No.110
It is possible to fit quite a number of things into a period of three weeks. You can, for example, put a designated quantity of your belongings into a very small car, leave one country and drive to another, begin to try and speak a language that you aren't particularly familiar with, and become used to the every-fifteen-minutes chime of an ancient church bell, which resides scarcely one hundred metres from your door. You can also find the time to feel wondrously dreadful about the world on fire, about powerlessness and politics, about the decisions being made by the unmentionable but obvious people who contain less sense, less feeling, and less understanding than could ever seem possible. In between this anger, you can also get pre-approved for a mortgage, construct a temporary washing line in an overgrown, stone-covered courtyard, and consume three croissants.
The quote below highlights most plainly for me that although we might now be surrounded by screens and destruction, by faster-moving engines and faster-moving people, saturated by everything beyond belief, collectively we haven't actually figured anything out in terms of living wisely, gently, and in ways that do not cause harm. (I would like to add that this was written by a Greek playwright, Euripides, who lived 484 - 407 BC.)
You see? Such things, they mean nothing.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
It felt like a relief to complete and send off an illustration for exhibition at Festilitt, a literary festival held in October in Parisot, France (it is probably among the most time-consuming creations, and by the end I was inordinately fond of it, which doesn't happen very often). Too much back and forth with accountants and the UK tax authority, the sifting through of almost 13,000 emails as I renounced a Google email address, tentative continuation of next book ideas, and a phone call with a lovelier-than-lovely publicist, who informed me that the UK publication date of Eating the Sun would be October 3rd.
On that note, I would like to mention here and now (or again, because possibly I have said as much already) that the UK edition has both a different title and a different cover, and that I hope this will not be too confusing for everyone (myself included). Mostly, I'm pleased that I was allowed to keep the octopus:
A SMALL MENTION:
The online publication Emergence Magazine, an editorially independent Initiative of the Kalliopeia Foundation, publishes some of the beautiful pieces I've encountered in a long while.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
A series of illustrations by Cape Town-based Katrin Coetzer, which is titled, sublimely, 'Forgotten Fixtures'.
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton (Four Quartets)
Copyright © 2019 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.