Holiday Writing Retreat
Standing outside, all bundled up, on a bluff overlooking Lake Huron, gazing through the trees as the snow falls down, I earnestly sing along to Taylor Swift playing from my bluetooth speaker — the Red album, at this point, to be specific. I do my best to harmonize, trying to find all the places my alto singing voice can shine, which may surprise you if you’ve ever heard my high-pitched speaking voice. I feel, not for the first time recently, like the version of a person, or a personal journey, written about in articles in on online publications with some vague but somewhat meaningful title (and content, I suppose) about “this generation/culture/trend” or “self-discovery/changed my perspective.”
It should make me feel basic, perhaps, or what I mean by that, which is that I should feel more like an amalgam of interests I was poised to like based on my media consumption, cultural immersion, and my generalized identity (gender, age, race, religion, etc), rather than my own cultivated array of personal interests. It surprisingly feels good, to be able to “title” both my mundane and adventurous experiences, to imagine reading an article, listicle, even just a headline, tweet or meme, and feel like it pertains to Me. It tells me I belong, to various groups, cultures, trends, values systems. I’m not basic (I say dripping with every layer of irony because I literally cannot even with myself). We all have a sort of ~mixing bowl~ [alert! new buzzword invented] of things that make up who we are: interests, values, practices, preferences, hobbies, media and music consumption, roles, relationships, and comfort zones. It’s a mixing bowl, I’ve decided, because all of the ingredients are structurally and fundamentally different, but when put together and mixed in the right way, science and magic happen in the mixing bowl, and it turns into a delicious batter.
But see, this is my problem. (I know you don’t see, this is a literary technique to get you to keep reading.) I have a list of lists. A list of essay topics or titles. Which is also, essentially, a list of personal and potentially prophetic epiphanies (a girl can dream…get it? No? Should I write an essay about the biblical character Joseph?): realizations that are important because of their pertinence to my personal story, in which I am the main character of course, but also because I believe they will resonate with others. I’m not trying to be the voice of a generation; that seems implausible for countless reasons. I do have an assortment of lived experiences, professional training, education, and personal dedication (to certain areas of pop culture and content, but more than that too) that makes me fit to speak to the experiences and emotional processes that may be a bit more universal than just me.
Alright, now that I have worked through my imposter syndrome and the internalized misogyny that tells me I must explain myself before I explain myself, I can get to a better point. Hopefully. I haven’t written anything beyond that list of titles, in a long while, because I have been stuck — in a pit, in a fog, in the day-to-day effort to live through a global pandemic, in the continued grief from my mom’s death, in the collective grief of today’s world and all that it feels like we’ve lost. So naturally, I decided to go on a vacation, to shake things up, to lift the fog and lift myself out of the pit.
As I stood on a literal precipice, a bluff overlooking the great lake in the UP (that’s upper peninsula of Michigan for those not familiar with the midwest), and my music has shifted to the much more appropriate Taylor album, evermore, I have countless thoughts — one of which is how well this album speaks to universal emotions through specific unrelatable stories — but there are two concrete brain formations:
- I am in awe, of nature and God’s presence, as I’ve chosen to understand it.
- I know who I am, right now. I am confident in that knowledge and the fullness of myself, and I am confident that I don’t know how long “right now” is, but it feels like it will be a long, long while.
Who am I? Or, is the better question can I define awe and God’s presence? Truth is stranger than fiction: those answers are intertwined. Who I am right now, as I write this, is a woman on a solo vacation, a holiday getaway, that has turned into a writer’s retreat. Who I am right now, as I exist, is a series of predicates like this. There is a theology of God that God is not the subject of the sentence, but the predicate. There are endless predicates to accurately describe God, which could also change situationally or over time. The same is true of people, especially considering we are made in the image/form of God. We are undefinable because we could be defined by a multitude of statements, but it would have to be all of them uttered at once to truly state who we are. But how can we know ourselves and not “know” God? Because I truly can list all of my predicates and know they are my truth — but I won’t do that to you. I love lists, but that list is more for me to rotate through as I access different Jenna-predicates that suit the situation, or the paragraph.
I’m inside, as I write this, staring at the snow falling from the warmth of my cozy Airbnb. A playlist I made called “spooky pop” plays a mix of music that I’ve decided fits in this new made-up genre (highlights include Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan, and Lorde), and it keeps me in the zone — the perfect mix of energized, contemplative, and distracted — as a I finally write out full thoughts. Maybe they don’t seem full to my wary, wandering reader, but that’s not the entire point. It’s only part of it.
