Happy Solstice!
Last Christmas
Until the early 2000s, we celebrated Christmas as one big squabbling family. I personally made sure that the TV would stay off. Smartphones weren’t a thing yet. There were always fifteen or more of us, kids and adults from various parts of the country. My uncle would tell fascinating stories about his ulcers – I didn’t mind, it was just good to see him that one time in the year. Some got married, some were heading for a divorce that was not discussed at the table. At the centre of everything was my Grandma. I’d sit on the ground with my chin on her knee and just feel that… that thing that I thought of as Christmas. I did that when I was six and I still did it when I was twenty-something. We were not like a TV family – too much drinking, too much politics, too many ulcers – but even before I turned 20 I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that adverts and movies presented the real world.
Fifteen or sixteen years ago I came out as gay. I was assured that nothing would change, that I was loved as I was, and since I had a boyfriend I thought that meant he’d be treated the same way my cousins’ girlfriends were. My aunt, whose house was the only big enough to accommodate the whole shebang, told me that we were not welcome – it was fine for me to be gay, but only as long as I wasn’t being gay in her presence. That was it. I never even found out whether the rest of the family asked and/or were told why I suddenly stopped appearing.
What next?
Our family, with one or two exceptions, considered themselves atheists, but very few people in Poland didn’t celebrate the holiday. For us, Christmas had nothing to do with the church or Jesus. It was about being together, consuming a lot of calories, laughing at the kids that were nearly unconscious with excitement because there were presents. It took one short phone call – I was only going to ask whether three p.m. was good, or should we arrive earlier or later – to lose all that. I have never seen some of the family members again, those who lived so far away we only ever met on that one occasion. The end of December, however, didn’t get cancelled worldwide to make things easier for me.
The last few years have been filled with deaths of famous artists. I’m only going to list three – Bowie, Prince, George Michael. All three shocked me, because those artists have always been around and I somehow assumed it would never change. Bowie, in particular, had more lives than a cat, how could he just go and…run out? I stayed online for way too long, refreshing forums and news, trying to make some sense out of it. When yesterday I found out that Marie Fredriksson of Roxette has gone I just started crying, listening to my playlists, the albums, Marie’s solo records. She wasn’t a celebrity to me. She was a friend who’s been around for thirty-one years, even if we didn’t talk much.
I’ve been asked to provide some insight into my creative process. This made me feel like a total ~*hipsté-artisté*~ – I never really sit down and open my laptop thinking “ooh, it is time indeed to engage in my creative process” – but it coincided with a curious event.
Recently I’ve spent a few frustrating days catching up with TV. I rarely watch anything, but when I found out that two of my favourite books – Good Omens and American Gods – were receiving the visual treatment, I knew that within ten years I’ll sit down and watch, and that I will have a great time!
Bjørn asked a hard and insightful question: what is my series, Empire’s Legacy, really about? At first glance, they might appear to be a simple adventure-romance trilogy, set in an early-medieval world, with people a lot like Gaels and Vikings and Saxons vying for power and land, and the memory of the Roman Empire just barely alive.
…and after all this fun and games I sort of broke.
I kind of lost track of chronology due to sheer exhaustion, so this instalment won’t be neatly divided into days of the week.
Judging by my social media and the news articles, humans finally figured out that the climate crisis is 1) real, 2) going to kill us all. Obviously “all” is an incorrect word to use, because the rich – who are causing all this – will do just fine. (The American president, for instance, didn’t attend the climate summit – he, personally, doesn’t have to – yet.) A lot of post-apocalyptic cli-fi writers probably already described the new, crispy world that neither they nor I will be a part of, because we’ll be dead. When 