Этих лет многогамный гвалт
[I started writing this around New Year's. And then I got busy and didn't finish, and now it's three posts. A whole lot happened since then.]
I've been thinking about absence of rituals a lot as late year came to its end.
My holidays - not just of this season, but year-round - have always been scattered, celebrated in whatever way that year offered. Hosting, party-hopping, traveling, mixing and matching as opportunities allowed. It was liberating this year, being able to choose those elements that resonated the most, and I feel like I've found satisfaction in all of them.
Meanwhile, I am watching my friends suffer their disrupted routines or trying to compensate for missing elements by stretching themselves thin over parts they can manage (or worse yet taking risks to do what they always do).... And I'm sad for them, and a little relieved for myself and for never having succeeded in building anchors.
Christmas is rarely stressful for me, since I don't celebrate it. It was fascinating (and frankly a little annoying) to observe many, many of my friends leap into the eating of Chinese food. It's not a tradition I am particularly attached to, but it is borne of having nothing to do on a day when everything's closed when Christmas-observers have their observances. We did not try for takeout this year, but a number of my Jewish friends more firmly attached to that aspect reported restaurants being beyond capacity on orders they tried to make.
Unseasonably warm weather permitted much walking. We spent Thanksgiving and parts of Christmas weekend and generally any weekend when weather wasn't terrible exploring local hiking trails. It felt good, and I think it felt good in no small part because of the freedom from expectation of what those times _should_ have been.
New Year's was harder, because it does hold traditions for me.
To start, I felt compelled to partake in an ancestral ritual of making too much food. I chopped three different Russian salads (the traditional requirement of Olivye, crabstick with corn, and beets and apples); we made a salmon with garlic-roasted potatoes on the 31st and an enormous roast and air-fried potatoes and cabbage steaks on the 1st. It was more food than we could possibly eat, and we barely found fridge space for it all, but it felt oddly unsatisfying, like there should have been more fuss and complexity, somehow. I wanted the table filled with appetizers like in my childhood, even if there was barely room at the table for the food that we did have plus the technical gear.)
I hosted a zoom gathering for New Year's Eve, which topped out at about ten people at a time, and maybe triple that total, including drop-bys of people collecting zoom events to attend. (A whole lot hung around until time to depart for a particular other gathering. I took a minute every couple hours to drop into that gathering long enough to exchange hellos). It was a pleasant core group of half-dozen greeting midnight with us, and I'm particularly grateful to that bunch - I am sentimental about the midnight, and it feels good that there are people who wanted to spend theirs with me.
And yet.
How are you, I was asked on a convivial zoom call. Prompted by I know not what impulse, I answered truthfully.
Really, really lonely, I said.
This prompted a chuckle. I am, after all, directing a show - I am guaranteed three nights a week of half-dozen to a dozen people in a zoom, and many of those nights concluded with socializing, plus scheduled zoom gatherings, groups of cheerful people drinking and chatting on my screen.
But, of course, lonely is exactly why I do these things.
In part the timing of my directing project was hopeful - I wanted to squeeze in my zoom concept while everyone was firmly trapped in zoom theater, and an optimistic piece of my brain wished we might move on to more conventional formats sooner than I expect we really will. But just as valid a part wanted me to have a place I must be with people who might turn up. (One doesn't exactly get to socialize in a conventional way, but it's what I can get, and there's often a small social gathering after).
It almost helps. But what I fundamentally lack is one-on-one interaction. In a zoom group I've had too many times when one or two people dominate the conversation; others seem content to be distracted and barely present. (Am I the only one who thinks it impolite to narrate or dialogue at length in a group setting?) What I need, as desperately as water in the desert, is to be talking to someone who is talking to me. And - as water in the desert - the scarce small portions might keep me from dying right that moment, but run out too quickly and aren't enough to sustain me.
