Holiday Letter, 2022

 2022 Season’s Greetings!

Hi friends, enemies, lovers, and people I would hide from in Target or pretend not to recognize due to social anxiety,

For 2022, I really wanted to focus on the big stuff, the stuff I won’t forget. Without further ado, here are some of my highlights and unforgettable moments:

Memories & Moments

It is said that you can’t buy happiness, but this year, I spent more than $75 to dress up like John Lennon for 24 hours of Halloween, which turned out to be the most exhausting and exhilarating day of my life. After a day of mania in which I constantly spoke in a garbled accent with many frequent flier miles (New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, occasionally English) and inexplicably, in third person, I promptly collapsed into a winter-state of being, which has lasted until then, in which I have more or less retreated from society to lick my wounds and sit on my cardboard couch, looking wistfully outside my window, remembering my more youthful days as John. 

John holding a small pumpkin, orange Fanta, and wandering through a rustic vista at dusk, as one does. 

New York John and Abbey Road John resting on a gigantic white pumpkin together at dusk; NY John appears to be in good spirits whereas Abbey Road John appears to have burned through his daily reserves. 

Only just recently, on the Solstice, has my energy approached anything resembling…energetic. In a flurry of activity, my friend Dani and I decided to make the questionable decision to drive around during an active winter storm to 10 different friends’ homes to carol for them. Dani, always a crafty one, created ‘antlers’ made out of local materials found in her backyard and home. We naturally called her “Forest Head.” I dressed as a bizarre mixture of Santa Claus, John Lennon, and Pan, at one point describing myself as the pagan god of sex, at which my friend Gabe, whom we were visiting, blankly stared back at me. At each stop, we sang a Solstice-y song about returning light and then broke into “Jingle Bells.” 

The picture above is when Cuong ushered us in front of his luminous home to get the perfect shot when we arrived to carol for him. 

In other news, I thought quite a lot about the various pros and cons about buying rugs, did rigorous research, became increasingly dismayed at the state of rugs (they are grotesquely expensive!), thought a lot more about it, tried not to think about it, closed the door on all future rug-buying, felt a brief smug superiority about not needing rugs in MY apartment, and then bought two rugs. The rugs are middling quality, at best, and I have almost fallen and broken my body a few times so far, due to stubbornly refusing to buy rug matts. 

Rugs not pictured. 

My bandmate, Gabe, and I decided to make things more official as a band, and we asked his glamorous younger cousin to do a photo shoot of us in a nature reserve looking like lawyers who have never been outside or interacted with nature before. This is funny because our band’s name is “Keller & Griffin Partners in Injury, LLC.” Neither of us are sure how funny this is to anyone else besides us. 

Keller and Griffin stand in a prairie. Keller is on his phone and looks concerned. Griffin is looking for service. 

Keller and Griffin sit awkwardly on a rustic mat in a prairie. Griffin holds a bottle of pink Mike’s hard lemonade and is giving a thumbs-up. Both are smiling in a smarmy way. 

Keller and Griffin appear to be examining a large stick in a prairie. 

Griffin is bent over awkwardly, smelling part of nature. Keller looks on, amused. 

It was also a year of breaking barriers. Some friends and I, while visiting a friend in a rural corner of Minnesota, started a coven and decided to perform a ritualistic gay group marriage in a public part of the tiny downtown. We shortly thereafter descended upon the only gas station in the town to buy victuals for our wedding celebration: liquorice, energy drinks, chips, candy. 

The four witches holding up their ring(?) fingers, an ancient marriage rite. 

Lessons & Learning

Something I’m feeling fairly proud of from this last year is having figured out how to have healthy relationships. I read at least a few books that told me, in detailed and often patronizing instruction, how to be a mature adult in mutually respectful and loving relationships, and I haven’t had any trouble since! 

 

Thanks, book! 

I don’t have much else to say about that.

This year has also been about conquering fears and being my most courageous self. For example, several months ago, I went to a new dentist, saw the thing pictured below in the waiting room, and did not immediately leave. 

Terrifying, gleaming sculpture of an unknown creature with blinding white teeth and a toothbrush

In fact, I did a lot of learning throughout the year! I was especially taken by Black Holes, which I have capitalized purely out of respect. I mean that metaphorically, since if I was truly to be taken by a Black Hole, then I would have swiftly undergone a spaghettification process whereby my body would essentially be stretched out into long spaghetti strips until it broke apart into bits of matter. And then my bits of matter would pretty much exit the universe and disappear and I would cease to have ever existed. There’s also something about a singularity, which sounds quite stately. I read a book and then watched a documentary about Black Holes and entered into a brief period of existential dread, which I have thankfully emerged from, for the most part (unlike anything that ever falls into a Black Hole). I am especially impressed by their ability to change the very nature of time and light. I believe, in general, that they are very misunderstood. 

Indeed, my thirst for knowledge never seems to be quenched. To illustrate, let me present you with a scene: It is 9:15pm on a Saturday night. I am awkwardly early to a queer dance night at a local bar. I only wish to dance and not to speak to anyone. No one is on the dance floor yet, and I feel awkward, so instead of being the first to dance or, god forbid, talk to anyone, I embark on an epic spur-of-the-moment rabbithole sesh that starts with me googling “mummies”, meanders to looking at the body casts from Pompeii, and ends, 20 minutes later, with me ogling photos of remarkably well-preserved humans, such as the Beauty of Xiaohe, a mummy who I would hesitantly and cautiously describe as attractive. Behold the scene! Waiting to dance, she buries herself into long-dead people. At some point, worried about someone looking over my shoulder, I turned my phone off and started dancing. 

Ups & Downs

There have definitely been some ups and downs, too!

I think one of the most exciting parts of this last year has involved my sunglasses, which I see as a central symbol in my life, of something really meaningful. Those of you who know me might know that I’ve had the same pair of red sunglasses for the last 6+ years (they are originally from Laos) and that they are miraculous in that, before this very pair, I was never able to maintain the bodily or spatial integrity of sunglasses. I was either sitting on them or losing them to bushes. These prodigious red sunglasses had deteriorated increasingly over time and had begun to take on the appearance of an object that had been dipped into various vats of acid. In a plot twist that no one was expecting, this beloved pair met their final match during the summer, and broke, without ceremony, while on my face. It was a difficult time. I even tried to wear the glasses with one of their ‘arms’ missing, but it wasn’t the same, and they kept falling off my face and exposing my sensitive eyes to the fire (sun). After the appropriate mourning period, I found another pair of sunglasses that were tastefully different (I couldn’t bear to wear anything that would approximate my beloveds); the gigantic white heart-shaped ones pictured below. Unfortunately, one day, I dropped these white sunglasses inside a table (don’t ask me how that works!). They were missing for months. I went to Target, filled with dread, and bought a really shitty pair of red heart-shaped glasses that kept on sliding down my face. A few months later, I looked inside the table, as one does, and found the white heart-shaped glasses. I have worn them ever since. 

The red immortal sunglasses meet their end, pictured on grass. 

White heart-shaped sunglasses

It was, in fact, around this time, that another incredible thing happened. I was at the “People’s Pride” in Powderhorn Park, rummaging through a free clothes box, and I found a baby-blue Tommy Hilfiger boy's suit that fit me like a dream. 

The first moment I wore the blue suit.

I have nothing else in particular to say about the blue suit, but I like it and I think it looks good on me. 

Thank you for taking this journey with me, through all the highs and lows of the last year! I don't think there's much else to report. I considered asking ChatGPT to write this for me, but I wanted this to be written with heart. 

Happy Holidays,

Ilse

Photo taken by my niece, Lia