can address and face these rejected parts of our psyche; we can further integrate our wholeness and take back our personal power.
Nightmares are not necessarily an indication that something is wrong. They are often more effective messengers. We often remember nightmares more than we do other types of dreams because they are so visually and emotionally impactful. This is for a number of reasons, one being that nightmares are specifically formulated to get your attention. A nightmare figure may have something important to communicate to you or be an aspect of your psyche or shadow that is starved for nourishment and attention. I offer a full guided experience and journaling prompts in my permanent online class through Ritualcravt, as well as detailed in the book!
You mention the concept of “flow state” in your book. I’ve heard this term before, but I am still not entirely sure I understand its meaning. How does this relate to dreamwork, and can engaging with our dreams help us access flow states more easily in our waking lives?
Flow theory was initiated by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975 and held that creative activity can actually influence emotional affect by eliciting the experience of flow. Flow is defined as “an automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness” and has been conceptualized as a particular type of optimal experience associated with vital engagement, which is a deep involvement in activities that are significant to the self and that promote feelings of aliveness and vitality. Flow causes deactivation in the brain, and the brain begins to switch from conscious processing, which is extremely slow and energy expensive, to subconscious processing, which is quick and energy efficient. We see this have negative impacts when our brain starts tuning out positive and helpful stimulus and focusing only on survival and threat, but in the experience of flow it has a positive impact in that we get completely absorbed in our creative activity and the brain reduces our anxiety and actually has an opportunity to heal.
The idea of “changing the world from the inside out” through dreamwork is fascinating. How do you envision this internal work manifesting in external reality?
All inner work manifests in the world around us. It changes us and therefore changes our choices and our relationships. If dreamwork is the primary way in which we can face our unconscious directly, it is a prime opportunity for some of the most challenging and liberating self work that we have access to. I have both personally experienced this level of change and watched dreamwork transform my patients lives.
You describe dreams as “vivid visual gifts.” How can people who don’t typically remember their dreams or don’t consider themselves visually oriented benefit from dreamwork?
Dreams are not just visual, they are often highly emotional. Even paying attention to the emotional arch of a dream and the embodied memory of interactions or sensations gives us clues to what is living in the unconscious. There are many styles of dreamwork and ways to work with dreams, they can be felt, acted out, spoken, written, made into poems, plays or songs. Whatever creative venue feels most intuitive to you is ripe for your dreams to emerge, working on and through you. I am partial to visual expressions in part because my dreams are vivid and I am a visual artist.
Have you noticed any shifts in how people relate to their dreams since you began your work in this field? If so, what changes have you observed?
Yes! Overall dreams seem to be taking off collectively in a huge way! When I first sought out dream work in therapy there was only ONE therapist in all of Portland whom I could find (who wasn’t friends with my mom lol) to see who worked with dreams. Now tons more folx are working with dreams, offering classes and writing about dreams online. The dreaming community continues to grow and it is amazing.
In your book, you discuss using lucid dreaming as a practice ground for real-life skills like public speaking. (I’d probably use it for highway driving, which terrifies me!) Could you elaborate on this idea? How can people harness their lucid dreams to improve their waking life abilities, and what other skills might benefit from this dream practice?
Lucid dreaming has been used all over the world to practice difficult tasks, learn new instruments and languages, even face general fears like public speaking. Dreamwork is not only creative and spiritual, it is incredibly useful and practical. For example, when a person is lucid dreaming, they have access to literally any tools that might help them grow. They can practice diving, summon instruments or books, and engage in sports or other physical activities without limitation. Once a dreamer becomes experienced in inducing lucidity, they can use their ability to develop skills that are beneficial in waking life. A person is able to use the dream space to practice skills that have a direct impact on their physical muscle memory and prime their cognitive functions.
In your experience as a psychotherapist and intuitive guide, what’s the most surprising or profound insight you’ve gained about the human psyche through working with dreams?
Dreams never cease to surprise me. They show me over and over again that people have access to deep truths and spiritual images that can change the color of their mind and experience forever. Just one big dream can transform a person.
Your book combines various practices like writing, collage, and meditation. How did you develop this multifaceted approach to dreamwork, and why do you think it’s effective?
