ssw15, Author at Triscribe

Merry Christmas 2023! Happy Holidays, or at least don’t be so dazed…

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

In these trying times – trying as ever, what with all the armed conflicts, partisan politics, mass shootings, human pettiness, and whatever craziness of climate change and the COVID virus, which is now part of the illnesses out there: try to find some light in all the darkness of the world.

I tried to be in the right mood for Winter Solstice of 2023, but I didn’t even timely send my Winter Solstice greetings to friends.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video (see below) about how people in Hong Kong celebrate Winter Solstice, and I was all: wow, I didn’t even know what “Winter Solstice observation” was called in Cantonese, and I realized that I’m so under-educated about this. It didn’t help that I didn’t/don’t care for glutinous rice balls (what we’d eat for Winter Solstice observation), so my adherence to Chinese traditions hasn’t been very good at all…

(https://youtu.be/NlGZoDZY7CE?feature=shared, or see below:)

But, trying to get into a Christmas spirit? Well, on my part, it’s the usual complicated feelings of not being Christian, of questioning organized religion, and of wondering about anything and everything.

But, a binge of Christmas music might help? Maybe? I tried listening to a lot of Pentatonix (their YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/@PTXofficial/featured), since I’m a sucker for a cappella…

Or check out this past PBS NewsHour Christmas 2021 presentation of US members singing Feliz Navidad; I like it for being so cheerful and hopeful: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-service-members-perform-feliz-navidad.

An old picture from Christmas Eve 2011; from my Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, NY, Christmas Eve 2011 photographs. This not as gaudy as the Christmas decorations one may find in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, NY.

Anyway, best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas and to all a good night. Let’s see if I’ll get to do one more blog post before the end of the year. But, be safe and enjoy the rest of 2023. — ssw15

Happy December 2023! Or Post-NaNoWriMo 2023

Happy December 2023! Wait, what? How did the time fly by like this?

Well, the streak has finally broken: I didn’t make it to 50k words for National Novel Writing Month 2023, falling short of 45,000. But, I did get past 44,500, so it’s better than zero. I’ll have to see what is salvageable, if anything was at all. There’s next year, I guess. Writing sure is a process.

The above image is/was the 2023 NaNoWriMo Writer Badge, which you can find over at the NaNoWriMo website, with more info about NaNoWriMo.

Work and life took a lot of my mood from writing and writing prep this year, unfortunately. Regardless, to all of us who did it, 1 word, 50k words, or more: we survived NaNoWriMo 2023!

On a more positive note: I was also in the middle of reading Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” a memoir of Murakami as a runner and a writer who runs. I finished reading the book, and I liked it. I am not a runner, but the book gave me a lot to think about when life is such a process for us all.

Anyway, I’ll see about posting again on Triscribe soon before the year winds down. How does the time get away from us all?! — ssw15

(cross-posted to sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com.)

Taking a Moment to Pause and Reflect 2023

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
“Try to Remember,” from The Fantasticks.

Time passes. I find myself disliking the mantra “Never Forget,” because I’m more concerned about what we learned from remembering. If September 11, 2001, was a nightmare, we somehow came together on September 12, 2001, if my memory isn’t so hazy to recall the attempts to help each other.

Have we kept at it? Have we developed resilience and overcome hate and whatever else? Have we made a better world for everyone yet?

Or am I asking for too much with my entirely rhetorical questions? Well, yeah, I am asking for too much…

22 years ago, I was trying to figure out how to make any use of my last year in law school, and then that Tuesday happened, the horrors marring the perfect blue sky. I didn’t imagine the entirely different landscape that we’ve had since. I never imagined that all the crises and calamities we’d be through.