On New Year's Day our theater troupe has its ritual of gathering for a feast. We zoom-feasted. I muted and meandered off a few times - called my cousin and my Toronto relatives and my father to exchange greetings. I did not even manage the tradition of staying until midnight when it became someone's birthday - people were enjoying talking to each other, but I saw no openings to participate in the conversation, and I could not bear it.
The weekend after New Year's we had extraordinarily good weather. I finally had an opportunity to make a cake for the woman who made me a challah for Rosh Hashanah; we waved and exchanged a minute's greetings masked and a dozen feet apart through the screen door. It was sensible and insufficient.
We asked for strolling recommendations, and explored a lovely park along a river in Laurel.
This made for easy logistics to drop by No-Label's, who had picked up something for me at a store months prior, and then we never made the time to reconnect for a handoff. (The thing mattered less than seeing him. When he offered to get it, the gesture meant more for me than the getting, in its implication of seeing each other sufficiently for a dropoff to be a possibility. That it took months and was as brief as it was pains me. "We don't need an excuse to see each other", he said. But what do we need instead, I didn't think to ask then, too struck by the contradiction of perhaps not needing it, but not taking it, either.)
When the news of the Capitol being stormed spread (what a surreal phrase to write!) I opened a teams talk with my work triumvirate. Boss had to run off to a meeting, ex-officemate and I kept the session going, doing whatever what we might be doing in a pale emulation of huddling in a cubicle at the office together. After dinner I launched a zoom, a few people joined me until it was time to move on to another zoom gathering. Once again I left early.
Meanwhile, my dear employer bought another company, and the next restructuring is shaking everything around, including the team I turned to when I needed to not be alone at work. We are an odd department to ourselves, three of us plus the minion, we don't fit into normal structures as we, amoeba-like, absorb functions that need to be done which nobody else is doing, and the shakeout will no doubt normalize us, and likely not keep us together. I only hope my job description does not normalize itself out of existence altogether. Originally posted at https://leiacat.dreamwidth.org/345936.html. Please comment either there using OpenID or right here. I read both with the same distracted semi-frequency.
I've been thinking about absence of rituals a lot as late year came to its end.
My holidays - not just of this season, but year-round - have always been scattered, celebrated in whatever way that year offered. Hosting, party-hopping, traveling, mixing and matching as opportunities allowed. It was liberating this year, being able to choose those elements that resonated the most, and I feel like I've found satisfaction in all of them.
Meanwhile, I am watching my friends suffer their disrupted routines or trying to compensate for missing elements by stretching themselves thin over parts they can manage (or worse yet taking risks to do what they always do).... And I'm sad for them, and a little relieved for myself and for never having succeeded in building anchors.
Christmas is rarely stressful for me, since I don't celebrate it. It was fascinating (and frankly a little annoying) to observe many, many of my friends leap into the eating of Chinese food. It's not a tradition I am particularly attached to, but it is borne of having nothing to do on a day when everything's closed when Christmas-observers have their observances. We did not try for takeout this year, but a number of my Jewish friends more firmly attached to that aspect reported restaurants being beyond capacity on orders they tried to make.
Unseasonably warm weather permitted much walking. We spent Thanksgiving and parts of Christmas weekend and generally any weekend when weather wasn't terrible exploring local hiking trails. It felt good, and I think it felt good in no small part because of the freedom from expectation of what those times _should_ have been.
New Year's was harder, because it does hold traditions for me.
To start, I felt compelled to partake in an ancestral ritual of making too much food. I chopped three different Russian salads (the traditional requirement of Olivye, crabstick with corn, and beets and apples); we made a salmon with garlic-roasted potatoes on the 31st and an enormous roast and air-fried potatoes and cabbage steaks on the 1st. It was more food than we could possibly eat, and we barely found fridge space for it all, but it felt oddly unsatisfying, like there should have been more fuss and complexity, somehow. I wanted the table filled with appetizers like in my childhood, even if there was barely room at the table for the food that we did have plus the technical gear.)