These practices are all well-known and documented across traditions both therapeutic and spiritual. I was definitely influenced by my mother, who is a prolific visual journalist, dream worker, SoulcollageTM facilitator, and psychotherapist. For me, bringing them together feels intuitive, engaging different senses; visual, mental, kinesthetic – word, image and imagination allows for greater access to unconsciousness and that is where we are trying to get to and to connect with through dreams.
Can you share a personal anecdote of how engaging with your dreams has led to a significant change or realization in your waking life?
As I mentioned briefly and vaguely in the book, a dream I worked in therapy told me to go to school for counseling. I don’t mind sharing it here; I dreamed I am on the steps of a building with 4 perpendicular sides. It looks gothic or church-like and on each side there are many steps leading up to a door. I ascend the steps and go inside. Somehow I know I need to go upstairs. I go up several flights and find my way into a big event room. There is some kind of conference or celebration happening. The room is full of all different types of people milling about and talking. I take a seat in a chair toward the back of the room near a window. I am introverted, so I tend to wallflower and observe in these types of situations. I sit quietly and listen, gently rocking (autistics will know lol). I am able to hear everyone’s conversations loudly, even private whispered exchanges close to one another’s ears.
I hear people complaining. “I am a professor and I hate my job.”
“Oh really?”
“I am a medical doctor and it’s awful, I’m so unfulfilled.”
I quickly realize that all of these successful and professional people hate their jobs and have no idea who they are or what they want to do. I start rocking harder in my chair and I yell loudly “I know exactly what I want to do!” Everyone stops talking and looks at me. They all say collectively, “Well then why don’t you go do it?” I run out of the room and down the stairs. The next morning I applied to college.
For someone new to intentional dreamwork, what’s one simple practice you’d recommend they start with tonight?
Just set the intention before you go to sleep, “when I wake up, I will remember my dreams” and try to gently recall your dreams as soon as you wake up. Practice, practice, practice.
As someone fascinated by the power of routine and ritual, I’m curious about your personal practices. Would you mind sharing your nighttime routine? What rituals or habits have you found most effective for nurturing quality sleep and rich dream experiences?”
I discuss some sleep hygiene suggestions in the book, but a few personal supports I left out are the manta sleep mask – it’s absolutely incredible – and a grounding sheet. I sleep in a cold room, read before bed, minimize artificial lighting and no screen time. Baths and meditation are also a huge help for me in winding down. I am actually not a night person, I usually go to sleep around 8:30 pm – most of my rituals are morning rituals, which included recording my dreams.
As both a creative soul and an adept navigator of dreamscapes, I’m curious about how you perceive the relationship between dreams and various art forms. Beyond visual art, how do you think other mediums like music, literature, or even scent art like perfumery might intersect with or be influenced by our dream experiences? Have you explored any of these connections in your own practice or research?”
Scent! The olfactory sense is rare in dreams but not completely absent. Just this week I dreamed of an ex’s bad breath lol – smell is, as you know, deeply connected to emotion and memory. Good smells and perfumes can be used to invite sweet spirits and influence our dreams in positive ways! I would be curious if anyone has made a perfume for dreaming? Possibly including some of the well-known oneiric plants or flowers? I know cologne, sprays, and perfumes are used in folk magic practices, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were specific ones for dreams and dreaming. [Author Edit: here are some of my favorite sleeping and dreaming scents!]
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Nicolas Bonnart – The Perfumers Costume (colour engraving)
Heretic Nosferatu As I have been wearing this fragrance, I am struck by how nothing seems quite linear about it, how delicately “outside of time” it feels. I realized it reminded me of the feeling I have after waking up and trying to recall the dream I was just having. I am half-here, half-there, both places and neither at once. Nosferatu is like that–fragments from last night’s dreams, scrawled in the grey dawn before they fade: the moon’s reflection in cooling bathwater. Soft fog, carved from shadow, packed with frost. A brittle wisp of dried lilac, phantasmal at twilight, fragile rustles of the restless dead. Storm-struck stone, its hollow sparking echo dimly illuminating a subterranean cavern, ghost light lingering between vespers, dawn, and never. The creeping moss of midnight rains veining the marble tears of weeping saints.
