Your Gift Horse has a Pretty Mouth
Forget Playstations - what about something from the Human's Gift Guide to Being Human this holidays?
Note: Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you. 🫡
✉️ Subject: Season’s Beatings—Give Gifts that WIN!
✉️ Subject: Intimate Gifts for that Special Sleigh-dee
✉️ Subject: Give the Grinch the Finger with Gifts that Linger
Bloated like an overstuffed stocking, your inbox groans under the weight of the relentless trill and ho-ho-hos of festive marketing missives dinging the server. It is defenseless against subject lines with a sweet spot of 41 characters, designed to arouse the wallet into the full-flush hot-blush of a spending frenzy. These lines dangle the promise of undying love if you gift that someone special a PS5. Or a foot massager. Or a cozy pair of custom socks with a cute picture of your pup taking a shit on your brother’s duvet. Hilarious!
‘Tis the season of spend. Society crumbles. Somewhere in the distance, an elf gets their wings and flies directly into the arctic sun.
At this point, I would like to confess that I am paid to write some of those emails—holds for applause—you’re welcome. But as one more email from some other powerful copywriter’s desk kicks my inbox in the ping-pongs, I can’t help but philosophize on The Season of the Gift Grift.
Knick-knacks, stand-in-for-love present putties, and future attic fillers—is that all there is?
Is this our gift to the timeline?
To be clear—I have nothing against making kids happy by flooding their synapses with thoughtful gifts that’ll make ‘em go apeshit. I have nothing against saving up all year to shower your loved one with that thing they want, so as to cement yourself in their Top 5 Favorite People list. That’s not what this is. I’m just thinking about other kinds of gifts—the ones that don’t cost money and operate in the currency of the heart to be banked in the soul.
This is my gift to you. Detox your inbox with the Human’s Gift Guide to Being Human.
No returns!
✉️ Subject: LAST CHANCE! Give the Gift of Pure Attention
The human form with its wrinkles and scars and freckles on our very minds is apt to flit off into the sky of distraction as a moth caught by an evil light. Inattention at our fingertips, in our ears, our eyes, and our hearts, we fumble with our zippers seeking to vent our hot misery. Lost to the zeros and ones of the atmosphere we seek out the distant horns in our fog, but too late! We are swept out by the sea of the chatter of distraction and we float, drifting far from the shore of each other.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I could go on but my invisible editor is having a shit fit.
Attention. My attention. This gift I give to you. Feel it. I am fully present in your presence. I meet your eyes with my shine, fully committed to the locked-eyeball gaze of engaged. My commitment to this moment skates to the center of your iris upon the icy lake of our meeting. It cracks, you melt, and we fall into the sublime warmth of our love, wrapped in the embrace of connection.
Held fast by this contract, we scud across the sky of this time, tingling, together, engaged and on high. Hand on arm, heart on sleeve, I tug at your hem to tuck in the thread of our neglected relationship. I hear you. I am with you. Our wires are entwining in the electricity of our love, our togetherness.
This moment is powered by us and the neurons of our thoughts. I have tuned in to your sonic station and adjusted our previous static to create a strong and defiant signal, unobstructed by the cacophony of gadgetry.
Your voice is clear. My gift is to hear it.
Unwrap it all year long, my friend. I love you, oh god I do, huzzah!
✉️ Subject: HURRY! Give the Gift of Availability
I see you cartwheeling into the pit of that swirling endless dark, ricocheting off the walls of worry and falling, falling, falling. I see you overwhelmed by the swarm and swaddled in that locust blanket, your legs kicking at it in your insomniac state. Stress scratching at your door, your wings clipped and flightless. I see desperation and loneliness, I see them hover around your crumbling door. I see them because these are qualities I have stuffed in my satchel and carry with me always.
You are not alone in your flail.
Feel my gift—the gift of my open door. My open heart. My open fridge if that’s all you need.
Open your eyes. Pick up the phone. Give that bad dog this juicy bone. I am as a warm pebble slipped into your glove, to be touched for reassurance, to be held in times of despair. Feel me always. Fear not the awkward. I am not put out. There is no dismay. I am waiting. I will always be waiting. I am at your service, friend.
I send you more than emojis. I send you the unfailing, unwavering available-ness of me. To you, I give you my time. It is my most valued asset, and it is there for you, whenever you need it.
Calendar reads: Available.
✉️ Subject: LIMITED EDITION! The Gift of Vulnerability Collection
We hide. We are hidden. We build walls and insert spikes at our parapets. We stock our muddy moats with snapping crocodiles and weird water-borne diseases that get into your blood to make your flesh necrotic. We make it impossible to be known by others. This is by design. We all do this.
We are frightened by our nakedness and turn away from our mirrors to seek out dark and curtained corners. We wear imperfect disguises with cracked masks and tatty garments. The fear of discovery—Fraud! Fake! Phony! Imposter!—looms large.
