A Lovely Sparkling Solstice
in spite of everything and at the last minute
Welcome to the longest night of the year (if you live in the northern half of the planet).
The stars on a cold dark night are beautiful whatever the state of the world. And when we say not to let the bastards grind you down, we should include still being able to recognize the earth’s beauty. Right? That’s recognize in however you happen to be able—maybe the sight of silvery moon, the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot, the feel of a good coat, the taste of sprinkled sugar, or the taste of fresh orange.
Yet, am I ready for the Solstice? No. Not at all. Let’s see what I can share before the night runs out.
I received two books for my birthday: Witchcraft: a History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson and In the Dream House: a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado. In the Dream House is excellent and intense. Intense, y’all. It’s one of the few memoirs I’ve ever read that I couldn’t stop reading.
“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.” ~ Carmen Maria Machado
Witchcraft: a History in 13 Trials I’ve just started. I can’t remember when I first learned about witch trials, but it feels as if I’ve been fascinated by them all my life. Maybe I suspected I’d have been found guilty too.
“In the context of this book’s history of witchcraft, it becomes more evident why that is: these are all traits long associated with witches; features seen as ignorant, wicked, and shameful. Women with these traits have been demonized since the Middle Ages and across history, from Helena Scheuberin to Stormy Daniels.” ~ Marion Gibson
I also bought myself two books (okay, more than two, but I’m only talking about two here): Momento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life by Joanna Ebenstein and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century—Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder and illustrated by Nora Krug.
Lots of folks are reading On Tyranny (as they should), and when I saw a graphic edition, that’s the one I wanted. Of course! I love an illustrated book.
Subscribe to Snyder’s newsletter as well.
Now, from Memento Mori:
For as long as I can remember, people called me morbid for being interested in death, and for many years I simply accepter their opinion as fact. But as I grew older, I began to think about it more deeply. If everyone who has ever lived has died; if I—barring some medical miracle—will also die: if we still don’t know what happens after we die—if it is, in essence, still the great human mystery; then how could one not be interested in death? Isn’t it more morbid not to think about it? And what does it say about a culture that seeks to avoid any serious engagement with this unavoidable fact of life? ~ Joanna Ebenstein
Some videos for the season: The Postal Museum at Christmas or Why Do These Monsters Want to Destroy the World?
I love the Solstice even in dark and challenging times. I don’t have much else to say right now, but thanks for reading. Thanks for supporting my work. You are a bright light in the longest night of the year.
A while ago, I shared the beginning of a story. Here’s the entire thing. It is a rough draft! Just so you know. It’s long for a newsletter, I suppose. Oh well! It may not make sense, but I enjoyed writing it.
When Time Ran Out at the Blue Hotel
Time ran differently on the many city streets. Lolly Paganini ran down Spruce Street at five o’clock, and she was quick, but it was still midnight when she turned onto Central Avenue. She cursed a bit. A person had to be good at calculating hours to get anywhere on time. It’s true some people lived their whole lives on one street. It was just easier and if you walked long enough, you could find most of what you needed, and what you couldn’t find, you lived without.
But Lolly was always crossing the intersection where time crawling met up with time flying. It was a miracle to avoid an accident there, time crashing into itself and sending people backwards or forwards, giving them or losing them years. Luckily, Lolly was nimble and well-practiced at keeping her head on straight. So she was lucky enough, she thought, to live on Avenue M where noon happened three times a day and to work on Willow Boulevard where noon came only four times a week.
Lolly worked at the front desk of the Blue Hotel. As far as her family back on Avenue M was concerned, she’d worked there for only a couple of years, since she was thirteen, but at work she’d just been given a pin for ten years of service. “How is that?” her mother had asked, seeing the pin on Lolly’s lapel.
Because Lolly was famous for her patience, she smiled. “Ma, the same reason you never leave our street. It’s different out there. You know that.”
“Never did understand it.”
“No one does.”
“It’s ‘cause we’re cursed!” her father shouted from his over-stuffed green chair in the corner.
Lolly just nodded. She knew better than to pursue an argument her father wanted. Did he mean they were cursed not to understand or cursed to live in the timeful city? She used to ask that question whenever he brought it up, but she’d learned long ago that the difference didn’t matter to him.