Pineward Borealis paints a stark landscape of frost-encrusted pines and barren rock, a scent so austere it verges on ascetic. It’s relentless in its portrayal of a world where survival, not beauty, is paramount. The fragrance opens with a glacial gust that scours the senses, carrying with it the sharp, mentholated breath of winter winds. This initial surge slowly gives way to the scent of ancient conifers, their woody essence concentrated by the cold into something almost medicinal in its intensity. As Borealis evolves, there are hints of bitter herbs and roots, their astringency amplified by the unforgiving chill, like sparse vegetation clinging to life in frozen soil. A fleeting, ghostly floral note emerges briefly, a spectral echo of summer long past before it’s subsumed again by the pervading bitterness and cold. Underneath it all runs a current of salinity and ozone, evoking vast, turbulent seas and the isolating expanse of arctic tundra. Unyielding and austere, its bitter intensity never softens, but persists with the tenacity of the raw, indifferent environment it evokes.
Zoologist Macaque (Yuzu Edition) I’ve spent countless YouTube hours watching travelers wind their way through Japan’s remote mountains in search of hidden onsen. Macaque conjures what I imagine in those moments before slipping into these natural hot springs: that sharp intake of breath as mountain air fills the lungs, a bracing brightness that stings like citrus without any trace of sweetness. Then comes the dry herbal/woody medicinal presence of cypress wood warming in the sun, and finally, the contemplative drift of incense carried on thermal currents. Its smoke is different here – softened and diffused by rising steam until it becomes almost tactile, like silk suspended in air. There’s something sacred in this solitude of smoke and steam, something that recalls the aftermath of a hot shower but earthier, more ancient – less about soap than the quiet ritual of purification, with just a whisper of mineral-rich air. The lasting impression is of warmth remembered rather than felt, like late afternoon sun lingering after the day has begun to cool.
Francesca Bianchi Voluptuous Oud First impressions of Voluptuous Oud are like opening the door to a grand parlour – a brief, sharp intake of leather and wood that quickly softens into something far more gracious. The oud here isn’t the fierce creature of perfume lore, but something more measured, like old leather chairs that have absorbed decades of warmth and welcome. Each breath reveals new facets of comfort – buttery undertones, traces of wood worn smooth by time, the particular richness that comes from allowing things their full measure of ripeness. This is a scent that understands the difference between abundance and excess. It settles into its own nature with quiet assurance, offering the kind of comfort found in well-loved spaces where every element has found its proper place through long association. Everything arranges itself just so, creating a world of perfect comfort and refinement – until you notice that somewhere, somehow, the shadows have begun to lengthen in impossible directions, vetiver’s bitter fingers grasping at the edges of what might be more than shadows. Yet what lingers longest is that buttery sweetness, rich and golden as an afternoon dream of darker honey, its lushness tempered by threads of burnished, brooding vanilla and sandalwood that render it less confectionery and more contemplative. This is precisely the sort of artful, beguiling fragrance one reaches for when they wish to romanticize their life, those days when a simple afternoon begs to be transformed into something more mysterious and meaningful. It reminds me irresistibly of Saki’s short story “The Open Window,” where a young girl transforms an unremarkable afternoon into something extraordinary through sheer force of imagination. Like the best storytellers, it creates its own reality – perfectly composed, utterly convincing, and just possibly not quite what it seems.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Nevertheless, She Persisted is all warmth and edge, a richness cut with a chipped blade, a silver that’s earned its patina, illuminated by a cresting shard of dawn. The scent blooms like resin warmed by just enough light to see by, bittersweet, gentle as prayer, steady as stone. It moves like metallic honey, like quicksilver caught in amber – inexorable and incandescent, a sliver of sunshine given weight and anointed with purpose. Beneath its surface lies something unflinching and resolute, like steel threaded through silk, like granite veined with gold, like a sword of thunder wrapped in a ballgown.
