The one thing all human beings have in common is the fact that one day, our life will end in death. What does death mean to you? How does it make you feel? I recently had a unique opportunity to engage quite personally with these sometimes scary, often uncomfortable, typically taboo questions and examine my own history and understanding of them, as well.
I’ve experienced more death than I care to think about in the past several years. Three close family members–my mother and both of my maternal grandparents–passed one after the other in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Through these experiences, I thought I had a handle on the different aspects of death, the ins and outs, the befores and afters.
I learned how to care for a dying loved one, loved ones both cooperative and cognizant–and loved ones who were not-so-much. I learned how to navigate the complicated business of living wills and regular old wills and estate planning, and in the unfortunate case of my mother, no wills or planning at all. I learned how to grieve the loss of a pair of loving and generous grandparents, as well as the difficult relationship with my mother. I believed that through these intimate familial encounters with grief and loss, I had become familiar with death, and in doing so, faced some of my own innate fears.
As it turned out, this wasn’t the case at all. At the end of everything, once I had time to breathe again, it struck me all at once. I’d come to terms with the death of almost everyone important to me because I’d had to face the actual reality of their deaths, but now that the dust had settled and the metaphorical dirt had been shoveled over their graves (it wasn’t, though, they were all cremated) this left me with an awful lot of time to contemplate my own mortality. This shouldn’t be a problem, right? I’d cozied up to the dead and dying plenty of times by now–I was perfectly prepared to confront the idea of my own death, wasn’t I? It wasn’t until I had only myself to think about and plan for that I understood how limited my knowledge about death really was, and how tenuous my ideas regarding the afterlife were once I began to more closely examine them.
These realizations were unexpectedly paralyzing. The raising of these questions broke me and bruised me in ways that I never could have anticipated…and I found comfort and catharsis in an equally unexpected way.
Death Awareness Coach Claudia Crobatia’s Get Ahead of Death Course is a series of 31 videos, divided into 7 modules which encourages people to explore their own relationship with mortality and tackles many of these questions. Guiding us through the subject matter with grace and compassion, Claudia provides us tools to get more comfortable with the idea of death and reduce some of this death anxiety– along with helping us integrate the new perspectives we gain during the course and turning them into practical actions. What does death mean to you? What are your fears regarding the idea of death and how can you transform them? How have your own experiences with death in the past shaped how you feel about it, and do these ideas still make sense to you today?
Through these conversations Claudia stresses that each person’s death is as individual as each person’s life, and invites us, in the safe haven of these gentle videos and corresponding lessons, to prepare personal death plans, to create bucket lists for living our best lives, exercises for envisioning and mourning our own death, as well as being guided through your own death in a special death meditation.
This course is a way of connecting with your own mortality. It is not a cure for fear or pain, nor is it intended to be. But it provides the tools to explore those fears, to reflect on painful instances of grief and loss and make these feelings easier to bear. Before embarking on this Get Ahead of Death Course I didn’t even know what questions I had in order to seek answers; now it’s possible I have more questions than I know what to do with! And it is the awareness of these profound questions–and the seeking of answers– that I believe to be of key importance in living more authentically and fully. Now I have resources and tools to better address these questions and understand the answers I may find as I move forward through this one life I have, in the time I have left to me.
I am a sloppy knitter. I’ll be the first to admit that. I don’t measure things and I don’t knit gauge swatches, because eh, I can’t be bothered. I knit for fun and also for therapy and while I get that grabbing your ruler and counting your stitches per inch are foundational steps and have myriad benefits for both your finished garment and your overall knitting practice, they are…decidedly not fun. They feel too much like math homework. Which is the opposite of therapeutic for me! This DEATH BEFORE SWATCHING is a stance I have stubbornly stuck to for years, and I don’t know why I dig my heels in about it, but I suspect it’s because I failed Algebra II in tenth grade and took it again in summer school–and failed again–and so maybe I am scared?
Sometimes I get lucky! Through absolutely no measuring or swatching at all, I made not one, but two really lovely sweaters last year that fit me perfectly! Well, let’s say 85-90% perfectly! But mostly this cavalier attitude regarding whether or not I actually have enough yarn to finish a project or am I playing a wooly game of chicken, or am I knitting too tightly or too loosely with this weight yarn and this size needles, it comes back to bite me. More times than not I actually do not have enough yarn, and half of the time I wind up knitting an elephantine kaftan when I was meant to be knitting a regular-sized sweater.