Now dashing into the Blue Hotel, Lolly double checked the date on the calendar (for as good as she was, it paid to double check), hung her purple coat on the rusty coat rack, and let herself into the space behind the front desk. The manager was dozing in the chair, a cigar resting on his chest.
“Morning, Hamish,” she said. It must’ve been a quiet night for his cigar to be down to almost a nub.
He grunted and woke up. “Lolly-lu!” He sat up too quickly and what was left of the cigar hit the floor and rolled under the wall of mail slots, where it would remain. “You know what today is, girl?”
“Monday,” she said. “I checked.”
“No! I mean, yes. But it’s more than that. Didn’t I tell you?”
She paused. She’d been looking at the registration book on the counter and seeing if the pen on the chain still had ink. There were more new names than she expected. She didn’t bother pointing out that he was forever not telling her things and then acting surprised she didn’t know. She had joked with friends that she should get him a key chain that read, didn’t I tell you?
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The mayor’s coming.”
Lolly thought she couldn’t be surprised. Everything and anything happened at the Blue Hotel, especially at night. She expected stories of impromptu weddings and crimes of passion or thefts and hauntings or drunken rows between conference attendees and event planners trying to run out without paying. She expected cats rescued from air vents and poltergeist handcuffed to the radiator. She expected guests attacking the cleaning staff, dying in the pool, or finding true love in the elevator. She didn’t expect the mayor.
Who even was the mayor? She had no time for politics. “Why?” she asked. “He…or she…want a room?” Surely the mayor preferred the scrumptious and luxurious Floridonian when needing a hotel.
“He.” Hamish stood and brushed crumbs off his shirt. “And he don’t want no room. He’s got a hundred or more of his own. No, girl. Get some sense. You been watching the news?”
She blinked. Why on earth would she do a thing like that?
A guest then turned up at the desk asking for their mail. Hamish grunted and handed it over. After the guest scurried away with their fliers and envelopes covered in letters and runes, Hamish turned back to Lolly who still stood by the registry book. “He wants to clean up the city. He’s been shouting about it for weeks, months. Years maybe depending what street you’re on. Anyways. He wants to clean up the city. That’s what he’s been hollerin about.”
Ah. It was time for another sweep of the homeless and strippers, dealers and reprobates, angels and musicians. Willow Boulevard had its fair share of all that. “Where’s he going to put the disagreeables this time?” she asked. Sometimes folks were lucky and got put in the shelter where social workers helped them straighten out their lives. Sometimes they got put into camps on the outskirts of the city, where time twisted around on itself. That was a hard place. You could end up younger than you thought or end up dead, aged before you were born. Citizens often protested such treatment, but it was hard to protest on time when on some streets the clean up happened yesterday and on other streets it happened six months back or ten years.
Hamish pulled open a drawer and took out a tin of breath mints. “There may be some of that, but no, he’s aiming to clean up time.”
“Clean up time?”
“Make it uniform. He says time has gotten out of control. It runs riot through this city, making it impossible to get things done, wasting taxpayer dollars in clocks and calendars and time training.”
“Time isn’t a vagrant. You can’t send your cops out to grab it and drag it into a van and take it where you please.”
Hamish chuckled and popped three mints into his mouth. “Like to see him try. No, but he’s gonna do his best to straighten out time, at least in some parts of the city, you know where the high and mighty want to have meetings and memos and a consistent tax day to avoid.”
“Why come here? Who’s high and mighty round here?”
“Lolly. I got you a job here because you’re smart. Come now. You know how them politickers like to be photographed here when there’s blamin’ to be done and promises to wave.”
“I don’t believe for two seconds on Main Street that he cares that our guests get to where they’re going in a timely fashion.”
“And right you are not to believe that. No. But Lolly-lu.” Hamish gestured at the lobby behind the front desk. “He blames us for time.”
For once Lolly was too stunned to ask a question.
“That’s right,” Hamish continued. “This is why you should watch the news, girl. So when they’re planning to come for you, you’re not taken by surprise. Now, that mayor says the problem with time comes straight from this hotel. Why look at the folks who stay here and the reasons the cops got to come. Lolly-lu, hold onto your hat, or in your case parasol, because that mayor is going to stand right in front the Blue and demand its demolition. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t want us in it when the wrecking ball shows up. Hell, he might bring it with him today. I hear he has one of his very own. A big wrecking ball he keeps shiny and bright and with his name, Ed Evanneer, engraved on it. For some folks that’s the last thing they’re ever going to see.”