4160 Tuesdays Shazam! Not all observatories are built of steel and glass. Some are carved from ancient wood and wisdom, where mechanical planets trace their paths through the perpetual twilight of desert mysteries. Here in the thin mountain air, elevation sharpens the senses: first the bright bite of altitude, then the way spices catch in the throat like distant light. Time dissolves in the dark. What begins as calculation—the precise geometry of pepper’s gentle ignition and austere cedarwood gears—softens into something warmer, more profound. Each celestial model points inward, finding its own true north in bitter cocoa and burnished amber. Brass orbits wheel overhead at the angle of eternity while censers trace their own paths below, drawing cosmic dust and incense into the undertow of old magics. In the smoke and spice of these shadowed alignments, the machinery of night turns ever inward.
Miskeo Parfum Épices immediately called to mind Audition’s Asami, that icon of patient malice and elegant vengeance, trading her torture kit for a spice collection. She conjures a pristine hostess in her leather apron, each pocket meticulously lined with strategically curated powders and preparations: cardamom’s strange cooling caress, coriander’s numbing bite. Her cedarwood spoon dissects the mixture with surgical precision, stirring sweet-sharp resins and honeyed smoke into something exquisitely lethal. When the spices settle, they leave behind a slow dreamy surrender of soft musk and patchouli’s eerie earthiness – even the deadliest hostess exacting her long game of vengeance knows the art of perfect measure.
Finally trying a few from Filippo Sorcinelli, here are my thoughts…
Notre-Dame 15.4.2019 is what happens when the witchly spirit of venomous anisette, honeyed plums, and midnight-plucked flowers from Christian Dior’s Poison decides to possess a gingerbread man, wrapping itself in a crust of dark spices and unholy sugar.
Basilica of Assisi If Heinrich Lossow’s painting “The Sin” got a modern perfume brief, but plot twist – the nun is doing laundry, and instead of a garden variety horny priest, she’s being visited by a biblically accurate angel, all burning eyes and razor wings and divine perversity. It’s giving Clovis Trouille’s ecstatic scandalous nuns but make it fresh linens and benediction. A slutty nun chypre laundry musk that somehow makes perfect sense. Sacred and profane, bleached and debauched.
BPAL x Haute Macabre The Veil Falls Like Leaves I wore The Veil Falls Like Leaves earlier in the week, and at first, it was very much that seasonal dead leaves/softly decomposing autumn harvest element that BPAL does so well. But by the end of the day, I was like, “What am I wearing that makes me smell like a posh art gallery weirdo?” So I built a little review around that, hehehehe.
The Veil Falls Like Leaves (leaves, vanilla, and leather) Found your local bog witch at the gallery fundraiser, trailing damp, earthy autumn leaves in her wake, each step releasing whispers of sweet autumnal decay and sour, earthy fungi. The wild things clean up nice but never quite lose their feral heart – you smell it in the manky, softly rotting vegetation that lingers beneath her gallery-appropriate veneer. This is autumn’s sophisticated glow-up, where decaying harvest and sweet-tempered spice mingle in the air. As the night deepens, something softer emerges: traces of expensive, elegant leather and fancy high-end shampoo that smells of earthy, loamy vanillagf, like a well-worn jacket catching the scent of damp, moss-tendriled hair, adding an unexpected intimacy to all that earthen wisdom.
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Here’s something different – today I’m reviewing a teapot. I know, I know. Usually, I’m here talking about perfumes that smell like goth California Raisins, or books about apocalyptic viruses, or art that makes me want to climb into the canvas and run away from civilization to spend my days floating on lily pads or whatever, but life is weird sometimes.
A few weeks ago, Umi Tea Sets reached out after seeing the YouTube Amazon Haul video I did last year (the one with a glass teapot in it, among other things), and they asked if they’d send me one of their fancy teapots, would I share my thoughts about it? While quite unexpected because, frankly, I don’t get a lot of brands reaching out to me to give me stuff, it was great timing because I had just broken the other teapot!
So I said sure, why not? But when it arrived, I realized I had no idea how to review a teapot. Books and perfumes? I can do that all day. But teapots? That took some contemplation.