It was just such a sweater that I unraveled over the holidays. I had been knitting it for the greater part of a year, but as I began working on the sleeves, it finally occurred to me to try it on. It was massive. Much, much too big. And short of starting over, there was nothing I could do to fix it. That sucked.
So. I ripped it apart and knit up a hat. Which is…also slightly too big. Whatever! There were no lessons learned here.
…and here’s the rest of that sweater. Reincarnated as the beginnings of a rustic shawl! And if this shawl is a bit oversized, I think that’s fine.
I have only just recently learned of the pleasures to be had in mid-afternoon bath-time reading. It is the most marvelous, most delicious thing.
This past weekend, I drew myself a bath and did a little photoshoot of the tub, the books I planned on indulging in while the water grew cold and my toes pruned up, and arranged all of the related accessories, to include my beautiful new bath tray from Peg & Awl. Full disclosure: I am actually taking a product photography course over on SkillShare, and I just wanted to try out some of the concepts and techniques that the instructor was sharing! You can laugh if you like, I guess it is a little silly; I don’t have any professional reason to be learning these things, but I thought it might be nice to figure out a few ways to make the pictures I take of my food and my knitting a little bit nicer.
…which doesn’t really explain why I was taking pictures of my bathroom, but I was pretty excited and I had to start somewhere, right?
In a strange turn of events, I woke up this morning and the trio of tub photos that I posted to Instagram had been deleted! Was my tub too sexy for Instagram? Was the reflection of phantom nipples in the bathwater too scandalous to behold? Was my tray lacking the requisite Cobb salad, two computer monitors, and a woman laughing uproariously at nothing in particular? I am still trying to solve the mystery of what exactly might have offended someone’s delicate sensibilities here, and got my photos removed.
I mean, come on, people! If you don’t like baths or books—that’s on you, man. Don’t make it my problem.
As it turned out, I didn’t end up reading either of these books in this particular bathtub session. I grabbed something else instead…. but I am very much looking forward to reading them both, and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you will be interested in them, too: Unknown Language, which I believe is a sort of fictional narrative attempting to convey Hildegard von Bingen’s expansive impact, and A sonnet to science: Scientists and their poetry
Also: if you’re curious about the geode planter sitting above the soap dish, it came from Tal & Bert! And the bath salts I was using didn’t really turn my water this acid green shade. It was more like “I did an accidental pee” yellow. So you can imagine why I tweaked the colors!
Featured image: Woman Reading by Candlelight by Peter Ilsted (1861 – 1933)
As 2020 ended, reading and books were the glue that held my fragile, frazzled human seams together, binding me back into myself, and keeping me from crumbling into a brittle, bitter heap of dust.
In our Stacked feature at Haute Macabre this week, I review some of these titles that, good, meh, or otherwise, kept me together as we entered 2021.
Typically at the end of the year, I compile a list of all the books I’ve read and share it here on the blog, but eh, that sounds like a lot of work for a year that was so stupid. If you’re curious, though, you can see them all over on my Goodreads books read in 2020.
I’d have to say my favorite fiction was found in the best of the weird, the bizarre, the off-the-wall stories: Bunny,Where the Wild Ladies Are, and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead are the first three that come to mind. The ghostly, chilling arctic horror of Dark Matter was my favorite audiobook of the year, and in terms of nonfiction, my top picks are the macabre biblio-adventures involving books bound in human skin found in Dark Archives and the exploring the mystical wonders of creativity with the exercises, practices, and rituals in The Magical Writing Grimoire.
What books did you thoroughly enjoy in 2020? What titles, in particular, got you through that spectacular dumpster fire of a hell year? And what have you got in your TBR stack for 2021? (There’s a lot of exciting horror in this fantastic Tor roundup, if you need some ideas!)
I’m not crying, you’re crying! Pictured here is my dear little sister, one of my favorite weirdos in the world, wrapped up in the hopes and dreams of the divorce blanket I started knitting for her six years ago, and which I finally completed a few weeks ago. “Hopes and dreams” and “divorce” probably don’t sound like words that go very well together, except that sometimes, I think, they quite splendidly do. She wrote about it on her blog, which you can find here.
