2023
Welcome to the 10th year of Advent Calendar Posing as Blog! So glad you are here. It has taken longer than usual to get me in the holiday frame of mind and a whole bunch of shlocky music to crack the shellac covering who I was when I started ACPaB. Mostly it starts with tears because my heart has been quite Grinchy for about eight excruciating years now. I hear my holiday favorite tunes and something deep down begins to unfurl and before the smile reaches both corners, tears appears. I truly have forgotten what this beauty feels like. I started putting up my diminutive, four foot tree the day after Halloween. I was not finished until 15 November. The tree is anchored with string to the wall on both sides to hold the ornaments of a six foot tree since I do not currently have the space. It takes a lot of contemplation to do that to an innocent tree. See the reel to the right. This year's giftings will be soul-soothing medicine. I plan to be on the lookout for what feels like a gift on as many levels as I can grasp and I cannot wait give them to you. Let the de-grinching begin! 2022 Welcome back and to the ninth year of ACPaB! We are in a new location this year and as a result, the gifts will have a more New York flavor. The past two years have been spent learning about online marketing. The idea is to creat content in advance for a more scheduled approach. However, it is the spontaneity of what feels like a gift each day in that is the driving thesis of this here Advent Calendar Posing as Blog. So please know that outside of the occasional housekeeping, the gifts were found the day of or before posting. I hope you can feel this. Now get ready to open all of your presents because you deserve them all and more! p.s. Noticings:
Well hello there and happy Day of Gratitude eve. The Advent Calendar Posing as Blog (ACPaB) is almost ready to begin just a bit earlier this year. And the years around here seem exponential in their length, width, girth and content. How can it all be so compressed yet expansive at the same time, all glistening with a healthy dollop of PTSD? I guess this is how we ride this train. But as per usual, I digress. Get ready, stuff your face, slumber well. This year, solace, self-care, and delight are priority topness. See you real soon. Plus, a change. No more separatism. Iyam what Iyam. ACPaB can now be accessed on Dori Miller Studios alongside "The Caramels" of Affectionate Sweets. Let the gathering begin. 2020 And a nice, piquant, toxic green up there to match the year. 11.14.20: Well hello there. This year, we begin early. Sporadically. And early. Because I need this. I need something warm and safe and fuzzy. Familiar. Before that can happen, we are going low and I promise that we will come back up. Low in feeling because we have to go high in acknowledgment. And there is nothing but the painful truth and it is a prize fighter with lead-filled gloves covered in rusted nails and broken glass and we have been moving targets. Some of us way and much longer than others. 2020: the great equalizer. It never made sense to me to get mad at a date range. But this year I'm on board. I am also suffering from a healthy case of schadenfreude to the point of yearning for a progressive race to watch while placing bets. Things are not the same as last year. Have I ever needed a gifting like I do now? In this year of our survival 2020? Well some of us. A whole lot of us have not made it to this pregnant moment of suffering and possibility. As of this writing, 1,318,044 souls have left this planet world wide including 251,256 from the USA alone. That many people would fill Madison Square Garden 12 and a half times. This is unfathomable, yet it is real. The duality. The polarity is deafening. How to exist in such fractured spaces? Acknowledgments. Saying names. Naming names. Calling out names. Voting names off into the wilds of oblivion, bound from causing one more moment of harm. Santa can you hear me? This Advent Calendar Posing as Blog will strive to include more than the traditions of old and new. Time for the new new (thank you Scott Pilgrim). New new for me. Time to mix things up and reach out to search and embrace what's been there all along. I seek empathic resonance. For everyone. That's my Tiny Tim wish for the season. If you read my original inspiration for this place in the About section, you will know that I am not affiliated with any organized religion, and that I abhor the blatant capitalization of the holidays. It is the spirit of the feeling available to share around the holidays if one chooses to feel it. That deep connection to a warmth of feeling. A simplicity of desires all related to comfort somehow. Some people are deep into their faith, while others are deep into their shopping plus plenty of other agendas, traditions and rituals. Please accept this excerpt from my recent written thesis as a clue to what I am getting at: Walking home around 5:00 pm Christmas Eve, 2019, I noticed how an otherwise bustling city street could be so quiet. I felt a collective sigh. A moment where I felt so connected to what seemed to be missing. I could not see anyone, but I knew that we were all doing the same thing; either enjoying or avoiding the holiday. Christmas Eve was the center of attention. And in that, we were all together. “I felt so connected to what seemed to be missing.” And that thought was during a non-plague year. So we are all isolated for