An argument for the curiosity project

On following curiosity, cults, The Nutcracker, the Winter Solstice, writing about others, and lampposts marking the passage of time

There is always a 10-day stretch leading up to the winter solstice in which I feel completely drained of energy, my animal body moving slow, slower, the slowest it has all year. I wake when it’s dark and sometimes it’s hours before the light comes in, and I sit at my desk and type away as the artificial glare of a life-saving SAD lamp casts light across my face. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it’s the sun.

I’ve added rituals of comfort to my days, lighting pine-scented candles and savoring an afternoon cup of tea.

When my workday is over, I have just 13 minutes until the sun sets. The early darkening is encompassing, cave-like. I find myself not wanting to venture out when it’s dark.

In an effort to lean into the unavoidable slowdown, and taking note of what I’ve done in recent winters that has worked, I’ve been reading “A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression” by Jacqueline Suskin. Two artists I follow, Marlee Grace and Anna Fusco, highly recommended it.

She writes:

“As humans, we’re caught in a long cycle of forgetfulness. There’s so much in our current culture that distracts us from the inherent information the earth provides. We’ve replaced the cyclical gifts of the season with controlled temperatures, ceaseless production schedules, and year-round access to always-ripe fruit. We’ve cut so many of our roots that connect us with the ebb and flow of earthly process. These changes have brought us comfort and a sense of advancement, but they’ve also disconnected us from a natural pattern of rest and revitalization.”¹

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I’ve been watching a lot of cult documentaries lately, the most recently being “Escaping Twin Flames” on Netflix. I always wondered what drew people in and made them stay in high-control groups, where your identity and autonomy are stripped away bit by bit. In these documentaries, you hear similar stories about how people “got in.” They all seem to go through a homogenization process, creating a “sameness” in a shared identity, which evolves into trauma bonding. You also witness the cult leaders evolve from failed entrepreneur to downright tyrant. Take Jeff Divine from Twin Flames, for example: he started as a con artist trying to make it big with yet another business idea in a long line of failures. Somehow, this one stuck, and he got a bunch of people to join. For the last act, we watch as he fully ascends into a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac who says things like, “I am your god,” tells people whether they’re “masculine” or “feminine,” and dictates romantic partners for his members. All the while, I watched his wife and cult leader partner Shalia go from a confident, communicative woman to someone who feels completely flat on screen, as if she were overly medicated.

Maybe this will be one of my winter “curiosity projects” — reading books and watching documentaries about cults. The nice thing about a curiosity project is that it doesn’t have any real parameters, other than following your curiosity. There’s no finished project to turn in, no deadline, no grade, no pass/fail. It’s simply the thought of, I’d like to know more about that or I wonder what would happen if …

A curiosity project can be big or small. You can keep it going as long as you want, or wrap it up and move on in an hour. And while you can technically do a curiosity project at any point in the year, I always find myself leaning into them in winter, when there’s less distraction and less pressure to go out and do, when it feels like there’s more time.

One winter, February of 2021, I force-started hyacinth bulbs in Ball jars. I filled the jars with stones, then added water to the jar until they were covered. I set the bulb root-down onto the watery rocks, careful to monitor and maintain the proper water level. Before any bit of green had even broken through the solid winter earth outside, I had white root tendrils curling around the rocks, spikes of green jutting up from a shimmery purple bulb, and clusters of pink and white hyacinth blossoms flooding my kitchen with the most romantic scent of spring. It felt magical, conjuring the cycles of nature out of time.

Force-started hyacinth bulbs -- a Feb. 2021 "curiosity project."

Even now, I imagine the dormant life in those hyacinth bulbs, how they reach toward water, seeking a place to root. I liken it to an idea, an itch — why not try? Why not nudge those tendrils of curiosity?

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I recently finished the memoir “Molly” by Blake Butler, a terrifyingly difficult read, but one that was important for me to read, because I too write about people who have died, people whose loss has irrevocably changed me, has ripped a fissure in the fabric of my reality, upended my universe. Without going into too much detail, the book is about a writer who loses his wife, also a writer and multitalented artist/teacher, to suicide. In the weeks and months after her death, he uncovers a lot of things he didn’t know about her — things that are pretty heartbreaking.

I’ve been wanting to think and talk about this book without wading too far into the discourse it’s kicked up, as challenging books often do. And the gist of that is: who has the right to tell parts of another’s story, if they are not alive to defend themselves? And: Does gender play a role in how we tell those stories (however intersecting with our own)?

I’ve thought about this a lot in the general context of essays and creative nonfiction, as I’m someone who writes about complicated subjects, featuring many in my life who are dead and alive. I’ve often thought about it when writing about A. — how much is too much? What’s mine to tell, and what’s not? And I usually come down to the same problem (I’m calling it a “problem” because that feels like the simplest way to put it): our lives intersected, overlapped, informed each other’s. Learning about A. after death, and learning how much I didn’t know, is in fact a part of my story, even if it’s also theirs. But how to approach that? How to wrestle with it on the page? Another thing entirely. Something to chew on. Maybe another writing-based “curiosity project” for me.

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I just started “Winter Solstice” by Nina MacLaughlin, a gorgeous little book that would make a great gift for the reader, nature lover, or poetry lover in your life. She writes:

“Dark makes its annual inhale of light. It seems night all the time now, and it’ll keep getting nighter as we spin toward the solstice. If you follow the meteorological calendar, December 1 is the first day of winter. If you follow the astrological calendar, calibrated by the position of the sun, winter begins on the 21st or 22nd of December when the earth, in the Northern Hemisphere, is tilted farthest away from the sun, when we’re delivered the longest night of the year. These are lampposts to string your lights around, ways of managing your time, systems to agree with and believe in.

What’s the start of the season for you? Is it: the first time you see your breath; the first potato-chip crisp of ice on a puddle; the first snow; the first mug of hot chocolate; tinsel; menorah; mistletoe?”²

On Saturday night, I immersed myself in the magic of The Nutcracker, swept up by the orchestral music, the movements, the movements of dancers on stage as they danced this familiar ballet. One of my favorite moments is the very beginning, before the curtain rises. The house that Clara and Fritz live in is illuminated, each window glowing by candlelight, among snowy trees. Those familiar with the story know the house is full of happy people, a Christmas Eve party full of merriment and joy, adults laughing and dancing and children running amok, getting underfoot in the way children do. It is the precipice of celebration, of Christmas joy embodied, of the deep, dream-full slumber (or is it?) Clara enters when the clock strikes midnight.

During the days when the dark feels longest, it feels good to gather, to have moments to join together, to have fellowship. To have specific things to notice, things that help mark the time. Going to see The Nutcracker, for me, is one of those traditions that guards against the obliteration total darkness can bring — it’s a light, a guidepost. It’s a reminder that magic sometimes takes just a spark, and that can be more than enough.

1. Suskin, Jacqueline. A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression. Boulder: Sounds True, 2023. (pp. 4-5.)

2. MacLaughlin, Nina. Winter Solstice. Boston: Black Sparrow Press, 2023. (pg. 14.)