your witchy writer friend's year-end faves
happy holidays if you celebrate! ✨
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Hi my loves,
I hope you’re enjoying a lovely and restful holiday if you celebrate (and that any crazy-making family scenarios have been minimal). This will be my last newsletter of the year, but before we jump in, I’m excited to share a new concept I dreamed up for CK.
Bottom line, sending out this newsletter is a happy endeavor—dare I say a thing of beauty!—and I’ve realized that I want to do more to share the core joy it’s brought me. I write a lot about trauma, and healing, and how my past experiences have shaped me, and while I don’t intend to slow down on that, I often catch myself saying, “This is why we can’t have nice things!” about one negative news item or another. With all seriousness. Duality, I guess.
Because it’s true. There are so many reasons humans can’t have nice things—most of them pointing directly back to other humans. But, we can have nice things will be a part of CK that’s determinedly NOT about that. It’ll be an ongoing list of the reasons why we can:
of articles or (good) news items,
poems, stories, art, literature,
videos and other media I/you/this little growing community has consumed,
ritual practices, ideas, signs from the Universe, astrological transits that instill hope,
things that give me serotonin, things that I hope give you, my dear readers, serotonin…
and more.
I haven’t yet decided on the cadence I’ll send these editions of Cosmic Kudos out, but I know it’ll come to me over the next week. And I’d love your submissions! Please email them to kimiawrites@gmail.com to share and potentially be featured. You can also drop shorter submissions in the comments. I’m happy to cite you by name and link out to your Substack or other email newsletter if you have one. Rather be anonymous? Just let me know.
I make no secret of the fact that the Gregorian calendar and I don’t see eye to eye. In the spring, nature’s own new year transpires; so, too, does Aries season, and Persian New Year, and that just makes sense to me.
BUT.
I am a sucker for a good end-of-year roundup, especially the best reads of the year kind of posts. So I thought I’d include my unsolicited takes here!
Most unputdownable book
Why, yes. “Unputdownable” is actually a word.
And I am yet another person who thought Gabrielle Zevin’s experimental novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, was one of the best books of the year, though I’ll admit to not “getting it” at first. A Good Read, but nowhere near as memorable as people were saying, I thought cynically, even as I rapidly sucked it down via the Libby app. (I promise I’m not a Libby ambassador, though if you’d like to sponsor me at any time, my dear Libs, know that I am game.)
Until it grabbed hold of me and shook. A little at a time, and then all at once!
The books that make you fall in love with characters you weren’t expecting to like, much less get so completely under your skin, will never cease to be my favorites. I don’t play video games, nor was I particularly enamored with the worlds within them. But there’s something special when, despite that, a writer can make you care so deeply you end up telling everyone you know:
Do yourself a favor and read. this. book!
Honorary mention: Sirens & Muses, by Antonia Angress. Set in the art world circa 2011, this is a sexy and dreamy thrill of a debut novel, and one I consumed nearly as quickly as this piece Angress wrote about her own muses (and experience being seen as one).
Pieces I found myself returning to for deep inspiration
“The Artists Who Turn Us Into Artists Are Like Family”: Maggie Rogers Remembers Joan Didion a Year After Her Death (via Vanity Fair)
Writing Towards Connection and Belonging (via Minnow Park for the Foster blog)
How to Survive in Broken Worlds: Jesmyn Ward on Octavia Butler’s Empathy and Optimism (via Literary Hub)
Controlled Burn (an essay on “Forough Farrokhzad’s forthright poems of desire”, via Rhian Sasseen for Poetry Foundation)
Why Write? (via Elisa Gabbert for The Paris Review)
2022 Heroes of the Year: Women of Iran (via Time Magazine)
Top zeitgeist-y Substack posts, in no particular order
intensity, via Isabel for
An Incomplete List of Things That Twitter Was, via Helena Fitzgerald for
(this is just a Helena Fitzgerald stan account, honestly)
Woman. Life. Freedom, on “Art as a tool of protest in the Iranian uprising,” via
for The Gallery Companion
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, via
for FEMINIST GIANT
No worries if not via Haley Nahman for
(tough choice between this and her story about TikTok, which is incredibly on-the-pulse for different reasons, and completely worth the read)
Why I’m challenging the idea of witchcraft as a “trend”, via Ceryn Rowntree for
Most compulsive watch
Prior to the season finale, I would have confidently told you The White Lotus was my pick for most compulsively watchable show of 2022. After watching the finale, I wavered, and then ultimately decided to follow through with my decision. The “derpy” death of a beloved character (writer/director Mike White’s words, not mine) was upsetting, yes, but actually made for a perfect sendoff. And at least we can say that nobody predicted it! (Trust me: I watched way too many disturbing fan theory TikToks.)
Honorary mentions: There was an inordinate amount of TV to binge this year, but I’ll mention 1899, the spectral and mind-bending sci-fi-period-mystery-on-a-grand-steamship I enjoyed nearly as much as its predecessor, Dark.
Annnd Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. I liked this more than House of the Dragon if I’m being honest—the world building just felt so much more expansive (though I dutifully watched both!).
On my list to finish: Irma Vep.
Most addictive podcast
Vibe Check with Sam Sanders, Zach Stafford, and
is IT. I’ve been a fan of Saeed’s since attending a poetry reading he did at the University of San Francisco while I was getting my MFA there. Completely blew me away (as you would expect if you are at all familiar with Saeed’s work!).I discovered Vibe Check, which offers a weekly breakdown of the latest news and culture, a few months ago—it launched in August—and let’s just say it does not disappoint. These three have such a warm and entertaining rapport with each other; their “group chat come to life” dynamic makes for a weekly listen that provides deep comfort when needed and artfully worded delight at pretty much every other time. Black boy magic at its finest.
Honorary mention: Vibe Check introduced me to Into It, Vulture’s flagship podcast hosted by Sam Sanders as well, and just as addicting! All the obsessive hot takes you need on pop culture and media and entertainment news.
Favorite film
Just has to be Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. There is so much that is wrenching, human, and profound about this deliciously genre-bending film; and there’s Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis with hot dogs for fingers.
Engrossing, intriguing, utterly unique and original. And it’s so meta! I noticed immediately that what protagonist and matriarch Evelyn and her daughter are doing when they “verse-jump”—or rapidly absorb skills from their alternate selves in other universes—is the Hollywood-adjacent version of quantum leaping, or shifting timelines! What’s not to love?
Album on repeat
Florence & the Machine’s Dance Fever. Incredible! Inimitable! The way I wish I could listen to “Dream Girl Evil”, “King”, and “Free” again for the first time. I mean, whew. I am quite literally obsessed with everything about this:
Poem I found solace in
Sun makes the day new. Tiny green plants emerge from earth. Birds are singing the sky into place. There is nowhere else I want to be but here. I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us. We gallop into a warm, southern wind. I link my legs to yours and we ride together, Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives. Where have you been? they ask. And what has taken you so long? That night after eating, singing, and dancing We lay together under the stars. We know ourselves to be part of mystery. It is unspeakable. It is everlasting. It is for keeps. —For Keeps, by Joy Harjo
Juiciest ritual practice
Poetry! Dancing! Remembering I have a body and coming back to it on the yoga mat! Returning to my tarot practice! Prioritizing slow(er) living!
Off to make a glorious spiked eggnog with one of my cousins, which our big fat Persian family will soon imbibe with abandon—a Christmas tradition. I’ll see you in January, friends.
xx
Kimia