No.166

I find myself with little-to-nothing to say, about much at all. The grass outside the window steadily loses green, and birds visit the feeders outside the window more than they did before. The world is awash with words that mean a lot, and with words that mean scarcely anything, though it seems to me that too often it is the meaningless words that get the most airtime, that are printed on repeat and strewn about the towns and cities and wild places.

But for those who are paying attention there is beauty within the bareness of the winter northern hemisphere months. There is beauty in the slender, apricot-sized birds that fill the leaf-less hedges, in the way nothing ever really dries out completely, in the gloom sitting around in these rooms even in the late morning, in the way we sometimes look at each other to wordlessly ask are you warm enough?

There is beauty in the way winter neglects all but the essential, in how the streetlamps can get confused and stay on all day, in how we wait for things, in how we hold on tightly. If you added it all up the beauty would be louder, resolutely so, than the meaningless.

BOOK-RELATED NEWS:

In some places (many places) people are trying very hard to return themselves and everything around them to a sense of ‘normal’, and while I can understand their desperation, the world is not yet ready for everyone to leap back into their pre-pandemic schedules, or desires. The human closeness to others that once felt so reassuring and social now feels fraught and anxious, and if you are anything like me you have altered very little about your existence—whether necessarily or voluntarily—since the first lockdowns came into place. I have plenty of meandering thoughts about all this, but for now the US edition of Close Again is soon to be published, and within the book are tender moments of closeness, the kind that I miss but am acting very tentatively towards. (It has been long enough that even seeing illustrations of people in situations where they need to be wearing face masks feels strange—Oh! To see the chins of strangers!)

Although the Italian and German editions are already available, for some reason it feels like I’m waiting for this US version more, and the fact that a box of 24 copies was delivered without warning to my doorstep recently has added another level of waiting-for. That its publication has been delayed too, as the date moved from well before December to the beginning of January.

All this is to say is that if, like me, you are uncertain of whether or not you will be with your loved people at this (theoretically Christmas) time of year, and as we pull our tired selves into 2022, this book might be a nice thing to give others during the traditionally bleak month of January. An acknowledgement that while we might not be close to each other now, that time will come.

There is more information about the book on the publisher’s website, and I know that it can be pre-ordered via Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org amongst others, and any independent bookstore would also be able to order in a copy.

(As you might know, pre-orders help authors hugely, as any early interest in a book indicates to bookstores and other retailers that they might wish to have the title in stock and perhaps display it somewhere more prominent.

I mention this because not infrequently, newsletter readers have not known that I’ve written and illustrated four books and this fact suggests that I should probably mention my official occupation a little more often.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

The following selection of images from a series by photographer JiaHao Peng, titled ‘fragments’.

“even when you’re in love, you still need soup!”

— Lucy Ellmann