I've been putting more effort than normal put into the burying of thinking that will slow me down, wear me out—convincing myself of the shouldn’t-listen-to-that, shouldn't-read-those.
Yesterday, I found myself too exhausted to be concerned or anxious about any of it any longer. The whole world alone, then not alone, alone, then not alone again, for what I'm sure will seem a very long time. The last week or so every small and pointless solitude has felt so terribly necessary, which is a bizarre thing when it's as if nobody anywhere is together. I’ve noticed more how it looks, how it feels, that slight and particular pressure that can usually be found when surrounded by others. Usually, I say, because there are times when it’s possible to be alone-and-yet-not.
It’s worthy of the word strange, how the fixed, scheduled points in time are able to keep us tethered. This tethering is something I’m glad for some days, with curses on the rest of the sloping, violent hullabaloo of life. When we step out of this damned, damaging global situation later, I hope we’ll be more of this, and less of that, but I don’t know what either of those are going to be exactly, and as a result this is all only just about bearable.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
Really, much of what I was working two weeks ago is still ongoing, so there aren't any terribly large or thrilling pieces of update. I'm no longer waiting to hear back about a book proposal though, because I heard back, and it wasn't good but it also wasn't bad, I'm just going to need to work quite hard to conjure up something different now, something that is more likely to fall better into the ever-sought-after category of 'monetarily a success for those involved', without feeling that I am sacrificing things like, well, the truth.
It is a play, you see, a play of sorts between personal desires and the desires of a publisher—a book needs to, whether it contains interesting things or not, ensure that everybody still has a job to do, so a book needs at least some assurance of what, for better or worse, makes the world revolve at present: money. The work of an author is different now too, and in almost all instances there is a need to be visible, to be always-engaged, to be appearing left right and centre in the consciousness or screens or hands of an audience. This isn't something that comes naturally to me, but I am working hard on reshaping, working hard to adapt to the requests made, because I would surely be a sad woman on a sad planet if I were not able to continue with putting my thoughts and fascinations onto paper in, ah, yes, a profitable way.
In other words: I am more than the number of books that have been sold, but I am also not more.
(Actually news, I am researching a piece for an environmental magazine that will be a long time coming, and in these slower, turbulent times have embarked on a secretive collaboration project of a personal nature, one that may or may not appear publicly.)
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Appropriate, timely, these images of far-away people by Brazil-born, New York-based photographer Vitor Andrade.
'When electricity was first introduced to homes, there were letters to the newspapers about how it would undermine family togetherness. Now there would be no need to gather around a shared hearth, people fretted. In 1903, a famous psychologist worried that young people would lose their connection to dusk and its contemplative moments.
Hahaha!
(Except when was the last time I stood still because it was dusk?)'
(From page 63 of Weather, by Jenny Offill, finished last week but still very much on the mind.)
The end.
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