This issue has a lot of pictures, so your email client may not handle it correctly. You can read it at the Substack website.
This is a creative writing post (#28) from my occasional series for paid subscribers, who can also leave comments on most posts. As always, email hollymathnerd at gmail dot com if you would like a paid subscription but can’t afford one.
Last year, I learned the word hygge.
I saw it in a Magnetic Poetry set with the theme of winter, and looked it up.
Instantly, I attached the word to one of my favorite sensory experiences: the re-warming that begins exactly halfway up the stairs to my apartment after going outside long enough to get really, really cold. It continues through the shedding of my hat, mittens, scarf, and hoodie, at the top of the stairs, and peaks a few minutes later when the re-warming is complete.
The predictability of this movement, the change from shivering to comfortable happening in the same way, and at the same pace, it has happened so many times before, is a warming that feels much deeper than my physical body.
The warming touches something in my psyche that’s almost always sad or scared—touches it with a kind of comfort that I’ve rarely experienced any other way. There’s a mocking imitation of self-help tropes about “giving yourself a hug,” which is of course impossible. But this ritual, which I love, may come close.
My days have many rituals.
Rituals are soothing.
Rituals relax the part of my brain that does a constant anxiety-based calculus.
Rituals serve as an orientation to the present, a reminder of where and when I am, and of the many ways my life is something I am choosing.
My newest ritual, surprisingly powerful and life-affirming, is the preparation of hot tea.
One of my dearest friends is an evolutionary biologist. He has told me many times how unhealthy soda is; our bodies simply did not evolve to cope with this stuff.
I have been seriously addicted to Coke Zero for years. At his urging, I tried to switch to coffee. Despite trying very hard—buying a machine to make high-end espresso at home, learning to froth milk so expertly that you’d think I had a master’s degree in gender studies—I just don’t like it.
This left me in a conundrum.