There’s something deeply satisfying about a well-crafted vessel for daily rituals. This Thickened Glass Wooden Handle Teapot, with its clear borosilicate glass (I had to look that up! It’s basically extra-strong glass that won’t crack under temperature changes) and black walnut accents, has found its place in the small pockets of peace I’ve carved out of my workday. My mornings begin in the pre-dawn quiet, curled up on the sofa with a book and soft light. During lunch, I steal away for quick visits with the bumblebees in our garden. But it’s the 3 o’clock tea break that’s become something of an art form.
The practical stuff: it doesn’t drip when you pour (crucial), the handle stays cool even when the tea is scalding (also crucial), and it has these little filter grooves that catch all the tea bits so you’re not drinking leaves (extremely crucial). It can handle ridiculous temperature changes without exploding (apparently from -20°C to 150°C, which seems excessive but good to know).
Working from home means my afternoon tea ritual is sacred – a necessary pause in the day’s momentum where I can reset before diving back into emails and deadlines. Now, it includes watching oolong pearls spiral downward through crystal-clear glass or, on especially contemplative days, seeing a flowering tea ball slowly bloom into an underwater garden. I can already tell this is going to be one of those well-loved objects that collects memories along with daily use.
Every winter for the past few years, I’ve been baking these lovely cookies adapted from a Hildegard von Bingen recipe (if you’re curious, you can find it on Atlas Obscura). There’s something deeply satisfying about pairing a 12th-century mystic’s spelt and honey cookies with tea leaves dancing in contemporary glassware. I like to think Hildegard, who knew a thing or two about rituals, would appreciate how these small ceremonies punctuate our days, even centuries later.
Whether I’m steeping something fancy or just my regular afternoon blend, I appreciate using a tool that’s been thoughtfully designed for this purpose. It’s not about slowing down – I was born at a snail’s pace and have not shown any evidence that I am getting speedier over the years – but about making these stolen moments as beautiful as possible. Even in the middle of a workday, especially in the middle of a workday, we deserve a little everyday magic.
You can find this little teapot and many tea-related items and accessories on the Umi Tea Sets website.
(Full disclosure: The company sent me this teapot for free, but they didn’t tell me what to say about it. These thoughts are my own, fueled by possibly too many cups of hojicha while writing this.)
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When I was curating images for my book The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook Of All That Is Unreal, I found myself drawn to the peculiar charm of Max Frey’s undersea tableau not because it featured an obviously fantastical creature like a dragon or unicorn, but because it captured something equally magical: the strange poetry of a human figure astride a sea slug, as casual as if riding a horse through city streets.
Frey’s fascination with undersea subjects emerged during a time when the natural world was capturing the imagination of both scientists and artists alike. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw an explosion of interest in marine biology, with publications like Ernst Haeckel’s “Art Forms in Nature” bringing the strange beauty of sea creatures to the public eye. This was an era when the depths of the ocean still held countless mysteries, and every new scientific expedition might reveal creatures that seemed as fantastical as any medieval bestiary.
Max Frey, Poseidon und Tochter
Max Frey, Amazone und einhörniges Seepferd
Frey wasn’t alone in finding artistic potential in marine life. Odilon Redon transformed deep-sea creatures into mystical floating eyes and otherworldly blossoms. Jean Painlevé’s early underwater photography and films of seahorses and octopi revealed an underwater ballet so strange it influenced the Surrealists.
What sets Frey’s approach apart is how he places humans in direct interaction with these creatures. His figure atop the sea slug brings to mind the way Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin placed classical figures among realistic Mediterranean landscapes. But where Böcklin’s work often leans into myth and melancholy, Frey’s sea slug rider maintains a wonderfully deadpan quality. The subject’s imperious expression suggests they see nothing unusual about their choice of vehicle – it’s everyone else who’s making it weird.
Max Frey, Wasserfee und Prinz
Max Frey, Lichtspenderin
Max Frey, Das Prinzesslein
This wasn’t a one-off flight of fancy for Frey. His work reveals a whole series of these marine mounts, each more fantastic than the last. Some glide through the water with sleek, silvery bodies that wouldn’t look out of place on a pulp magazine cover. Others sport mohawk-like manes or crown-like fins atop their heads. Yet their riders maintain that same air of perfect nonchalance, as if commuting to some underwater office on their sea-slug steeds.
