Holiday Lab-ish
+ Orbital (week 8) all of time in a year
Good morning!
For years, I’ve run a holiday lab through my platform, and as I revisit the archive now, I am struck by the consistent thread of agency I tried to activate in readers. There is so much sadness, frustration, and unfulfillment throughout the season, mostly from self-imposed unrealistic expectations and labor.
As always, I say stop it!
This is a magical time of year, but not because of the decorations or overabundance of gifts. It is a time ripe for reflection, cozy time, wrapping up the year, long nights in, and recovery.
The holidays are not something to nail or get right. I am a firm believer that they should not be aspirational. The intent, the close observation and gratitude, the nowness of it all can be the gift.
What if we culled instead of creating a huge list of things to do/prepare/buy/make happen?
Edit down to the essentials and watch those expand to fill the space.
So, if you have time, write or chat with your people. A yearly check-in to see what everyone’s wishes and expectations are is clarifying (and sometimes surprising).
Then, your job is NOT to make all that happen, but to support others in bringing their vision to your home, too.
Here are a series of questions that might be useful. My family is tied to the academic schedule, and this reflects that. Adjust them for your people.
What are you looking forward to most over the holiday break?
What feeling are you most needing to feel this season?
Is there anything special you want to do/see/watch? Movies? Theatre? Choral? Museum shows?
What foods are you hoping to make/enjoy/learn to make?
Are there any crafts or art projects you would like to spend time on?
Do you have ideas or thoughts about gift-giving in our family this year?
Can you think of any non-commercial gifting ideas? Can we reimagine gifts? (plan an evening? A family game? Teach a skill? Coordinate a hike?)
Would you be interested in planning a family night? What would you want to do? How can I help? (Game night? Ice skating? Movie night? Craft?)
When school starts back, how do you hope to feel? What can we do to support that?
What are you looking forward to next year, 2026!? Anything we can do to set the stage?
Over the following weeks, I will share more ideas about decorating, gifts, food, and other activities, not as a guide to follow but as inspiration or permission to disrupt and explore the season in new ways.
I share all this as a fellow good-intentioned, flawed friend trying to figure everything out.
I hope you will share your ideas too.
Consider joining the lab portion of this Substack, where I share creative prompts each Wednesday.
From reading and writing to activities in the world, it is a great space that supports a curiosity-based practice.
This week, I am sharing an activity you can do with your people over the holidays that is surprising and makes for an easy connection (no Thanksgiving fighting!).
Orbital
week 8, Orbits 11, 12, + 13
We have two weeks left, which, when you hold the book in your hands, might seem silly. I mean, we could finish up sitting with a cup of tea this afternoon.
But we will continue at a snail’s pace to the end.
This week’s reading was short but so powerful. We start with Shaun’s grappling with the reporter’s big question about the future, and he surmises that we are like windblown leaves, trying so hard to be special, singular, loved that we have deceived ourselves into thinking we are the wind. Imagery of gibbons calling in the rainforest reinforces this idea of our tribal and humble ancestors, from which we are not far removed.
Then we move into the lab, where Chie is overwhelmed with the grief of her mother’s death. It overcomes her like a suffocating wave. She balls herself up and floats around the lab, lost in her pain. Again, Harvey deftly connects human experiences with animals, as we, along with Chie, see the mice finally let go of their gridded cages and float around. She wonders if they have joy as they find their space legs, but I doubt it. I think they finally, exhaustedly, gave up their firm grip and attempts at control, much like we are gently persuaded to do.
All of this sets us up for a spectacular Orbit 13, where we are walked through the year-long model of the universe. You might have seen this online or learned about it in school. The gist is that if we traced all the understood history of the universe from the Big Bang to now, humans would show up in the last hours of the last day of the year.
That is how recent and insignificant we are on this timeline.
But what makes this chapter so moving to me is the long list of what is contained in those last hours. Harvey throws a net over human history and reports back with a wide-ranging haulof notable people: Beatrix Potter, Indira Gandhi, Stravinsky, FloJo, Yeats, Tesla, Ada Lovelace, and humans actions/inventons: wars, split atoms, unfriending, fascism, surrealism, crowdfunding, and finally the mundane and dometic: tea bags, frozen food, the spring mattress, jeans. It is a touching and heartbreaking index that made me think of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” or those end-of-year wrap-ups on the news.
Harvey darkly imagines the future and seems to offer a bit of warning and directive when she writes:
We exist now in a fleeting bloom of life and knowing, one finger-snap of frantic being, and this is it. This summery burst of life is more bomb than bud. The fecund times are moving fast.
It is probably going to end, but maybe look and enjoy what we have? I mean, what else can we do?
Next week (9), a super short reading Orbit 14 ascending (p176-184). See you there!
This was perfect timing because I love doing advent in December, but as my kids get older (14 and 16 now), it definitely has evolved. Your list of questions are definitely ones I will use to help shape our advent experience.
I also REALLY loved Orbital 13 in this week's reading. So good. But also from Orbital 11, Chie in her grief and the passage about gibbons found me writing "memory as song" in the margin. And the thought that one creature can tell us the whole history of earth. Another thing from Orbital 11 was the idea of being in "a constant state of free fall." And Orbital 12, so short and sweet. This week's reading was a gift.
Additionally, I finally watched Perfect Days (a Japanese film from 2023). I think it was at Amy's recommendation, but I know others have recommended it as well. Watching this film while also doing this read of Orbital felt so complimentary, the two resonating with each other in the way that they bring forth the beauty of routine and of the mundane. In Perfect Days, the film is framed in daily segments that felt similar to chapters framed by Orbitals. And the different people that come in and out of the main character's life and his relationships to them made me think of the beauty of the relationships of the characters on the spaceship, their relationships to each other, but also the snippets we get into the relationships with their loved ones back on Earth.
Anyway, I was grateful for the timing of both of these pieces of media in my life together.
Finally, I have another recommendation for a collective short read: The Book of Records by Madelien Thien. I started it through Libby, but decided I want to revisit it when I get my hands on a physical copy. It feels like a book that would be lovely as a slowly read.