“He wouldn’t. He can’t. This is the Blue! Sure, it’s rough, but where else are these people going to go?”
“To hell, to hear him tell it. Anyways, Lolly-lu. Get yourself ready. He’s coming and you can’t stop him.”
In fact, what stopped him on the particular day from showing up at the Blue Hotel was a whole heap of lost time at the intersection of Ave. A and First Street. It wasn’t unheard of. The conflicting timelines ran over each other, got lost in themselves, and created more lost time than the city’s cleanup crews could deal with. They were ridiculously underfunded, which Mayor Ed Evanneer had never much cared about before. He wasn’t too angry this time around, however, since it proved his point. Time was a-wasting.
The mayor rescheduled his appearance at the Blue Hotel, buying, unbeknownst to him, Lolly Paganini time to fight city hall.
Lolly tried many things to advocate for the Blue Hotel and its inhabitants. She cajoled tenants into letter writing campaigns. She made phone calls (which were tricky when the phonelines got tangled up in the timelines). She wore her very best dress and visited the mayor’s office, where no one gave her the time of day seeing as she was too young and, everyone in the office agreed, self-important, marching into rooms as if she believed she had something to say. The mayor’s personal assistant was offended at the very sight of her, her direct gaze and loud voice. They sent her away with the advice to use her time more wisely and learn some manners.
She wasn’t interested in their advice. Instead, she put up posters—Save the Blue Hotel! And Maybe you’ll be next! Most of the posters withered away in the blink of an eye, but some, those is the hardiest timelines, stayed like new, unfaded and untorn. A few people read them though even fewer thought it worth rallying to the cause. They were sorry, of course, but who had time for that?
The Blue Hotel stood near the intersection of Willow Boulevard and Main. Main was an especially unpredictable street. It ran straight through the city, and while other streets, thoroughfares, and boulevards were fairly consistent (on 27th Street it was never Tuesday and on Elm Lane the noon hour took all day), Main Street could be anything.
The letters, posters, and phone calls did nothing to stop the mayor once his schedule cleared up. He finally arrived, a wrecking ball crane behind him. The massive wrecking ball crane, its bright yellow body squatting in the road, blocked traffic on Willow Boulevard while Main Street traffic trundled by, unconcerned with the troubles of side streets.
A crowd was gathering. Those who lived around the Blue were subdued, frowning at the shiny machine and equally shiny mayor. But many on the street looking from crane to hotel and back to crane were from other streets. They’d heard plenty of rumors about the Blue, and so choosing to believe the most salacious of them, they came to applaud the hotel’s destruction.
However, Mayor Ed Evanneer wanted all eyes on him.
This crane, the Wreckanneer, the mayor called it (always with a chuckle), had been built taller than any other. Everything from the turntable to the jib midsection stretched taller or longer than standard. The city engineers hadn’t approved, and so Mayor Evanneer replaced them. It took several tries to find engineers who understood his genius. Now on this crisp bright fall morning, he jaunted up the slim narrow steps going to the roof of the crane cabin, stood in his well-practiced power pose, and grinned at the crowd as if he had all the time in the world.
He began his speech. But half of the assembled people wanted to see the hotel fall, not listen to speeches. It wasn’t that they disliked the Blue. They’d just never seen a fourteen-story building brought down, and surely it would be fun. Surely the place deserved it. A speech could be heard anytime. The shattering of concrete and glass was an event.
Lolly Paganinni wanted none of it. “There’s people inside!”
Ed Evanneer looked down at the girl shouting from below. “People?” he laughed. “They’re criminals. Leeches. Mold. They knew we were coming and could’ve removed themselves ages ago.” The crowd was becoming restless, but the hint of a fight piqued their interest. Was this an opening act?
Mayor Evanneer jutted out his chin further than even the most obsequious portrait painter would’ve dared. A few of the more astute onlookers began to wonder about the balance of things, the mayor, the wrecking ball, and the turn of events.
“They’ve taken advantage of us their whole lives and twisted time for their own purposes,” the mayor continued. “Well, I shall make time straight!” He thrust his arm outward, and the audience gasped. Later, a few witnesses would say they heard the first creak. Not that they said anything at the time.
“You can’t do this!” Lolly shouted up to the mayor astride the yellow beast.