probably the second time any minute now and if we are not, we should be so we can be safely together again sometime soon. So what is missing is us. We are not physically together this year. This beast of a year. And I was going numb. I was forgetting how connected I felt to you. So much so that I want to give you presents. The day after Halloween I pulled out the holiday decor and I now live in a very sparkly and twinkly existence. I knew I was in trouble when out of nowhere, my face started to hurt. It was my smile muscles. They had atrophied! No no no I must work out. Must get in shape! I WANT MY SMILE BACK. How can I want this when there is so much darkness and suffering? Because I know that we will get through this. We will be alright. We are changing. We are trying to get together and better and heal, together. And I am going to need my smile for that. Therefore, let the gifting begin. In the thick of the crazy and before I, we, you, are permanently imprinted with this illusion of normalcy, please accept a pre-gift to get you started for the season. A holiday season that we need, that I need like never before. One tradition that I have heard of and knew nothing about was Kwanzaa. So I searched for something Kwanzaa to gift. I was alarmed that I could not find more productions, which speaks to exactly the continuing problem. However I was happily surprised to find this film, full length and for free. I do not know why this film is not famous. I learned so much and had such a good time in the process. I learned that Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday but a cultural one. A much needed one that has grown into a most beautiful holiday tradition filled with soul-sustaining rituals. And Kwanzaa is celebrated during the week after Christmas. Happy first pre-gift of 2020! The Advent Calendar Posing as Blog is open!! Now if you are here on the About page, please head over to the 2020 Presents section and open your present! 2019 And here we are beginning the sixth year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG. Gifting you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during my last year, my thesis year of graduate school. I fear that last year's Santa wish was a smidge naive. The present has been exponentially crawling and it is screeching down the gate top speed as we speak. So welcome to your 2019 presents! Scroll to the first year below to learn about this ACPaB's origin story. I am so happy that you are here and that we get to basque in the circuitousness of give and receive together again. If you can feel the same thing in either circumstance, you are twice as rich with presents. Enjoy! 2018 Welcome to 2018, the fifth year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG. Relocation, relocation, relocation. ACPaB is giving from the exciting and artistic City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia! Purpose = MFA Candidate at the sacred and historical Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. So you better appreciate your presents just a little bit more this year since my graduate school soaked soul is yearning for the time to do this. Does that post office creed apply to Santa and his/her/its minions, like me? Well it should. Because YOU my dearest are getting 24 presents and you deserve them all! P.S. Looks like the "Grinchiest of Beings" situation referred to last year is turning around. Could that said situation become one of your presents? Oh the glee and goosebumps I feel at the potentiality of giving you a conviction for one of your presents, not yours of course... someone else's. "Oh Dear, Dear, Dearest Santa o' mine..." P.P.S. Oh Dearestest Santa 'o' mine, are you seriously considering giving me, us, the whole wide world, the bestestest present ever!? <Whisper>It's Happening</Whisper> -- December 18th, 2018 |
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2017
Welcome to 2017, the fourth year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG. Looks like I neglected to say hello on this About page last year, 2016. Not to worry. This year will be extra festive and warm with Christmas Spirit hoping to negate the recent unpleasantness. Perhaps we will enjoy ourselves so much that we will start a happiness wave that will permeate even the Grinchiest of beings.
I am sorry to say that on November 6th, 2017, my beautiful Christmas Companion, Oliver the Sacred Sphinx a.k.a. Kitty Boo, The Big Handsome, Silky Smoothy (Rap name), Oliviere (when he was feeling particularly French), Loungey Boo, My Liege, He Who Must Be Named, has flown to the Rainbow Bridge. This is and will be a very bittersweet holiday season for me. I continue to immerse myself in all things him. Here are the words that my soul spoke when I knew it was happening:
“Go to sleep my love
You will wake in my arms again
Rest your weary soul,
and come to me anew”
2015
Welcome to the second year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG.
I actually ventured out to a hardware chain thinking I could get a deep discount on the new holiday lights that I want for my window. Not only is Black Friday an assault to the senses, it is total bullshit bait and switch. The lights I wanted were not on any kind of discount. I left without buying anything grateful for the solitude when I got home.
So in the true essence of Christmas (and this is all I have to give this year) I hope you enjoy opening your 24 presents,
one day at a time.