Below I have included a gallery of some images of the process if you’re curious. And here is a link to my Ravelry page for more! And so many thanks to the thoughtful, generous friends who shared yarn, and well-wishes, and stories of their own along the way.
I’d love to know what stuff and things, tangible or intangible, and however small, or mundane, or banal (or grand and luxurious, why not?) got you through the latter part of 2020!
I probably never would have gotten around to starting a YouTube channel in 2020– or any other year, for that matter–if not for the badgering of my baby sister, who has been on me to start one up for a while now. I’d personally rather read a blog post about something than watch a video about it, but I’ve accepted that not everyone feels that way, and so to keep up with the rest of the world and to practice being flexible and adaptable and learning new things in general, I chose this ridiculously terrible year to get started. And I’m pretty proud of myself! Nine months later, I continue to upload videos, although not exactly consistently, and while I’m no award-winning cinematographer, I daresay my efforts have visibly improved along the way.
From reading lists and hauls, to author chats and Q&As, to my obsessive love of perfume to those “what I do in a day” type videos, I think I’ve got a handle on the things I want to present on my channel, and surprise, surprise–it’s exactly the same type of thing I would write about on my blog. Which is okay, I think! Because people who are reading my blog aren’t necessarily stopping by here to watch my videos, and vice versa–and that’s fine! I’ll just try and connect with people wherever they are.
So what’s the plan for 2021? I literally have no clue, but I’d like to keep on track with my one-video a month plodding progress, so if you’ve got any ideas or suggestions or anything, in particular, you would like to see or hear me talk about, leave a comment and let me know!
See below for links to everything mentioned in the Hexmas holiday gift haul!
And a bonus that didn’t make it to the video, are these incredibly snazzy dangle earrings that my Best Good Friend sent me! A bonus about having hair that looks like a Fizzgig is living on your head, is that now everyone can see my ginormous danglers! From Haus of Sparrow on Etsy, if you are interested.
Today I am over-the-moon thrilled to cozy up with the extraordinary Lisa Marie Basile for a magical, mystical year-end giveaway! If you are interested in ritual, the occult, history, writing magic, poetry, journaling, or magical symbols, this little book bundle is for you!
Jakub Schikaneder (1855–1924), Podzimní červánky (Autumn Red)
I am tired. I bet you are tired, too. This has been a weird year. Has it even been a year? Has it been a thousand years? I feel like I’ve aged immensely in these last 365 days and yet…I’ve experienced nothing. I can’t quite convince myself I’ve done nothing, I won’t allow myself to think that. No matter how furiously that self-effacing little demon on my shoulder tries to bully me into thinking it! I have idle tendencies, but I’m not lazy.
And I don’t mean to say that you are lazy if this year has been too much for you and you can’t function. No. But “I’m not lazy” is a mantra I have to repeat to myself, internally, all the time until I believe it. I grew up thinking I was lazy. I was told in so many ways that I was lazy. I came to believe that I am, indeed, a lazy, indolent person. Perhaps because I am slow to move and act. Often times this has to do with fear and anxiety. Also because I have a tendency to act only when I am ready to act. Don’t rush me! Perhaps also because I am not hugely ambitious, at least in the ways that the rest of the world, and perhaps my generation, define success. But I am not lazy! A few years ago, I made myself look at my progress and motivation and drive, and dammit, I am not lazy. But I still remind myself of this, every day.
I am always working on something. Baking, gardening, knitting, researching, writing, sometimes even making myself do the things that scare me! I mean, I published a book this year! This year, of all years! That counts for something right? But at the same time, I don’t feel like any of it counts at all, like it is entirely possible that this year hasn’t actually counted for anything. Although I have done things, learned things, made progress on, and completed personal projects… I have not gone anywhere new or exciting (or even old or boring) or seen or met anyone. All of these things are different marks that add up on the yardstick for which I measure my years, and this year is terribly off balance.
