The Problem Is Beautiful to Me

Reflecting on a year in writing

Juanita McNeely

The Sunday Letter #44

I have this memory of being ten years old and wanting to stay up to hear the countdown on New Year’s Eve. My parents told me I wasn’t old enough to stay up, so instead I pulled my radio into bed with me and listened to the countdown under the covers. The transition from one year into the next felt sacred to me, a tradition I could always count on, and I wanted to be there to usher it in.

For a few years as a teenager, I’d ring in every new year by listening to All You Need Is Love by The Beatles; it felt like a good omen.

Eventually it began to feel like the New Year was arriving more and more frequently. Now it feels like there’s hardly any time to catch my breath and revisit the year before the next one starts. So perhaps it’s fitting that for the past few years, my New Year’s tradition has been to revisit Lucille Clifton’s iconic poem:

“i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me”

Now that’s a good omen.

*

Last week I attended a holiday party at my grandmother’s care home, arriving with a clandestine can of beer in my hands because she’d been asking for one during our visits. Then my aunt arrived, pulling out another can of beer because “She keeps asking for one!” We joked that it had been her plan all along—though her memory may be failing her, her vices are still sharp as a tack, much like her sense of humour.

Her daughters have posted signs up throughout her apartment to guide her through her day. One such sign sits across from her chair and reads, “Mom, put up your feet.” When I visit her, she looks up at the sign, then down at her feet, and jokes, “Okay…now what?”

She has some difficulties recalling where she is and why. She asks about dinner, and we remind her that the care workers will be making dinner for her in the kitchen. “And where’s the kitchen?” she asks. “Around the corner,” we remind her. She thinks for a moment.

“Hmm. Guess I’ll have to find the corner.”

*

In February, this weekly newsletter turns one. A full year of committing myself to writing every weekend, of dedicating myself to a writing routine that’s now guided me through four seasons.

Will I always feel this sad when every season ends? I wrote in my notes last week. Winter and summer both; I’m always mourning.

*

In a recent interview, Annie Ernaux repeats a frequent refrain about her writing practice: “I am nobody when I write.” She doesn’t recognize herself in her books, such that she sublimates herself completely into their creation. She writes to free herself from shame, but the vulnerability of such a project brings its own kind of shame too. She remarks,

“I have many decades of diary behind me, and I can see that there’s an evolution certainly... But at the same time, there’s a hard core, which must be the being, that thing that resists. And that appears in the diary.”

The being, that thing that resists.

Yet at the same time, she remarks, “Writing is saving.” A dedication to that murky space between truth and untruth, of remembering and letting go.

Here I am, running into a New Year. Am I running to, or from?

Sending you into the New Year with “We Are Real” by Silver Jews: “Is the problem that we can't see / Or is it that the problem is beautiful to me?”

2023 in Writing

In April, I wrote about a recurring nightmare in which I lose the ability to speak, and visiting an estate sale.

In May, I wrote about Maman, regrets, radical menopause, and orca matriarchies.

In June, I wrote about my birthday, and graduating last.

In July, I wrote about learning to be more patient, making peace with our former selves and buying our first house (!) — plus,

abby

wrote the first guest newsletter, on finding a sense of home.

In August, I wrote about milestone fatigue and grief, and seeing The National live.

In September, I wrote about the intersection of art and ADHD, and the function of criticism, and

Cait Barlowe

wrote about finding one’s self through writing.

In October, I wrote about the confusion of getting older, the art I’ve made of my life, the miracle of human relationships, and cancer, in what was probably my most vulnerable piece of writing thus far:

In November, I wrote about trying to ‘win’ a psychology experiment, Taylor Swift and Anatomy of a Fall, and hometown connections.

In December, I wrote about survival as a creative act, and writing as sharing.

Whether you’re new here or you’ve been here since the start—thank you! What was the best part of your year? I’d love to hear it.

What I Watched in This Weird Limbo Week Between Christmas and New Years

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) — Gorgeous shots with a dreamy film effect we’re probably unlikely to see again in this lifetime. Loved watching Kidman as a housewife on the verge of a sex-drought-induced breakdown, but distracted by Tom Cruise’s empty performance. This one may require a rewatch in a few years to better appreciate it.

The Iron Claw (2023) — I mentioned last week that I was not enthusiastic about Maestro, and after seeing The Iron Claw, I’m all the more frustrated that Zac Efron has been left out of this year’s Best Actor conversations while Bradley Cooper’s vanity project sucks up all the air, but alas! Efron’s delicate inversion here is heartbreaking, especially as his body seems to be bursting at its own seams. The performances of the brothers in this tragic biopic elevate an otherwise just-fine script into something poignant and haunting.

Moonstruck (1987) — Delightful! 24-year old Nicolas Cage in a tank top campily begging for Cher’s love; to me, that is cinema! Also, both Cher and Olympia Dukakis (who plays her mother with a delicate balance of mature sexiness and lovelorn frailty) won Oscars for this! People used to win Oscars for romcoms! We used to be a real society.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) — Great Christmas film, veering on unexpectedly pretty horny thanks to a post-war James Stewart. My first time watching but I’m sure I’ll be back, despite not really connecting with the angels-are-among us theme. Such is the power of Stewart’s dreamy drawl.

The Holdovers (2023) — Paul Giammatti offers another threat to Bradley Cooper’s Oscar campaign and for that I support him, even though he’s not really doing anything new here (sorry!). Otherwise, this was another one that I thought was just fine; sweet, without being saccharine, though Mary’s storyline deserved more screen time.

His Girl Friday (1940) — So funny that this came out the same year as The Philadelphia Story with nearly the exact same plot (Cary Grant trying to win back his ex-wife). Also delightful!