A judgement & a curse

I awoke this morning to the news that the US had invaded Venezuela and abducted President Maduro.

This was just going to be a brief Happy New Year post, and a placeholder post, pending a longer post at some point this month. But it feels weird to start with that sentiment; but then I suppose that sentiment must always have been weird. In the dazzle and stupor of newsfeeds it feels especially stark. I’m trying to think of a year in which it wouldn’t have felt strange, but I’m coming up short, and I don’t think there was one. Nevertheless, I hope, wherever you are, that the new year brings you some personal peace, and rest, and — why not? — happiness.

Hope is a perilous thing, of course.

My hope for this blog was to post monthly, about writing and reading and related matters, but the previous two months had something to say about this. I can’t recall the reason for missing my November slot, but an unscheduled ME/CFS relapse, the worst in over a year that was, nevertheless, mercifully brief at 10 days or so in length, disrupted any December effort. For a brief period, a day or two, I couldn’t read, which is always the worst thing, in my experience of this illness.

December posts are for yearly recaps, judging by the newsletters/blogs I follow. I would have liked to produce one myself, because it would make interesting reading, at least for me, in a decade from now, but I’ll content myself with this amusing remark from Antonio Gramsci, posted to Instagram by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation:

‘That's why I hate these New Year's that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management.’

My final publication of 2025, in any case, was ‘2 Stories’ for Always Crashing, a publication I’ve admired for a while now. As the AC editors said of these pieces in their newsletter:

An accusation and a curse; two short fictions in which the tension turns on a speech act, or (in the case of “Pivot”) one might more properly say an act of indexing. In both the language rolls and builds and doubles back on itself, the syntax simultaneously baroque and deadpan. Both stories, of course, are very funny.

I was especially pleased with that last sentence. Thank you to Tadd, Jessica, Andy, Meghan & Josh for publishing those two short stories.

And thank you to you, if you have read this far. A belated happy new year. I hope it’s a good one.