I hosted a zoom gathering for New Year's Eve, which topped out at about ten people at a time, and maybe triple that total, including drop-bys of people collecting zoom events to attend. (A whole lot hung around until time to depart for a particular other gathering. I took a minute every couple hours to drop into that gathering long enough to exchange hellos). It was a pleasant core group of half-dozen greeting midnight with us, and I'm particularly grateful to that bunch - I am sentimental about the midnight, and it feels good that there are people who wanted to spend theirs with me.
And yet.
How are you, I was asked on a convivial zoom call. Prompted by I know not what impulse, I answered truthfully.
Really, really lonely, I said.
This prompted a chuckle. I am, after all, directing a show - I am guaranteed three nights a week of half-dozen to a dozen people in a zoom, and many of those nights concluded with socializing, plus scheduled zoom gatherings, groups of cheerful people drinking and chatting on my screen.
But, of course, lonely is exactly why I do these things.
In part the timing of my directing project was hopeful - I wanted to squeeze in my zoom concept while everyone was firmly trapped in zoom theater, and an optimistic piece of my brain wished we might move on to more conventional formats sooner than I expect we really will. But just as valid a part wanted me to have a place I must be with people who might turn up. (One doesn't exactly get to socialize in a conventional way, but it's what I can get, and there's often a small social gathering after).
It almost helps. But what I fundamentally lack is one-on-one interaction. In a zoom group I've had too many times when one or two people dominate the conversation; others seem content to be distracted and barely present. (Am I the only one who thinks it impolite to narrate or dialogue at length in a group setting?) What I need, as desperately as water in the desert, is to be talking to someone who is talking to me. And - as water in the desert - the scarce small portions might keep me from dying right that moment, but run out too quickly and aren't enough to sustain me.
On New Year's Day our theater troupe has its ritual of gathering for a feast. We zoom-feasted. I muted and meandered off a few times - called my cousin and my Toronto relatives and my father to exchange greetings. I did not even manage the tradition of staying until midnight when it became someone's birthday - people were enjoying talking to each other, but I saw no openings to participate in the conversation, and I could not bear it.
The weekend after New Year's we had extraordinarily good weather. I finally had an opportunity to make a cake for the woman who made me a challah for Rosh Hashanah; we waved and exchanged a minute's greetings masked and a dozen feet apart through the screen door. It was sensible and insufficient.
We asked for strolling recommendations, and explored a lovely park along a river in Laurel.
This made for easy logistics to drop by No-Label's, who had picked up something for me at a store months prior, and then we never made the time to reconnect for a handoff. (The thing mattered less than seeing him. When he offered to get it, the gesture meant more for me than the getting, in its implication of seeing each other sufficiently for a dropoff to be a possibility. That it took months and was as brief as it was pains me. "We don't need an excuse to see each other", he said. But what do we need instead, I didn't think to ask then, too struck by the contradiction of perhaps not needing it, but not taking it, either.)
When the news of the Capitol being stormed spread (what a surreal phrase to write!) I opened a teams talk with my work triumvirate. Boss had to run off to a meeting, ex-officemate and I kept the session going, doing whatever what we might be doing in a pale emulation of huddling in a cubicle at the office together. After dinner I launched a zoom, a few people joined me until it was time to move on to another zoom gathering. Once again I left early.
Meanwhile, my dear employer bought another company, and the next restructuring is shaking everything around, including the team I turned to when I needed to not be alone at work. We are an odd department to ourselves, three of us plus the minion, we don't fit into normal structures as we, amoeba-like, absorb functions that need to be done which nobody else is doing, and the shakeout will no doubt normalize us, and likely not keep us together. I only hope my job description does not normalize itself out of existence altogether. Originally posted at https://leiacat.dreamwidth.org/345936.html. Please comment either there using OpenID or right here. I read both with the same distracted semi-frequency.