writing prompt
“things i am afraid i will forget with age”
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medicine for 2026
December 31, 2025
it seems like everyone’s got their list of the things they want to accomplish for the new year. all that new year new me type of vibe.
i dont know if im about all that kind of stuff because i don’t want to make promises and i dont want to say crazy shit like how im gonna go the gym everyday and hustle for dat bread.
when i was young, new years eve meant getting drunk and partying and now, i feel is a time to sent intentions for the things i wish for myself as another year turns ahead. but, i don’t want to hustle and i don’t want to be a boss and i dont want my intentions to be ones consumed of avarice.
so let’s talk medicine. i like big medicine in small places.
- i want to pray more, to smudge more and to continue to look for, find, and appreciate the numinous in my life
- i want to continue to write and to write even more and to just keep writing because i feel most like myself and most at peace when im writing. i started hospital vespers in 2025 and it’s been one of the best decisions ive ever made.
- i want to continue giving myself the freedom to be myself in all of the ways i would like to be, even if those things don’t make sense, aren’t aesthetic or could be seen as cringe. the personal branding programming that is fed to us by social media is toxic and harmful. i wish to continue to reject this.
- i wish to embrace curiosity and a gentle questioning spirit in my quest to understand others and also myself.
- i will endeavour to attend as much ceremony as i can in 2026.
- i will endeavour to continue to uphold and assert my personal boundaries and release what no longer holds me.
- i wish to read more and i wish to learn more and to approach both with a gentle spirit and curiosity. having duolingo taught me that i can gain progress even in small amounts. even if i read a few pages a day, it is better than nothing at all. writing has made me desire reading.
- i will fall in love again.
- i will endeavour to go out more and challenge myself to do different things, make new friends and allow myself to experience wonder, again.
- i will go back to therapy, regularly. ive taken a break of several months that has been needed from regular work and im ready to work again.
- i will continue to talk about grief and loss and mental illness and trauma and spirituality and love.
- im gonna find really cool stuff at the thrift store this year.
- im gonna send more mail to people just because
- im gonna tell more people that i love them and that im grateful for them.
- im gonna make more memes
- im going to laugh a lot
- im going to continue learning swedish (sorry in advance to anyone who has to listen to it)
- im going to make playlists for each month and post them here
- i am going to send more voice notes
- i am going to make more phone calls just because
- i am going to continue to fill sketchbooks and journals and not listen to the voice that likes to say that my sketches and writing aren’t worthy to sully the pages of a book
- i will endeavour to love and use the things i own completely and accept the change in them and in myself. i will not save the good perfume or the good clothes or anything else for a “special occasion”
- i will learn to make something new.
- i want to allow myself to feel happiness in times where i would not have previously allowed myself. i let myself feel joy during christmas 2025 for the first time since my father died and it was extremely meaningful and healing.
- i will endeavour to stop over explaining.
- i want to learn how to dance and make regalia and do my beadwork. i want to learn to drum and sing and do all the things my ancestors had taken from them. i will live for them in ways they could not.
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photographs found in a book in a thrift store in december
scotty’s castle, death valley, california i am restless, as i usually am when i am working. in my work i am often exposed to humans and their humanity, and sometimes the weight of human emotion and often human suffering can be a heavy load to lift with my own psyche.
i go walking when i feel restless, i find a lot of peace in hitting the pavement in my blundstones, with my headphones on, because then i can just think and when i’m thinking, i can let things go.
kitt peak observatory, arizona in my walks, i often end up at the thrift shop – there’s one downtown that i love and i go there frequently. i like to visit the ladies there and say hello. i’ve written about this thrift shop before here and here and also here.
i love this shop. i love the piles of papers and cards and old books.
bisbee, arizona i find a stack of photographs tucked into an old book at the thrift shop. it is december and snowy outside. i am moody and listening to a pensive swedish hip-hop song about forgiveness.
the photographs are not dated. printed on fujicolor paper. there’s no indication of who took them or why – i don’t immediately recognize the locations, either. using google lens, i am able to place the photographs as a trip to california, nevada and arizona.
death valley, california i am, of course, as i always am with the photography of others, fascinated. i begin to romanticize who may have taken these photos, what drove them to the desert? what called them there?
maybe it’s because i live in a desert myself, that i know this call of the heat, the dry, the dust, the coyotes shrieking to the sky, rattlesnakes sleeping on red rocks. i know this desire, the murky darkness and scorching heat.
club legacy, reno, nevada as a canadian, i also know the fascination with the vastness and the loneliness of the united states and it’s american dream. i feel like, we have traces of it in canada as well, this loose sense of loneliness that pervades our iciness here in the great white north.
father misty lookout point, rainbow canyon, death valley, california it’s a little romantic for me to find someone’s photographs like this, such an intimate look into the life and dreams of another, this anonymous other. they’re beautiful.
i love moments like this – just the briefest feeling of connection with another human in our shared humanity, in our shared little lives.
