Some sentences from a past self, 2017—
People, small in their surroundings, made smaller still by the glare of the sunlight; they look for weightlessness but it’s as slippery as that green water you swam in. Cultivation has turned the landscape below us white, and we will later eat these things grown in straight lines, under hot dripping plastic. I want to follow rivers, but I also want to know what it feels like to be one, and actually we want too much, so I’m quiet as I keep my hands underwater until they crumple, protest. Higher now, the mountains look like the paper I routinely screw up and throw in the bin, all sharp creases and shadows. Clouds looking like when flour and water don’t mix, curdled and impossible to ignore. I wonder whether you count forwards or backwards when figuring out the other side of the world.
How many mountains do you think you could fit inside your lungs? Skin tight, your edges pressed against by altitude and all those trees you don’t know the names of. When that feeling gets too heavy maybe you can try carrying me instead. From this height there are stretch marks on the Atlantic, and tiny ships that look like stitches, not really holding much together except men because there is little reassuring about deep water. Does it bother you, that there are likely to be pieces of yourself in places that you’ll never see, never set foot in? Colours run here and they say it’s possible to catch them.
Say what you mean but say it slowly, so that I have time to run away. What was it? Yes, I wanted to tell you just how blue it is down there but don’t have words that could even begin; it makes me feel thirsty and worried and like I might need to turn around and leave again soon. The sky looks good on you though, I can see clouds where your stomach should be and oceans reaching their arms around your back.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
Yesterday I received the copyedited manuscript of my next book, Everything, Beautiful, and I’m faced with a handful of days in which to peel through it, to stare at small details and wonder whether all of those countless decisions were the right ones. A 217-page document which now carries the thoughts of three different people: my own, my editor’s, and those belonging to the copy editor. It is a strange thing to go back to words you wrote as much as a year ago, and the ongoing input and expertise of others feels invaluable, especially when so much—and so little—happens to a person in between the phases of a book. How to ensure you sound like the version of yourself that was there, writing it? How to sound like a version of yourself that you be able to stand by when it comes to publication?
It has been, by far, the most intensely I’ve worked on a project, and the largest number of pages that I will put my name to. So now I must not become distracted by the collective of palm-sized feathered things outside on the feeder, and spend the next week and a half determinedly shuffling back and forth between the computer and the kettle.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
This small series of engraved photographs by Todd Clare—they look a lot like how the past two years have felt.
“We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough to do.”
— Miranda July
