Note #10: A winter pipeline.
Pleasure > happiness
Welcome to Notes on Sensuality, an exploration into everyday sensuality, led by me, Maxine Kelly.
For all my chat about loving winter, I’m always surprised when a wave of weather-related melancholy hits me. I don’t think it helps that it usually arrives at the same time that seemingly everyone in the northern hemisphere is frolicking in heatwaves and never-ending iced drinks.
I don’t think those people feel the same when we’re the ones enjoying summer — being only 10% of the world’s population (!), I imagine our summer never drenches Instagram and Substack feeds with quite the same abandon.
So I pass the shortest day of the year, feeling like I might be the last soul on this planet to be experiencing winter.
Woe is me, indeed! In an attempt to pull myself out of the abyss, I thought about the things that I can do in winter to get into the winter > pleasure > happiness pipeline.
Having baths where I add more hot water as I shrivel—book in hand, candles lit (nothing in the oven, I’ve learnt my lesson that a bath is not about multitasking)
Double moisture drenching post bath: a very dense moisturiser layered with a body oil (moisturiser first, not the other way around.)
Reframing seasonal stagnation as rest (okay?)
Wearing an old cashmere scarf, wide like a shawl, like the summer girlies are doing with their cotton scarves.
Taking inspiration from a character in a Japanese show I watched last night and moving s l o w e r instead of buzzing around (Straight to Hell, on Netflix)
Making soup upon soup, I can never have too many recipes, so please send me yours.
Enjoying fluffy socks all the time, specifically, these possum, merino + silk ones from NZ brand, Francie.
Listening to quiet music, loudly, alone. I’m liking Sounds of the Dawn or The Slip on NTS.
Remembering that there is no such thing as bad weather just inappropriate clothing (or however it goes) and getting outside for a stomp in the bush.
I’m currently reading Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt, on the impact of the arts on our mental and physical health, which is inspiring me to take up something more artistic (and strictly non-business related).
I’ll let you know how I go, for now, I’m having another bath.