(if these photographs belong to you, let me know here if i can reunite you with them)
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into it: erk & academics – “liften (regular och goofy)”
hi. hey. so, the new erk and academics track dropped december 26, 2025 and it’s, uh, hella good.
i mean, that’s not surprising obviously, i really like both of their work and the work of the random bastards collective to which they both belong, based out of umeå, sweden. as i’ve spoken about in previous little pieces i’ve written – i get that for a lot of people, music and media in languages unfamiliar to them, may not immediately hit, but again, i really must challenge anyone who’s curious to check out this collective’s work. there’s something about it, and really everyone within it, this realness, this, like.. depth? i can’t kinda stop myself from saying that, but really, i think that’s why i like it, it’s real music made by real people, it’s got this kind of perfectly imperfect vibe and a lot of self reflection to it.
“liften” is a good example of this, of course, and while my own swedish isn’t good enough to catch the entirety of the song’s meaning, it’s talking about having some difficult conversations with people, difficult conversations about the past, talking things through, mending fences, a desire to bury the axe, etc. i like things like this, because, as i have aged, i’ve really began to understand that one thing most of us are vastly uncomfortable with is, is being wrong, and feeling ashamed.
shame is such a sharp cutting emotion and it can be so devastating to one’s own psyche – most of us would do anything possible to get away from it (i mean except for the freaks who are into that but that’s a whole other blog post). admitting when one is wrong or fucked up and trying to make amends for that is a powerful act – it takes having some pretty big ol’ balls.
i’ve been in that position myself, and things get fucked and messy and you wanna kinda just say “hey let’s just take a lift, talk it out, grab a beer etc”. there’s people in my life right now that i would like to say that to. it’s a rough feeling, and i think that’s what brings a lot of emotion into this song, i mean, at least for me personally. i think we all regret when we fuck up and things get tough with our friends and loved ones.
anyways it’s hella good. and it’s going on my january 2026 playlist.
and i drew a lil doodle while listening.
anyways heres the links: random bastards | spotify | youtube
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family secrets set in 18k gold
i was visiting my mother recently and she was doing what she usually does when i visit – fucking around inside of random cabinets, mindlessly tidying her already tidy home, drinking black coffee the whole time.
it is a gloomy grey afternoon as we share some chocolate over our black coffee and gossip. she just got her nails done and they’re glittery – they look really nice, actually.
she’s busy in the cupboard and she pulls out a small container.
“i forgot this was in here,” she says.
this starts a weird family revelation that i was not expecting as my mother reveals to me that my grandfather, the kind hearted german man i grew up and idolized and wanted to be exactly like, was not my biological grandfather.
she describes that her biological father was a man she never met, a man who left the family destitute to flee to south america to join a mistress there, when my mother was a baby. he left behind three children and my biological grandmother. he also left behind another child fathered with a mistress on the other side of town, an unknown baby girl who would be my mother’s age.
he lived in south america and died under mysterious circumstances.
aside from his body, the only things that came back with him were two 18k gold religious medallions, which my mother hands to me. one is a small sized st. christopher pendant, and the other is a beautiful 18k gold medallion of jesus. on the back of the medallion is an engraving in spanish to my biological grandfather, signed with a spanish woman’s name, dated christmas 1964.
i am fascinated by this. the image of the lord contrasted with the reality of alcoholism, trauma, spousal and child abuse, and also infidelity. innumerable sins butted up against the golden image of a saviour.
my mother sees me studying the piece, “do you want them? you can have them if you want them”
do i want them? of course i want them. i don’t think i’ve so immediately wanted something like this before, except for my grandmother’s gold opal ring (which disappeared under mysterious circumstances). the family secret set into 18k gold with the image of the risen lord bearing the sacred heart.
that’s 100% my shit.
i was wearing my silver pyrrha key necklace, a sterling silver replica of a old skeleton key and i slip the gold medallions on it.
my mother rolls her eyes at me as she tends to when i launch into one of my tirades about sin and redemption and the nature of trauma and our fragile humanity.
i see my mother today and i am wearing the necklace with the golden medallions and the silver key. she rolls her eyes again as she smokes a cigarette.
i wonder what my ukrainian grandfather would think.
“he was a bastard,” my mother says, exhaling cigarette smoke into my face.
i don’t think she’s said that about too many people, so he probably deserved it.
a family secret, a grey day, and 18k gold.
hospital vespers 