Monday Miscellany: Inking over old words, her feet the quill

Notes from December 8 - 14

Dec 15, 2025

Greetings from my spot on the couch in front of our space heater! Today’s high was 36℉ and I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go, so stay in pajamas most of the day I DID. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, how are you faring in the last week or two before the holiday? I’m extra cranky about capitalism and AI and the noise and speed of life these days, but I’m trying to combat those feelings by taking deep breaths and sleeping a lot and making things with my hands and remembering how to exist apart from the overstimulating hellscape of the internet. The process is always ongoing!

Read this week

Sometimes one finds oneself a week and a half into December, having set up a fully insane reading plan for the month, a list that is entirely too long and wholly unachievable, when one’s best friend proposes a movie date to see the Hamnet adaptation two days hence—and one must throw aside all previously established intentions in order to re-read this Maggie O’Farrell masterpiece before said film viewing. And one IS NOT SORRY for having done so because my god, what a story. This lady can write.

I’ve said before how I’m not by nature a Historical Fiction girlie, and yet I’ve learned that I would follow Maggie O’Farrell anywhere she’ll take me. In Hamnet, that’s late-1500s Stratford-upon-Avon, where the bubonic plague has descended on the household of a young William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, ultimately stealing their son Hamnet away. This is one of the most affecting meditations on grief that I’ve ever read. I’m not a parent myself but I have lost people I deeply loved, and O’Farrell captures it perfectly, that horrible ache:

Do you think of her, do you still catch yourself listening for the sound of her breathing at night, because I do, all the time. I still think that one day I might wake and she will be there, next to me, again; there will have been some wrinkle or pleat in time and we will be back to where we were, when she was living and breathing. (109)

She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She was with him; she is alone. She feels exposed, chill, peeled like an onion. (214)

She is someone adrift in her life, who doesn’t recognise it. She is unmoored, at a loss. She is someone who weeps if she cannot find a shoe or overboils the soup or trips over a pot. Small things undo her. Nothing is certain anymore. (299)

The day after seeing the Hamnet adaptation (more on that below), I went to our local art museum’s book club discussion of Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris—so the emotional gravity of the week’s beginning was mercifully balanced at the end by a re-read of much lighter fare. This collection is mostly memoir with a couple of stories, all seasonally themed, and a quick read at only 166 pages. The first story, “Santaland Diaries,” is the longest and most famous, covering Sedaris’ time as a Macy’s Christmas elf in the early 1990s. Having worked in the service industry myself for about a decade at this point, I related to a lot of his customer horror stories. People really do be people-ing, especially around the holidays.

There’s a lot about these pieces that hasn’t aged very well, though, like the liberal usage of mental disability slurs and some tiptoeing into classism and racism. I’d like to think that present-day David Sedaris would word these differently if he were writing them now; he’s much too smart and witty to resort to punching down. But if nothing else, my revisiting of his early work has both reminded me that language is constantly evolving and highlighted just how far we’ve come in terms of what we broadly recognize as unacceptable.

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Watched this week

So… Hamnet (2025), whew. Beautiful cinematography, gorgeous costumes and colors, tearjerking soundtrack,1 a dream of a cast, and an absolute gut-punch. The adaptation was faithful, likely thanks to Maggie O’Farrell’s involvement with the project, even though some of what I loved about the book—the richness of the language and the interiority of the characters—by definition resist translation to the screen. The death that O’Farrell so gently writes around in the novel is instead stretched out in brutal detail, impossible to look away from. We don’t wake up to find Hamnet gone, we watch him as he goes and we suffer along with him. My god, did we sob in that theater. If your heart can take it, grab an emotional support friend, fill your pockets with tissues, and go see this movie.

A lucky trip to McKay’s on Friday blessed me with a new blu-ray player!2 Obviously I had to get a few movies to try out on it, too, so in the end I went home with Frozen, Celeste and Jesse Forever, and Gravity, all $0.95 each (again, blessed), and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for $5.95. Have I mentioned lately that I love our used bookstore? I cued up Frozen (2013) immediately upon getting home and hooking up the player. Winter setting, soundtrack full of bangers, and a magic act of sisterly love and sacrifice? What’s not to love? It was the perfect choice to have on while I wrapped a few holiday gifts.

Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) has been a favorite ever since I saw it in theaters. I love both Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, their chemistry as people and their shared sense of humor. This story is about divorce, but also growing up and letting go of the need to be right and figuring out how to be content with who you are. I enjoyed the millionth watch-through just as much as the first.

Do you like visual and slapstick comedy? Ridiculous mascot costumes? Intricately constructed jokes and callbacks? Video games? Snowy landscapes? A hero’s quest? If you answered “yes” to any or all of the above, might I recommend Hundreds of Beavers (2022)??

This is a fever dream of a movie, kind of impossible to describe, but I guarantee it’ll surprise you and make you laugh. A perfect mood lifter for that moment after the holidays when you feel your spirits start to droop.

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!