Solstisial Submission
A 2023 Year in Review w/ Top 10 Lists and a Taste of 2024
Hello friends, strangers, supporters…
The shadows are long in this little house on the outskirts of the village that I’m grateful to call home, here in the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s not much of a winter by the Canadian standards endured by my people “up north.” As the years pass, here “down south,” I wonder more and more about the winter, its absence in my life and the possibility of those who experience (and yes, endure) it in other places. How many among us know of Old Man Winter beyond our own personal feelings about him? How many of us have translated the cracking of air and ice in the darkness and of the deep winter days?
This has been a looooooong year on this end. I think back to what I was doing in January and really can’t believe the elasticity that seems to have visited itself on 2023. It makes me wonder about time and that getting older doesn’t necessarily mean time moves quicker, but that it doesn’t all move in one direction.
That said, I got to see some long-lost friends this year, work with chocolate again for the first time in a long time, see my baby nephew and niece (the latter for the first time!), and focus my time on myself, my work, and the path I want to create for the second half of my life. Cheesy, maybe, but when you go decades without it, the sheer simplicity and significance astounds. Here’s some of what I’ve put myself to, this year.
The Mic
The End of Tourism Podcast returned in February with Season 3: Invocations with a myriad of incredible guests and conversations, including
author and Dark Mountain co-founder
, Fiore Longo on behalf of Survival International, Cecilia Morgan, Stephen Jenkinson, Murray Cox of Inside Airbnb, media ecologist of the McLuhan Institute, writer and the man who started it all, Dean MacCannell.In the summer and fall, we travelled to Europe for Season 4 of the pod, speaking to
author Petra Reski about Venice, Stop Despejos (Stop Evictions) in Lisbon, author and Dark Mountain director
, No Name Kitchen about the border crises in the Balkans, professor Penny Travlou about Exarchia in Athens, and finally professor Macia Blasquez in Palma, Mallorca, Spain.The Pen
During the spring months I was busy preparing for the launch of my personal Substack writing The Exile and the World Tree as well as moving the podcast from Anchor to here. A lot of work, but I’m glad I did it and could find some amazing people to write for.
Apart from my earlier Medium essays, I was happy I could re-share the essay that marked the beginning of my time and path in southern Mexico, with chocolate, and radical hospitality:
Shortly thereafter, I had the great pleasure of getting to share my first piece of writing to be published in print, this one by the Dark Mountain Project, on the hidden lineage of my family’s spiral sustenance and how such an understanding can offer a way of coming to terms with the fact that “the enemy of my ancestor is also my ancestor:”
Next, as a way of honouring my time in
’s Understanding Media Intensive over the last couple of years, I’m rewriting and remixing the homework assignments he optioned for us under the banner of “Quixote’s Media Meditations” or “QMM,” a moniker Andrew gave near the close of the course. You can find the most recent one here:To close the year,
’s new endeavour, Liminal Journal, has just published their next edition on the subject of “Automaton.” In it, they feature a short, original essay of mine entitled “The Automatic Myth,” asking “Is AI the culmination of the human mythological saga?”Top 10s
Over the course of the year, writing at the pace I have, I’ve also read a lot. Below are some lists of my favourite reportage and stories that I’ve come across, in print as well as cinema.
Books
I just barely succeeded in my challenge of reading forty books in the year. You can check them out here. Below, however, I’ve assembled my top ten books of the year in no particular order:
Rupert Ross - Returning to the Teachings
Franz Kafka - The Trial
Martin Buber - I and Thou
Milorad Pavic - The Dictionary of the Khazars
Colleen Derkatch - Why Wellness Sells
Mahmoud Darwish - Mural
Various - The Critique of the Image is the Defense of the Imagination
David Cayley - Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Life
Homer - The Odyssey
Simone Weil - The Need for Roots
Films
Truth is I didn’t watch that many films or series this year and the ones I did watch were not exactly life-changing. So, here’s a top six instead. Here are those that had me paying attention and paying attention to the themes and contexts in the world thereafter.
Silence (2016)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
Contratiempo (2016)
Roots Mini-Series (1977)
Human Flow (2017)
Dream Scenario (2023)
What’s Next?
A deeper dive. I took a couple of months off from recording episodes for the pod after two years of non-stop releases. When shit gets tiring, it also becomes uninteresting. So, some time off was important. That said, I’m prepping Seasons 5 + 6 as we speak. The former will be a return to a mixed format with no specific theme or place at hand, but will include a stellar collection of speakers. The latter will return be a special season on Latin America in Spanish (and English where possible). If you have any suggestions for the pod or would like to assist in any way, please let me know!
I’ve also been hard at work on my writing, with another piece set to be published in print in the springtime and other collaborations on the way. If you know a particular publisher or would recommend one that would appreciate and complement my work, definitely let me know!
All of this continued work is possible based on your personal support and those of your fellow Substack subscribers. I thank you for seeing something worthy of your time, and for those who can contribute financially, of your money as well. For every like, comment, share, and subscription, I offer a bow of gratitude. For better or worse, this algorithm attachment complex is here to stay. That said, and as you might have guessed, I simply couldn’t and wouldn’t be doing it without each of you. So, thank you.
Blessings on each of your paths. May they be prosperous and perplexingly gorgeous in this next solar cycle.
Sincerely,
Christou