I don’t make music; I don’t write songs. I do write though. This essay, like all of my writing, is meant to express how I feel, what I experienced, what I think, but it’s also vague enough that others should, or could, connect. It’s meant to answer a tiny bit of those big questions, to explain an inkling of my two concrete brain formations (is this another new ~buzzword~ for thoughts? I think so). It’s meant to reveal a bit of me without revealing too much, so I’m motivated to keep writing, and hopefully you keep reading. This essay is another track on my album. Right now it’s just a single, part of the vaguely disjointed releases that could be considered my early EPs; maybe it’s a single that ends up on my first full album, who knows. It’s got a pretty good title.
You could, however, put a number of Buzzfeed/Reductress/Hey Alma/Betches style article titles at the top and it would still be accurate:
a. Girl bundled in Curated Winter Wear Mourns Lack of Attention
b. How to Do Christmas as a Single Jew in a Pandemic
c. Want a Winter Getaway and Need to Figure Your Shit Out? A How-to Guide
d. Cat Owner Stares at Snowfall and Misses Cat. (And the inevitable followup article: Cat Home Alone has the Best Day Ever.)
e. Millenial Existential Crisis Solved through Affordable Mini Vacation
f. How to Eat your Feelings, Drink Beer, and Cry/Dance to Music While Literally No one Watches
g. A Palace of Space and Time: a Vacation Dedicated to Hitbodedut, Nature, Disconnected Connection, and Snacks
h. Need a Break from your Phone, Social Media, and Yourself? Try one of these Destinations for Spiritual Reawakening
i. Singing through Sadness: Using Spotify Playlists to Express Feelings
They might each assign me a different one of my predicates, and they might each lack the nuance and uniqueness that I crave, and that’s ok. I can describe my experience through these self-aware, facetious titles because it allows a healthy amount of vulnerability without having to go to therapy.
- In my best Mike Birbiglia voice: I’m joking! I mean to say I’m both the joke now and later. (This is from Thank God For Jokes; please watch all of his specials)
I went on this vacation for three main reasons:
- Indulgence
- Isolation
- Inspiration (preferably accompanied by clarity)
Quite quickly, it worked. The pandemic has, at times, made me incredibly depressed, hopeless, lost, and striving for connection. Getting away from my day-to-day reality and space, disconnecting from all of my tethered threads, which most of the time do feel like they’re helping but possibly aren’t, has made it surprisingly easy for me to reacquaint myself with my self — as a whole, not just the disparate functioning parts. I have spent a great deal of energy compartmentalizing my life, myself, even through the facade of honesty and authenticity; sharing just enough, cultivating the moment just right, so there’s a glimpse of me but not the whole picture. I thought it would keep me sane and happy enough as time passed, getting through this challenging phase. But after the pandemic (whatever that means), I will still be here, and I will still be me. Unless I’m truly me now, I won’t turn into me later. Time passing won’t change anything except that I’m older.
With that in mind, I peered out toward the rolling waves of Lake Huron, the single seagull still flying, the snow flurrying around me, and I let myself grow fully comfortable and confident with all of who I am right now: pop culture consumer, music lover, rabbi, moon-person, family member (sister, daughter, aunt, etc), friend, community-devotee, writer, and so much more. I let myself feel better. I let myself think deeply, come up with all these thoughts, and move them from swarming in my head to swimming on the page.
I hope this window into my poorly produced Hallmark movie holiday gives someone else the courage and confidence of conviction, to try your own version perhaps of this experience, to connect to your self, and then to go find other selves to connect with. My second reason I listed for my getaway was Isolation. This kind of introspection is like a shower: it’s hard to motivate yourself to get to it (especially in the winter), but you know it will make you feel better, it will be cleansing, and it will give you the comfort and inspiration to go be around other people afterward. It’s the intentional alone time for me (yes, read this like it’s slang). It’s the microcosm of extreme solitude that pushes me back to myself, springs me into this authentic, earnest (and yes, maybe a little basic) self expression aimed at connection.
Up next in the holiday retreat schedule: dinner, more contemplation, and reading, set to my next playlist “cool chicks,” which comprises music made by badass women (greats such as King Princess, Maggie Rogers, Haim, and Bishop Briggs).
In a few hours, I’ll come across this paragraph in a book that so perfectly encapsulates who I am out on that bluff. From The Girls by Emma Cline:
Connie stood at the mirror and tried to harmonize with one of the sweet, sorrowful forty-fives we listened to with fanatic repetition. Songs that overheated my own righteous sadness, my imagined alignment with the tragic nature of the world. How I loved to wring myself out that way, stoking my feelings until they were unbearable. I wanted all of life to feel that frantic and pressurized with portent, so even colors and weather and tastes would be more saturated. That’s what the songs promised, what they trawled out of me.
In two days, I’ll sit down to cypher through my handwriting and margin revisions to type this up, drinking coffee and petting my cat, as I listen to Harry Styles. It’s a perfect way to spend a Sunday morning.
