Things are looking a little bit different, it’s true. Since the last newsletter I have migrated from Mailchimp to Substack, not for any immediate reason in particular, but the ease of writing with this newfangled thing was likely what finally swayed me. The last two days were spent manually moving the entire archive of newsletters over, a decision which I regretted at frequent intervals because—alas!—it was not as simple as a copy and a paste, and because I do not enjoy existing in realities, no matter how short-term, that consist of forgetting to breathe and blink properly in front of a screen.
Let’s begin with something sad:
Sadness comes, and then it eventually goes elsewhere for a while, so even if the sadness is significantly bigger than the small one pictured above, it will still need to take breaks (a person isn’t always able to sweep sad out with regularity and results). I wrote last time about how important it is to move gently right now, not needing to berate or bemoan or wonder what might have been, and sad is a part of all this—it’s a part of all-everything.
People react very differently when faced with unprecedented and worrying situations, and as such there is no wrong, no right. We are exceedingly connected, often to our detriment, and in recent shut-down weeks this connected-ness has left many feeling that they are not doing enough. In fact, waking and staring broken-hearted at the news for exactly seventeen minutes before curling up in a chair and gazing into space for the remainder of the day is plenty. Re-painting all the rooms in your house using Tai chi-like motions while learning Greek is also plenty, as is knitting everyone in your extended family a misshapen sweater and then screaming at trees. My point is that existing is enough, and whether that looks from the outside like productivity or usefulness is not relevant—it is most important to listen generously to our insides, if possible keep them soft and calmed for at least some of this peculiar time.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
I woke up this morning at 6:27am. A small digital alarm clock was introduced three days ago because both parties felt that the day could start a bit earlier, and with more consistency. It was agreed we would try the new method (as a very light sleeper I dislike being woken abruptly when I can avoid it) but this has not been working in that each morning since I have woken up progressively earlier, and well before the set alarm. And so, between 6:27 and the alarm hour of 7:22 (I feel compelled to use multiples of eleven in various places) I listened to birds—loud—and thought about the book that I should be writing.
There are three strands to my thinking, and this morning those strands waddled a bit closer together, began to look like one thing. I’m nervous to speak of it, because as some of you know the last three proposals I have put forth were not deemed fitting—those ideas were not never, but they are certainly not now.
I’ve been left wondering a lot, struggling with time and the imagined value of another book, both to me personally and to others, because I do not wish to add another object to the planet if it is not filled with truths, however small. To this end—who knows what end—I will be writing some of this perhaps-book, and hopefully it will be met with yes, this will be worthwhile, go on.
In the meantime, a Q&A with Comestible (a project of Anna Brones and therefore utterly delightful), in which food and art are discussed.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Those of you who read newsletter no.126 might remember that I fell in love with the work of photographer Emma Hardy, and as it happens I have since fallen in love with the work of her daughter, Alice Zoo.
I’m not sure what it is about these images, but they make me feel a slow homesickness, for places I’ve lived in and views I’ve looked out at, for the first cold months of last year when we woke up early-dark almost every day to swim in chlorine before you left for work—3pm would come around and I’d still have the swimming pool lingering on my arms. They also caused me to think about the differences we declare for ourselves, supposed differences between our human bodies and the landscapes we move through, between our breathing and the breathing of everything else. All these small lines, fixed rules, ways of being and not being, stacked up and adhered to, but never seeming to do anything any good.
Sometimes I write these endings before I write the beginnings, because I figure if there are words left to say at this point, there must be enough to spread throughout the rest. This time, there weren’t many words left over.
From Memoirs of a Polar Bear, by Yoko Tawada:
“A human being, perhaps, is made up of many nonsensical movements. But they’ve forgotten the movements necessary for life.”
The end.