Tender hearts and broken brains. Insecurities about our worth in the tapestry of humanity. Soft bellies at dawn. And on and on and on.
Boxed bravery leading to unboxed vulnerability—it’s the gift of the year.
Unwrap my fear, my horror, and my raw, confusing-to-me emotions. With this gift, I declare myself open to the sting of rejection and the potential of acceptance. My insecurity is a bell rug in the town square and heard across county lines. My vulnerability is a familiar tone that resonates through the bodies of the throng gathered at my gallows. Should I hang myself with it? Not today. With this gift, a glimpse at this vulnerability, I step away from the hangman, unloose the noose, and toss my coins into your wishing well.
Know someone.
Allow yourself to be known1.
A Vulnerability Cloak may hang well on the clotheshorse of you. It may feel comfortable when buttoned up and sit perfectly at the ankle. But a vulnerability cloak also has a tendency to pinch at the armpits and lose buttons as you get fatter beneath it, and that’s a concern.
Be brave!
Shuck it off, fold it into a heart-shaped box and give it to your friend, lover, or whomever you’d like to take care of it.
Trust is a glorious gift.
There can be no returns.
✉️ Subject: Buy One, Get One Forgiveness Free!
You failed, you tried, you gave, you died. You worked, you slept, felt fear and regret. You aimed high and fell low, you were dealt hammer blows and then your rhyming structure fell apart and you gave up.
You’re the failure. The idiot. The fool de jour.
And so it goes.
Guilt is the whipping post we tie ourselves to. Our bodies are bruised, battered, slashed, and lashed. We flog ourselves with self-imposed punishments and drawn-out tortures that serve only to make us smaller on the tableau.
Dude. Unsubscribe from that newsletter and cut yourself some slack.
This gift is for you.
Forgive. Forgive your difficult demeanor. Forgive what you perceive to be your unlovable stubbornness. Forgive the lack of respect you have for what you think is a fraudulent purpose, or how you sometimes feel oh so alone even when in a crowd. Forgive your general sense of worthlessness.
Forgive yourself for being unable to stay on top of the bills, or keeping the house clean, or for saying the wrong thing AGAIN and experiencing that hot flush and prickle of guilt at what an absolute arse-heel you are. No brains, no good, no point.
Forgive the hate you feel at other’s success, forgive the frustration that biles up in your throat at how HARD EVERYTHING FEELS. Forgive your failings. Forgive your lack of insight. Nothing is beyond your vision.
Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself. Give yourself that gift!
This present is love. You cannot give any of the previous gifts without having love for yourself. Love for who you are and who you can become. Love for your failures and successes. Love for your broken brain and tender heart. Love for your misdirected anger and frustrated fumblings. Love for your forgetfulness and unexplained emotional absences. Love for knowing who you are. Love love love.
Not 50% OFF love. Not for a limited time only love. Absolute full price, free shipping, you are worth more, love.
This gift horse you have been given has a pretty mouth. Trust me. It is not a trojan gift horse. It’s not filled with ants or murder hornets or soul pestilence. You don’t need to look at it—not even a second glance. Its lip may tremble and its teeth may need braces, but forgiveness is a thoroughbred you can ride all the way to redemption.
So giddy up—let’s ride!
My invisible editor says I should stop now. That this gift from me to you—the Human’s Gift Guide to Being Human—is done. May you find some of the aforementioned gifts stuffed in your heart stocking or loaded into your life console this holiday season. Wrap and unwrap with the glee of a child. These gifts create no landfill, need no receipts, do not end at midnight, and shipping is ALWAYS free.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
I am an Instrument
I am an instrument
The timbre of my voice flies with the winds of heaven
I belong to one who is more than a musician
He is an artist, I live to be his pleasure
I do not flee from him when he comes to me
For instruments are not sufficient in themselves
They are cold and lifeless without the touch of hands and mind
The artist holds myself tenderly in his hands
For as he touches the strings of my heart
To find if they are in tune with the universe
Then suddenly vibrant thought strikes there
And music from the world of time and space is born- Sun Ra
Here, let Sun Ra speak it to you…
On Rotation: “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)” by The Darkness
While you can play this song at ANY time of the year, the week before Christmas is probably the BEST time. I have added it to The Stream On Rotation playlist for your all-time listening pleasure.
As a side note, if you’re not subscribed to Justin Hawkins Rides Again on YouTube, you are missing out. I feel like I’ve learned a lot watching him deconstruct songs he knows nothing about (this 1975 one is great), and his Responding to Comments or Be Nice (the only one I’ve seen him fail on is Moves Like Jagger, here) videos make me laugh. Go down the rabbit hole! And just ICYMI, The Darkness album from last year, Motorheart, is a ripper.
Yes, it’s an ad. It’s easy to be cynical and say it’s selling phones, but sometimes ads can open your frickin’ eyes.
Via Storythings
Someone made Homer’s spice rack from the Simpsons. Accurate.
Via BoingBoing
I’m a hypocrite. But I’m also a work in progress.