a guide to winter for the mystically inclined & vitamin d deprived xox

and also a minor complaint

I was going to write about a new parasocial enemy I’ve recently unlocked. My friend Elaine has been sending me updates about this woman in question, because I have been away from the madding crowds of s*cial media (for the most part) in order to preserve my precariously natured soul for about a year now. Exposure to people like the woman in question, who shall go unnamed although don’t doubt I’ve already cast her name into the annals of my hex-list, is exactly the kind of content that caused me to realise it was necessary to preserve my delicate soul in the first place. She has recently published a book, a much hyped biography, about two wealthy white woman writers who made their names in 1960s California. According to her narrative (a narrative which she obviously needs to perpetuate and exaggerate in order to justify the existence of her silly little book in the first place, a narrative built from a dubious baseless framework that she dallied out for tens of thousands of dollar, if not more, and the chance to hang out with basic celebs in the Chateaux Marmont but ok) these women were sworn frenemies, two hysterical sides of the Apollonian-Dionysian coin, deranged by jealousy and spite to out-do the other, and generally incensed by the other’s existence. Think sexy party girl who writes capital-F-fun little stories vs Very Serious Intellectual Woman Whose Ethereal Thinness Is Somehow Inextricable From The Crisp Tautness Of Her Prose. According to my nameless provocateur, it’s necessary to pick a side, to pit one woman against the other and make clear to everyone which team you’re on. I happen to love both of these writers, they are both extremely fun and interesting to read and also extremely different, they just happen to both be woman who lived in the same place at the same time and god forbid, wrote about it.

I know we live in culturally regressive times, and I do think the neoliberal obsession with the dead end that is identity politics is largely to blame for that, HOWEVER, I am honestly still, against my better nature, surprised that this book has even been published. I really thought the culture had moved on from the SEXY WOMAN VERSUS CLEVER WOMAN thing but no, here we are, in the year of our lord 2024 no less, still popcorn munching cackling cat fight! at any given opportunity. I’m not going to name the book because I don’t even want to summon its hideous aura into my sacred energetic field, but I just want to say: RESIST! Girls – the other girls working in the same field as you are not your enemy, no matter what the gatekeepers would have us believe, there is space for all of us to carry out our little projects in peace. Resist this tedious narrative. It has been my life’s work to be a sexy fun girl who loves parties and also a serious intellectual academic writer etc all at once. And anyone who has read Nietzsche, which I’m assuming the writer I’m refusing to name here hasn’t, will remember that in order to make good art both the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses must be present. You can have it all! In fact, if you ever want to do anything of value – you must!

it’s crucial to resist the gregor samsa-ficaton of the self

That aside, I can breathe again, just about and tell you I am writing from bed, my duvet over my legs, hot water bottle in my lap, to the whirring sound of the plug-in electric heater I have been wheeling around the flat with me like an obedient little dog on a leash.

Almost every year, winter in Ireland comes dangerously close to being the death of me, I thought by now, having survived twenty-something winters living in houses without adequate insulation in this curséd and dreadfully cold city I would know how to deal with it, but yet here we are, desperately staving off the shivers and misery once again.

(First of all I know it’s only luck that I have a roof over my head at all, I’ve experienced homelessness in my life and it was only luck that friends and relatives gave me places to stay, and, in Dublin’s endless precarity I know how easy it is for the rug to pulled out from under you. My strongest, most rage filled hexes of all are directed towards the policy makers that perpetuate the endemic homelessness in this country. I also know hexes aren’t enough so if you also live in Ireland I urge you to vote for left-wing candidates like People Before Profit in the election this Friday!)

All of that aside, here is my winter survival guide for vitamin d deficient mystical girls obviously this won’t apply to people with a 9-5 lifestyle, but just in case this helps any fellow unemployed bohemians with nervous constitutions, here you are:

• Develop a spiritual calling
  

• Surrender to the fact that you will spend much more of your hours in bed than out of it. Embrace it, invest in good quality sheets (100% linen! Or cotton at the bare minimum) polyester is OUT. Get a hot water bottle, feel no shame about refilling it 2-3 times per 24 hour period. Get one of those little wooden trays on legs (I think they’re called breakfast trays? I call mine my bed desk) so that you can type on your laptop warmly in bed without turning your spine into a weird little prawn. Do get out of your bed as much as you feel humanly capable but also if you start to feel lazy for taking this hugely practical step in keeping warm, remember Proust wrote all his books from bed.
  

• If like me, you live in a completely uninsulated house with huge single glazed windows and a bathroom that essentially has icicles growing on the ceiling, you will probably be warmer in almost any indoor public space than you will be at home, which is good, because if it’s literally too cold to wallow in your room all day you won’t be able to rot yourself into isolation-induced depression. I recommend finding a library where you can chill for hours undisturbed, finding a yoga studio or whatever other kind of exercise you do that does discounts and membership deals on classes (if you pay your membership up front you will guilt yourself into actually going more regularly), going to the cinema as much as you can possibly afford it (btw the Lighthouse does €5 tickets Monday-Wednesday for anyone with a student card although honestly they’ve never even asked to see my student card so idk), befriend a local coffee shop, go often enough that they start giving regularly discounting your coffee.

• All of the above applies to people who live in cities, and if you are spending this already freezing Irish Winter in a rural place, honestly I’m so sorry, I’ve done it many times (including last year which truly nearly ended me) and I will never take a cinema for granted again. However last year I forced myself to discover podcasts for the first time and made myself go for walks by myself almost every day listening to pretty much every episode of In Our Time ever made. I truly grew to resent those cows, I’d walk down to the cliffs and think, oh great, another glorious view of the miraculous atlantic ocean, now what! But honestly if I didn’t do that (dressed in all of my layers and my little boots) I would literally have been flinging myself off those same cliffs in despair.

• Despair is a natural part of being a dreamy girl in winter. You always think