The Days Get Lighter

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• December 28, 2019

Yet again, we survived the darkest days of the year— in the literal sense (if you’re reading this, I assume you’re not dead, if you are dead and reading this, DM me, I’ve got a lot of questions) with the help of song, colorful lights, cups of tea and eating cookies while watching cartoons in the night.

The days will grow longer, but winter is still coming at us at full force.  I’ve got new socks, mild but manageable credit card debt, Disney+, some dread that comedy is quitting me in 2020 and an appetite for your left over cookies.  I miss being in the sun, having a tan, my parents and the ability to eat fried food without getting a stomach ache.

Time, it seems, sometimes, feels like an accordion.  My brother and I traveled to Costa Rica in February, and while that seems like a lifetime ago, I also don’t know what happened to 2019 at all.  Another dud of a year.  Nothing so grandiose to label tragedy, but disappointment gives fuel to the fire of future dread.  The future and dread.  The future might not even exist, if you are dead.

Soon begins a new decade.  A whole new generation to shit on.  To foster and then to blame.  Ah, yes.  We do it well.  The blame game.

It’s not that I’m out of things to write, I’ve just forgotten how to start.  Or how to end.  And in 2020, new stories will write themselves, old stories that haven’t been told, and told stories that haven’t been given proper lime light will find their way to letters to words to sentences to being heard.  Understood?  That’s not for me to tell.  You can write and write, but the understanding is up to the reader, ultimately.

I can’t make promises in the new year, because far too often, promises become lies, even if it wasn’t intended.  There is a feeling of a great change, an undertow in the sea, like when you know the subway is coming before you can see it, because there’s a tremble in the ground.  I don’t know what it is or what it means.  Perhaps that’s how it always is.  Changing.  But you only notice it when you’re waiting for something.

Though you can only wait for so long before you know, that your destiny is somewhat in your control, you still have the reigns, so fuck it, let’s go, because after all, I’m the girl who jumps off cliffs and then brags about it, dreams about it, desires and needs that rush of life, followed by that embrace of being held and being okay.  But you have to jump first.  You have to pick up the pen and sound out the words.

You have to start.  You have to do.  Do something.  And whatever you do, that’s who you are.  You are what you do.

My name is Lori Palminteri.  I’m a daughter.  A sister.  A niece.  An aunt.  A writer.  A comedian.  A surfer.  A cynic.  A self depreciator.  A creator.  An over thinker.  A laugher.  A nerd.  An asshole.  A great wonderer.  A wannabe warrior.  A depressive.  A worrier.  An old soul with the imagination of a child.

My name is Lori Palminteri.  I hope you enjoy the work I pen to paper.  I hope there’s a lot more of it in 2020.