Until very recently I had forgotten what it felt like to drive in the true dark. I am speaking of the dark that, at last, allows the car headlights to highlight a few dazed and fragile and ethereal moths, like those small passages in a book that feel like illumination and that stick to you before perhaps breaking your heart. The dark of no streetlamps, the dark of no road markings, the dark of deep winter approaching and of not necessarily having anywhere to go—we did that night though, have somewhere to go that is, because we drove out to have dinner at an isolated establishment which sits just up from the invisible, black sea.
As the autumn placed its arms around us, the mornings darker and the afternoons darker and generally everything darker, my working hours increased in line with all that dark and there had been no need to leave the house after its arrival. By the time everything became shadows, I was usually still craning over the desk by the light of a lamp whose blinding bulb gets strangely hot, my self reflected like a ghoul in the window. I had forgotten what it felt like to drive in the dark, but now that I’ve remembered, now that it has happened, it seems like a ritualistic thing, or like a potion, like I might find answers within it and be able to bring them back to show you.
WORKING-ON-A-BOOK NEWS:
I look back at the last newsletter (published October 16th) and wonder how I have managed to complete so much work on the book between then and now—this isn’t so much self-aggrandisement as it is straightforward disbelief. The number of pages scanned in now number many, and the end of this part seems to be within sight, like a loud sign for a new road diversion, which is unnerving.
Over the weeks, the earlier painted pages sitting on the shelf have flattened out with the weight of the fresher ones, and this flattening-out I can also recognise to some degree in myself. Sometimes sheets of paper can feel surprisingly like layers of stone.
This is by no means an end-in-sight for everything, but it is for the phase of time that has been entirely paint, brushes, muddy water, waiting for things to dry. It is the phase I am most myself in, I think, which is why the ending of it brings those unnerved feelings—after this comes digital edits or improvements, likely some complete redoing of certain pages that I have deemed below-par, and the laying out and stitching together of every illustration, every sentence. Essentially, the turning of it all into a book.
Without warning this recent portion of time, these two-dimensional creatures of colour on off-white paper seem so valuable to me, feel so treasured. I think about this precarious pile of myself when I finally leave the house, when I fall asleep, when driving in the coastal mist to pick you up from work. I think about what it will become, I think about who and where I will be by the time readers are able to read it as a book, and I also think about how I might conduct everything about myself and my life more truthfully.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Personal and commissioned work by Edinburgh-born, London-based Robbie Lawrence.
The library, briefly:
Still to return but I’ve already renewed it three times because it requires a type of thought and stillness that simply hasn’t been available: Convergences by Lawrence Weschler
Returned today in the rain without a raincoat: P. G. Wodehouse and Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, which I liked but did not like more than some other things I’ve liked of late