He didn’t look down. “I’m the mayor.” He dropped his arm by his side. “The people chose me. I can do what I want!” Now he winked at the crowd. The crowd laughed, though perhaps uneasily. News accounts would vary widely on this point.
Lolly fumed. “Well, I’m not having it.” And with a jolt forward, she scrambled up the giant lower walking body of the crane and up the slim narrow steps.
The mayor’s security team hadn’t been watching the girl. They’d been eyeing suspicious looking men and oversized parked cars. The mayor, beaming over the crowd, maintaining his power pose, didn’t see her either. So, he misunderstood why the crowd began to point. He preferred eyes in his direction, not fingers. Glancing down to make sure nothing was amiss with his newest, bluest suit, he adjusted the wrecking ball pin in his lapel and the sun shone upon it.
The security detail was too unprepared and too clumsy to intervene in what happened next.
The crowd shouted. Or cheered or jeered. Again, news reports would vary.
Lolly reached the top of the cab. The mayor finally saw her. He laughed. If girls were going to chase after him, he knew he’d reached another pinnacle of success. His time had come.
Lolly hurled forward.
The crowd behaved like a crowd. They surged. They jostled and some knocked each other sideways with their shoulders in a friendly I-told-you-this-would-be-fun manner.
Lolly had tackled enough drunks to know what she was doing, while Mayor Ed Evanneer had never been tackled in his life. And he certainly wouldn’t guess a girl capable of such a thing. Nonetheless, Lolly Paganini plowed right into him and both sailed onto the yellow metal cabin’s surface. They landed hard. The monstrous machine shook. It lurched. It really creaked.
Lolly, already back on her feet, leapt to the machine’s edge. It tipped.
Having been made taller and more elegant at the mayor’s demand, the crane’s balance was off, and once the weight shifted, it couldn’t stop. The crowd screamed. Now everyone was shouting for the same thing—get out of the way.
The mayor attempted to get to his feet, but his shoes, fine expensive things, with smooth, shiny soles, went out from under him. The wrecking ball crane tipped more, creaked more, shuddered, and, after a pause, careened all the way over.
Metal clanged and bent. Parked cars accordioned under the weight. The ball itself swung and pivoted the crane’s arm. It looped and cratered in the middle of Main, shaking the streets and sidewalks. Fissures cracked their way out in every direction.
Lolly and the mayor slid off the cabin roof and hit the pavement. Lolly landed on her feet. The mayor landed flat. He wheezed and struggled over broken pavement. Rolling over, he groaned, and pushed himself awkwardly upright. Blood trickled down the side of his face. His elbow poked out of his torn jacket. One shoe was underneath him.
The fissures widened. Steam rose. Windows in the nearest buildings shattered. And then the light changed.
It had been night on Main Street but late morning on Willow. People usually took for granted the strange and confusing shadows the various time streams created. Now the light shifted, the shadows moved, and the entire intersection fell into direct sunlight.
Lolly looked at her watch. Two o’clock in the afternoon. She bolted past Mayor Evanneer, who half-heartedly and in vain reached for her. Even if she’d been slow, he wouldn’t have caught her. He was too bruised. His muscles had been pulled in terrible directions.
Darting down the wreckage of Main Street, Lolly checked her watch again. Two o’clock. Disbelieving, she ran further to the next street, Avenue Q, and it was two oh-one. She looked up into the sky. The sunlight was the same everywhere.
She had to catch her breath. Opening her hand she saw the mayor’s lapel pin. She’d grabbed when she tackled him, apparently, though she’d never remember doing it. Its golden sheen dulled. Its surface cracked. Lolly pitched it into the nearby gutter where it disappeared.
Time, it seemed, was back on track. The Blue Hotel was saved, and the mayor would do no more power poses. He broke his leg in three places. News reports later said when he finally went back to his office, he broke the first clock he saw. Time Not on the Mayor’s Side, said the headline before he was voted out of office. The inquiry into the girl who destroyed the wrecking ball and the mayor’s reputation was forgotten. Most people forgot a girl was even involved. The man did this to himself, they said, time and time again.
Lolly went back to work. “Lolly-lu,” Hamish declared when she walked in. “Didn’t I tell you? You’re late!”
“Yes!” she said as she spun around in her purple coat with her arms outstretched. “I am! Isn’t it wonderful?” And they both laughed.
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Best wishes in the New Year!
This is amazing, much like you!
A great read, perfect for tonight!