This past summer, I think I felt that keenly, and so I overloaded myself with tasks and projects and all manner of what I suppose amounts to busy work. I may not have been able to travel to see friends or family, but I dabbled in a multitude of cuisines, I perfected my sourdough starter, I finished a knitting project that I have been working on for five years–I can’t say that I didn’t do anything. I did all of the things. But…it all feels pointless? Wasted? And now it’s December and the year is ending in just over two weeks and I am tired. And I need to rest. Why is that so hard to admit?
On the knitting front: I think this is the first time I’ve worn something I knit in over a decade!
While I love to knit, I discovered that it’s more about the process and the journey for me, than it is about the destination and end result. When I am done with a project I set it aside until I feel I’ve found the right recipient, or, more frequently, they reveal themselves to me mid-stitch, before the pattern is even complete. I’m never sad to say goodbye to these projects because they were never meant for me to keep.
This sweater, though…maybe it’s going to stay with me a while. I hadn’t knit a sweater in a very long time. I tend to stick to things that don’t actually have to fit, like intricate shawls and the like. Measurements mystify me! But I was gifted a book of patterns late in 2019, so I thought I’d give it a another go. It was probably a fluke (because I did no maths, and much like merging onto the highway, I just close my eyes and prayed for the best!) and wouldn’t you know? It was perfect!
Of course, living in Florida, there are not many opportunities to wear such things. But today is chilly and here we are! Warm and cozy and it fits beautifully.
I think this one has found its home.
This was meant to be a divorce blanket for my baby sister. She could have gotten married and divorced again in the 4-5 years it took me to knit this!
Each and every square was knit with my deepest heart’s love for this beautiful, brilliant, brave woman, and with wishes and dreams that her life as she goes forward is exactly as she wants it to be. And more or less it has been, I think, and utterly without the help of this blanket! Well, it’s the thought that counts, anyway.
Thank you to the many friends who have contributed yarn to this project over the years. I appreciate you all for your help.
Reading: Though I’m a life-long fiend for all things horror, my love for the genre does tend to wax and wane. Sometimes I become a bit unplugged, only to dive back in with a voracious ferocity that’s probably a bit alarming from an outsider’s perspective.
Recently I was gifted a copy of Matt Glasby’s The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear on Film, and it has marvelously rekindled my love for all things horrid, haunting, and harrowing. Glasby examines some of the most frightening films created and explores with us what it is exactly, that makes them so scary. Which sounds like it might be a dry, scholarly affair, but it’s not even a bit! The analysis is tightly written, wryly humorous, and exceptionally insightful, and, coupled with the spare elegance of Barney Bodoano’s striking black and white artwork—I’m utterly immersed and enthralled and I haven’t been able to put it down.
The advent of the winter months are casting their strange spell and making me forget, as I do every year, that baking in Florida in November is pretty much the same as baking here in July. Still, the heart wants what the heart wants (even though the heart doesn’t even care for sweets) and so that means Swedish cardamom buns and cranberry scones.
I really don’t have much to say about them, but I did think they were nice photos!
I have been feeling some kind of way in the last few weeks. I can’t put my finger on what it is, or why…it’s somewhat inexplicable and mostly inexpressible and it’s for sure not a particularly nice feeling.
The closest I can get at it is this: I have been hearing various friends at various points in time say that they need to delete their Facebook accounts or stop scrolling through Instagram or maybe even stay off of social media entirely, because it makes them feel crappy about themselves. They compare themselves to friends and acquaintances who have perhaps had more achievements and successes, who have gotten married or had children, who have traveled the world, who seem beautiful, valued, fulfilled, and happy…and in seeing all of this, they find that they are coming up short in their own lives and wonder where they went wrong. Rather than be bombarded by their social media reminding them of these short-comings every time the page refreshes, they delete these platforms from their devices, removing the temptation to subject themselves to these feelings.
I thought that I never really understood or properly empathized with the dissatisfaction or disappointment or depression/despair they experienced from these interactions (oh, the arrogance!) because I believed that I measured my success differently. I genuinely believed I wasn’t paying that much attention to what everyone else was doing. Or if I was, I was happy to see that they were doing well. And I am!