2014
Since I'm a present giving and receiving demon, any reason to open presents is a good one. Suffice it to say I love, Love, LOVE Advent Calendars, for exactly 24 reasons. I like to create unusual Advents. A tradition where the containers go to live with their gift receiver for the month of December, then come back to me so I can put them away and refill them anew the following year. So I thought why not give a present every day starting December 1st, 2014 (3 days from now)
so that anyone who finds this blog can enjoy/open them?
I am an Artist, Photographer, Writer, Luxurious Nutritioner and Lover of all things beautiful. The daily gifts might include my or others' photographs or artwork, recipes, Prophet quotes, film or music clips. Whatever feels like a gift that day. I am not religious and I am well aware of the original intent of the holiday. Nor am I a soulless materialist. I truly love Christmas and the feeling I get from the lights, sparkly things, fellow-Christmas lovers, the nostalgia of a life collecting ornaments (1 per year), a cup of hot cocoa, and a book in a cushy chair on a snowy day with a warm sleeping kitty, under my tree. This holiday makes a lot of people happy for a lot of different reasons and I'm one of them.
I am a broke college student and even if I was wealthy, I wouldn't run away from the subtle feeling and "true meaning" of Christmas by blindly spending myself into oblivion. I agree with the disdain over the commercialization of Christmas. Black Friday gets more and more violent to the senses every year. I have personally boycotted Black Friday for years by not buying one damn thing on the day of. So in the true essence of Christmas (and this is all I have to give this year) I hope you enjoy opening your 24 presents, one day at a time, until Christmas.
Welcome to 2017, the fourth year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG. Looks like I neglected to say hello on this About page last year, 2016. Not to worry. This year will be extra festive and warm with Christmas Spirit hoping to negate the recent unpleasantness. Perhaps we will enjoy ourselves so much that we will start a happiness wave that will permeate even the Grinchiest of beings.
I am sorry to say that on November 6th, 2017, my beautiful Christmas Companion, Oliver the Sacred Sphinx a.k.a. Kitty Boo, The Big Handsome, Silky Smoothy (Rap name), Oliviere (when he was feeling particularly French), Loungey Boo, My Liege, He Who Must Be Named, has flown to the Rainbow Bridge. This is and will be a very bittersweet holiday season for me. I continue to immerse myself in all things him. Here are the words that my soul spoke when I knew it was happening:
“Go to sleep my love
You will wake in my arms again
Rest your weary soul,
and come to me anew”
2015
Welcome to the second year of ADVENT CALENDAR POSING AS BLOG.
I actually ventured out to a hardware chain thinking I could get a deep discount on the new holiday lights that I want for my window. Not only is Black Friday an assault to the senses, it is total bullshit bait and switch. The lights I wanted were not on any kind of discount. I left without buying anything grateful for the solitude when I got home.
So in the true essence of Christmas (and this is all I have to give this year) I hope you enjoy opening your 24 presents,
one day at a time.
2014
Since I'm a present giving and receiving demon, any reason to open presents is a good one. Suffice it to say I love, Love, LOVE Advent Calendars, for exactly 24 reasons. I like to create unusual Advents. A tradition where the containers go to live with their gift receiver for the month of December, then come back to me so I can put them away and refill them anew the following year. So I thought why not give a present every day starting December 1st, 2014 (3 days from now)
so that anyone who finds this blog can enjoy/open them?
I am an Artist, Photographer, Writer, Luxurious Nutritioner and Lover of all things beautiful. The daily gifts might include my or others' photographs or artwork, recipes, Prophet quotes, film or music clips. Whatever feels like a gift that day. I am not religious and I am well aware of the original intent of the holiday. Nor am I a soulless materialist. I truly love Christmas and the feeling I get from the lights, sparkly things, fellow-Christmas lovers, the nostalgia of a life collecting ornaments (1 per year), a cup of hot cocoa, and a book in a cushy chair on a snowy day with a warm sleeping kitty, under my tree. This holiday makes a lot of people happy for a lot of different reasons and I'm one of them.
I am a broke college student and even if I was wealthy, I wouldn't run away from the subtle feeling and "true meaning" of Christmas by blindly spending myself into oblivion. I agree with the disdain over the commercialization of Christmas. Black Friday gets more and more violent to the senses every year. I have personally boycotted Black Friday for years by not buying one damn thing on the day of. So in the true essence of Christmas (and this is all I have to give this year) I hope you enjoy opening your 24 presents, one day at a time, until Christmas.