December in the Subtropics

Good things for your good heart

Dec 19, 2024

Dear Reader

Recently, we had a French visitor staying with us, and my son and I took her hiking on a mountain in the local area. She looked around and said, “the colour, it’s intense”.

You forget sometimes, living in a place, what it really looks like. The rainforest was full of pademelons, too, which is indicative of a lot of green feed around. We didn’t even try to look nonchalant about the abundance of animals and little running streams in front of her. We kept stopping to take it all in.

Christmas is a time of storms around here. Both literal and symbolic, I guess. It is the beginning of summer, but as well as all the brilliant light of this season, we can also be descended into darkness by late afternoon, as huge storms come rolling in over us. It’s all very dramatic.

The rain is warm, so you try pushing on with life, regardless. Children playing in the rain. Parties happening. Getting dressed up and ruining your fancy shoes while escaping through flooded streets. And, in our case, husbands and teenage boys building decks.. sometimes also in the rain1.

As you might recall, I try to accept, if not embrace seasons, as they are, but wish us luck for a break from the humidity.

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Rain
by Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

This month’s newsletter is full of little Christmas treats for you. It’s a little pile of stones - suggestions of nice things to absorb. Next newsletter I will get back to more discussion, more journaling.

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Good Book

My favourite book this year was not a new novel, but if you are in the market for a book recommendation then I absolutely loved Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. It’s about a little tinderbox of a group of people on holiday (so, very appropriate for your holiday reading) and how the presence of a very nuts type person2 can really just set everyone off. Then, we’re all nuts.

The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Good Music

Some holiday listening. This is 3 for a road trip to your family Christmas. Or else, get yourself a whiskey or a beer and listen to this one on your deck.

Good Thought

My favourite psychoanalyst, Orna Guralnik is talking about the current state of politics, here in The New York Times:

The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.
It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state, we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves, we become allergic to dissonance, and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.
To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms, we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.

Good Film

Firebrand has not received the reception it deserves. But, I loved this film.

Here is Brazilian film director, Karim Aïnouz in The New York Times talking about his approach to the story of Henry the VIII and his last wife, Katherine, which he treated as a thriller.

“I began to understand that this was really about Katherine, a woman trying to change things through soft power. There are many narratives of the global South from American or English directors, and I started to think it was interesting to reverse that perspective.
There was something very hot-blooded about the Tudors, something operatic and kind of bling-bling which reminds me of Latin culture. It was surprising to me to find out that English identity, as we think of it, is an idea from the Victorian era. There was something dramatic and golden and violent and romantic about the Tudors that really intrigued me.”

Good Television

Our most recent fun with television was watching the IRA story, Say Nothing. I highly recommend that series, but it’s not particularly suited to the Christmas break. Instead, let me share with you that we are about to dive into So Long Marianne4.

This series sounds ideal for the Christmas down-time - it has both Greece and Leonard Cohen. But watching the first episode I also realised that, of course, it crosses the paths of Australian writers, Charmian Clift and George Johnston. Even better. Have you read Clift’s Peel Me a Lotus, about their time living in an enclave of artists and writers in Greece and raising kids, arguing, having affairs and drinking, a lot? (Quite the motherhood memoir!). Another book recommendation from me. A friend gave me the book after she named her baby after Charmian.

So, I think this TV series might be good.

Good Art

There’s not enough art celebrating the splendour and craziness of repartnering. I came across this wonderful piece by David Hockney, called Second Marriage, the other day in a gallery.

Look at this husband and wife. These two have been through some shit. But also, they’re equals.

Good Arguments

John Kim, known as the ‘angry therapist’ (he seems quite calm) - reframing your partner’s conflict avoidance in your romantic relationship for you both, and telling you why your husband (I’m going to presume) needs to change that.

Good Advice

Comedian and writer, Simon Amstell on how to get along with your family, when you see them again at Christmas.

“These are funny people, how funny”.

Good Tip

I have started drinking magnesium, daily, and salty lassis5 (that I make myself), almost daily. And I feel better, you know? Like my back is less sore, my digestion is better. I hate people’s health tips, so you will almost never see me doing that, but maybe this one is a good thing to try?

Good Recipe

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Like a Wife

The week before my wedding, my friend's dad said:
just don't get fat, like other wives do.

And so I brined him in a deep salt bath, added thyme
and celery. Devoured him whole, in one big bite,
so he could see just how hungry a woman can be.

- Kate Baer

Good T-Shirt

I bought one of these Jacaranda t-shirts from Phoebe Paradise and you might like one too. You know I love Jacaranda season.

Good Parenting

“I made you somebody by shouting”. This is comedian, Romesh Ranganathan talking with his mother and it’s useful information for parenting in the Christmas season.

Good Newsletter

Alex Auder, the writer of Don’t Call Me Home who I have admired in a previous newsletter (last Christmas, it seems) has started a newsletter. Her latest newsletter is a typically amusing homage to her breast.. and middle-age. (Also includes photos, so is NSFW).

My left boob had a meteoric rise and fall. Wait. I shouldn’t call Left Boob mine as it emancipated itself at a very young age. When I was 16 Left Boob came into full being with great enthusiasm and loft. I immediately fell in love with it. I brought it with me everywhere and exposed it whenever and to whomever I could, always with awe and respect. Those who were lucky enough to flabberwobber Left Boob across their faces, told me it was one of the greatest wonders they had ever beheld. And then, like a Buddhist sand mandala, that was it: it gave up the ghost. The weight of the world was too much for Left Boob to contend with, so Left Boob bowed its head with grace and dignity and tried to devote itself to a life of listening.
But I had other plans for Left Boob.
As much as I tried to respect its desire to live off-grid, I was a little surprised it could only hold its own weight for a couple of years. I mean, I had prayed for Left Boob’s birth. I had waited and waited for Left Boob to reveal itself. I felt it owed me more than a flash in the pan. No, I said, YOU are in charge of the pan! I can’t let you go down without a fight. I was just shy of twenty when Left Boob held its first aluminum sauce pan with no help from me.

I have five ‘one month subscriptions’ to share. If you’d like one, please leave a comment below.

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December in the Subtropics

Good things for your good heart

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