Here in the northern hemisphere, we're a few days away from the solstice. "The planet," writes Annie Dillard, "tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch." This longest night of the year once marked the depths of winter and now barely marks the beginning.

Here in southern California, where seasons have always been a matter of nuance, winter is an exhalation. We greet it the way Midwesterners embrace spring. The wildfire embers die, a few rains come, and we pull our nostalgic woolens out of the closet. Our citrus trees heave. I went looking for a Didion quote about the particularities of this season in this part of the world, and was shocked when I could only find an aside: "('winter' in California is widely construed as beginning and ending with the Christmas season, reflecting a local preference for the upside)". How could she relegate our winter to scare quotes like a cold-toed Canadian? How could fail to revel in the specific contours of our dark season?

Here in the final weeks of a second pandemic year, the darkness is less welcome—yes, even in sun-soaked places where the season is parenthetical. We're already disoriented and scared, still waiting for our eyes to adjust, sick of stubbing our toes on the way to the bathroom. The fixed tension, the helpless spin, none of it feels seasonal at all. I am trying to convince myself it is not permanent. And to find joy in the nuances, the citrus fruit, that fleet blazing touch.

Ed. note: This newsletter is not done for the year! Next week's edition is about our collective 2021, and it's not too late to tell me about your year. The Dec 31 edition will feature my favorite sentences I read this year. Look for it. 

"bell hooks left more of herself to all of us than any Black woman could ever owe to anybody. She did it as an act of love." Ed Yong's pandemic reporting has been indispensable to me this year, and his latest on Omicron is no different. Lessons from Sophie Calle on how to turn life into art. How Botox insinuated itself into our emotional and creative lives. The elder millennial urge to get really into knickknacks. How Shein beat Amazon at its own game. A dispatch from a LuLaRoe convention. A really great obituary that went viral for a reason. And we chatted to the wonderful Nick Quah at Vulture about the end of Call Your Girlfriend.

Want to get me a solstice present? Become a paying member to support this newsletter. Also! I'm accepting applications to become one of my 2022 writing fellows.

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The Facility, a documentary filmed using the cameras attached to tablets installed inside the cell blocks of an immigration detention. The hidden labor of holiday magic. A new exhibit of pre-WWII Japanese American photography.

"To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending." -bell hooks. Rest in power.

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This is the ninth in a 12-part essay series in which Nereya Otieno, one of this newsletter's 2021 writing fellows, explores her experience with immigration. Click here to read previous installments. -AF

By Nereya Otieno

I’ve had a lot of difficulty writing as of late. Someone very close to me passed away. Close enough that people mistook us for one another on the street. Sounded-like-me close. Shared DNA kind of close. In the wake of it all, I want to share a brief thought.

The essays in this series have ruminated on a very practical, dictionary definition of immigration. Focused on moving and living in relation to physical countries across recognized borders and measurable distance. But there are other ways of moving life into unfamiliar territory, other types of migrants.

People who choose to go to therapy. People who confront their trauma. People who work to get clean. People who decide to get sober. People who go to rehab again and again and again, more scared and more embarrassed and more determined each time. People who come out to the world as something the world claims it can’t understand. People who leave a home that hurts them. People who venture inside their psyches even when it terrifies them. People who survive accidents or illnesses and must adjust to a body different from the one they inhabited before. People who find themselves living without the people they’ve built their lives around.

Click here to read the rest.

Did you click? Do it—read the rest. Or you can listen to this essay in audio format, an experience I highly recommend. You can also sign up for Nereya's newsletter and cut out the middlewoman (ahem, me).