But I suspect…I’m more attentive than I thought I was to what X/Y/Z person was progressing with, making strides toward and ultimately achieiving and succeeding in. And inevitably, we relate information about others to ourselves, and it would appear that I am not immune to that, no matter how much I imagined myself to be! And while I might not covet the lifestyles and timelines of say, that enthusiastic person posting pictures from their themed-engagement photo shoot, or the third-time mommy-to-be celebrating milestones in her kid’s lives, or the career woman who was just promoted to Regional Director of Whatever…I do take notice of the various ways in which the people whose interests align with mine are putting themselves out there and achieving things. And I wonder what is wrong with me that my expectations for myself are so vastly different and what opportunities I might be missing because of that.
I guess when it’s stripped down to essentials, what I’ve been feeling of late is the dull hum of inadequacy. It’s been buzzing through my brain at a frequency I couldn’t quite attune to, but in writing about it just now, I think I’ve dialed it in. And I hate to blame social media, but it’s so easy to lose ourselves in what we think we should be doing/wanting/having because we see those individuals whom we admire involved in all those things…but are those things really the things we want for ourselves? Or is the algorithm just brainwashing us into thinking so? And so maybe it is better to step back. To remember who we are and what we want for ourselves, and use that clarity to both connect with our identity and cultivate our self-esteem.
Psychology today writes that:
“A stable sense of self comes from thinking about who you are absent any feedback. What are your values and preferences in the absence of anybody knowing about them? Can you be proud of the person you are who isn’t publicly posted?”
So I can certainly see how taking a step back from Instagram and Facebook can provide some time for self-reflection, to strip away all the clutter that you’re constantly barraged and the constant need to “create/curate content”.
I don’t know where I’m going with any of this navel-gazing, because while social media creates these uncomfortable and upsetting comparisons for me, it’s also a source of so many wonderful connections. And while I realize that my efforts fall far short of anything that would be described as a journalistic or literary tour-de-force, I do like to try to keep my finger on the pulse of things, so to speak, for writing purposes– and social media platforms can be such an amazing source for the sorts of tidbits that I like to stay on top of. So what can I do? Just keep it all in perspective, I guess. As poet and writer Lisa Marie Basile wrote on Instagram recently: “The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. I promise that bitch on Instagram doesn’t matter.”
Seen too, just today, via Sarah Faith Gottesdiener’s Instagram:
“It is a fucking relief to dive deep into your own well, to move forward in your own integrity, and forge your own path. It is a breath of fresh air to acknowledge your own needs, dreams, and particular talents. We all have our own unique roles to inhabit and our own particular calls to heed. The more we stay in our own energy, the easier it is to attract what is for us. Do you understand?” (Read the rest of it here, it’s exactly perfect.)
I think I do understand. And so maybe you will be seeing a little less of me in my familiar haunts. You can always find me here, though.
WOW! It’s been a long dang time since I have compiled a list of wished-for Hexmas gifts. WAIT, no it hasn’t! I made one just last year. How could I have forgotten that? Oh yeah, I know why: because last year, as we who can still joke about such things like to say, was approx. one thousand weeks ago.
I’m into the mustardy yellows now, which is a bit of a new thing to those who are used to my monochromatic palette, and overall I think in these lists you’ll see a bit more color than I’ve had a preference for in recent years. Interesting! What does it all mean? (Is a thing that I am sure no one is asking.) All in all, these lists today are a bit of a mishmash, none of it really connected or thematic… although I suppose the slippers and teas and bath related items would certainly point to a longing for calm and comfort and soothing experiences? And maybe a few sparks of magic for the kitchen and the home? Well, I guess let’s not try to overthink it.
It’s really just an opportunity to say, here’s some stuff I like! I don’t actually expect anyone to buy and gift these things for me; as I have noted before, there’s no one who can shop for you as well as you can. So I like to make these lists for myself every December, and then slowly treat myself to the things on them over the course of the winter and throughout the next year. And don’t get me wrong – I love it when people think of me enough to buy me a gift, and I am grateful…I just don’t ever expect that someone is going to read my mind and get me that thing that I really, really, want. And god forbid I actually tell them!
So here it is, then. The luxuries and fripperies I’ve got on my personal 2020, utterly selfish Hexmas wishlist. I’m not sure that these things will be of any interest to anyone but me, but perhaps you will find some last-minute gift ideas here, for either friends or family…or yourself. Happy Hexmas to us!