In ‘”Das Prinzesslein” (The Little Princess), Frey gives us a humanless scene – though perhaps not entirely. The central creature’s expression suggests a strange mix of concern, bewilderment, and haughty bearing as she surveys her underwater domain of muddy anemones and eels. A gross, leering, crab-like beast lurks nearby, barnacles and tentacles sprouting from it like some strange mutation. One can’t help but suspect we’re witnessing the aftermath of a curse, the little princess transformed but still maintaining her royal demeanor among these unsettling depths.
Max Frey, Das Wunder
In “Das Wunder” (The Wonder), Frey takes us deeper still, into a dim underwater grotto where a serpentine creature – or possibly two creatures, it’s difficult to tell if we’re seeing a two-headed being or a pair – gawps at what appears to be a human figure encased in a glowing egg. The murky illumination from this strange cocoon creates the kind of scene you might expect in a deep-sea expedition’s fever dream.
Max Frey, Das Wunder
Finally emerging onto land, we find “Tier und Mensch” (Animal and Human), where a hybrid of giraffe, llama, and dinosaur appears with pinky-beige hide and doleful expression, its wiggly ears and sad face giving it an almost apologetic air. A figure kneels beside this bizarre beast in an enigmatic vision that raises more questions than it answers. Like his undersea riders, Frey presents this unlikely encounter as if it were the most natural thing in the world, leaving us to puzzle over whether it’s the scene that’s strange, or merely our perception of it.
While New Objectivity and Symbolism appear frequently in descriptions of Frey’s work, these pieces suggest an artist operating in a territory entirely his own, where grand sea wyrms serve as commuter transport and sad-eyed hybrid beasts receive mysterious visitors. Each piece is presented with the calm assurance of someone who has witnessed something deeply weird and is simply waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
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First, I would think of the wild geese. Not the poem—the actual birds themselves, cutting their black paths through the dawn sky, crying out to one another in voices that sound like longing. I would remember how I learned to see them differently, to hear in their calls not just noise but a fierce joy in being alive.
Osprey by Holly Fasching
I would sit with my betrayal like a stone in my throat. How many mornings had I carried her words like talismans? How many times had I pressed them into the hands of friends who were drowning in grief or doubt? The grasshopper, the swan, the lily—these were more than just images. They were keys that unlocked something vital in me, something I had forgotten how to name.
But then I would remember: the truth about teachers is that they are always human first. Their genius and their darkness flow from the same well. We drink what nourishes us and leave the rest. The greatest gift a teacher offers isn’t their perfection but their ability to illuminate the path—even if they themselves have stumbled on it.
Great Horned Owl by Kshanti Greene
So I would begin the careful work of separation, like sorting grain from chaff. I would spread out all I had learned about attention, about the sacred in the ordinary, about the weight of a single moment held up to the light. These truths remain true, regardless of their messenger. The lily still opens in its own time. The swan still curves her neck toward her reflection. The grasshopper still fills her body with the day’s sweet excess.
What we learn about beauty doesn’t become ugly just because the one who taught us was flawed. The wild geese still know their way home. They never needed anyone to write them into meaning—they carried it all along, as do we all, waiting for someone or something to teach us how to see it.
Barred Owl by Kelley Luikey
In the end, I would keep the lessons and release the teacher. I would thank her, not for being perfect, but for showing me how to look at the world with eyes hungry for wonder. And then I would go walking in the woods, watching for movement in the underbrush, listening for the sounds of small things going about their vital, ordinary lives. Like the great owl moving through darkness, its wings deadly and silent, I would learn to navigate by instinct through this tangle of meaning and messenger.
Because that’s what she taught me, after all—not to worship her, but to worship this: the unfolding miracle of each moment, whether we deserve it or not. And maybe that would be the final lesson—that beauty and truth can flow through crooked vessels, that we are all both monstrous and divine, that the world goes on offering itself to our imagination despite our failings. The wild geese still fly overhead, crying out their harsh and exciting notes, and we still have the choice to look up.
P.S. As far as I know, Mary Oliver was not a monster! But I’ve been thinking lately about what we do with beautiful things we’ve learned from flawed teachers, and how we might salvage the lessons from the borrowed lenses through which we learned to see—even if we have to leave their messenger behind
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