Now, here, in northwest France. Now a bundle of everything unknowable and good and precipice-feeling. Time stretches out like an elastic band but it doesn't seem to be a circle, doesn't seem to ever stretch to the point of no return, which is frustrating and leaves one feeling decidedly unresolved. Below, some words of a while ago that crawled back to me and then felt right, yes, that:
Landscapes wash over me like paint, soaking outwards because this paper skin isn’t thick enough; I’m lightweight, unsuitable for pages of a book, hold me up to the sun and you’ll see right through. For a while the stretched canvas of you looked set to be filled edge-to-edge with others, places that I wouldn’t recognise, weather that I didn’t want, but in fact you’re covered in small, unseen white spaces and it is these that make my knees weak. We’re walking out of the Hockney exhibition when an elderly man to my right sits down to rest on the rim of an outsized ceramic plant pot, large green leaves of something I don’t know the name of stroking his neck—I want to tell you this, but the words don’t find my mouth and instead you talk about composition and climate change. It’s acceptable to bore other people, you say, but it’s very important not to bore oneself. How many more times are we going to be able to speak without interruption about a quiet tomorrow? I’ve only just started to unpack the air in your lungs; this won’t ever be long enough. You care when we are in corridors, and I look at other people’s shoes like they might tell me secrets.
I’m determined in a way that I wouldn’t have recognised before; mouth shut, ears closed, haven’t looked up at a bird in three weeks. Why are those closest to us so unable to accept our alterations, so unwilling to let us walk outside of the years they have seen us grow up inside—faces pressed up against glass we now see as mirror. Give me that pen and I’ll circle my own flaws, I know you think I speak too softly.
It’s like repeating a sentence until you are sure you cannot forget, low visibility when driving, you having fallen asleep on my shoulder, seasons that just won’t stop, motion sickness and sleeping until noon. You can’t ever end things neatly, can’t ever put them back quite the way you found them, and this fact will consume you repeatedly. Look at me, then, as you sit in the first light, look at me and dare to say that you are thinking exactly the same thing.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
1. Waiting on news regarding a book proposal
2. Waiting on the world to change
3. A delayed exhibition in Tokyo
4. Possibility of another exhibition in Japan
5. Some small alterations for Lost in Translation
6. Contract-reading for podcast series involvement
7. Contract-signing for the Korean edition of Eating the Sun
8. Finding time to panic about a podcast interview scheduled for September
9. Chasing UK tax services for some sort of official stamp for something
10. Sorry if I still haven't replied to your email
11. Drawing
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
A collaboration between photographer Paul Phung, Karlmond Tang, and Roger Cho, which resulted in a series of black and white portraits honouring their multicultural backgrounds. The title of the project is project ‘Tóufǎ’, meaning hair in Chinese.
'Be as often submerged in the thoughtless water as possible.' — Samantha Harvey, The Shapeless Unease
(My last-read book, talking about swimming, talking about not-sleep, talking about the places these things take you.)
The end.
Copyright © 2020 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.