This time of year often renders me unable to distinguish between birds and falling leaves; sometimes their patterns of flight are confusingly similar. I looked upwards at about 8:43 in the morning, sky a stubborn grey, but the air slightly warmer than yesterday, and needed a few moments to decide: bird, leaf. Those tiny-winged ones that laugh openly at our lumbering ground movement, the way they change direction faster than we can blink our eyes, thin air dances that seem coordinated and patternless in equal measure. Perhaps seven bodies, a few handfuls of wings between them, masquerading as leaves descending from the birch tree as I continue to blink and evaluate. No, definitely bird, as they move much faster than leaves could in the stillness.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
1) The vast majority of hours this week have been sponged up with the painting of trees for an unusual and beautiful Orion Magazine project—it was difficult in the end to remain optimistic about the possible number of ways to paint leaves—and I’m glad to report that as of yesterday 86 trees were scanned and poised to become a curiously green centrefold spread, as per this small portion:
2) A recent conversation with Rachel Schwartzmann of Slow Stories was one of the most interesting ones I’ve had in a while, and sat at the overlap between worrying and creative work, of beauty and slowness, of beauty and worrying. It covered various other things besides, but I came away feeling sure-footed, and that is always a lovely thing when having discussed either the self or the work. We spoke of course about my latest book, Everything, Beautiful, and I read several extracts from amongst its pages. You can listen to our conversation via the Slow Stories website, here, or via the other places in which people usually listen to podcasts. (Below is my face, which I am unaccustomed to putting on the internet.)
3) I also signed some nice documents, completed a piece of work for the wildly lovely Jodi Ettenberg, received copies of the current Resurgence & Ecologist issue which contains some of my work and certainly I should have mentioned that by now, had a weekend-long migraine which I do not recommend, and generally found extremely varying degrees of success when it came to doing the rest of the assigned tasks for the days. It’s November and the afternoons draw towards darkness so quickly, what else can be said about it.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Softer-feeling illustrations by Jinhee Lee.
“This book is confusing as all hell.”
— 12:30 p.m. Sunday 11th August 2019, you were sitting on the too-many-springs sofa within the stone apartment in Salins-les-Bains reading Carlo Rovelli
“Because although I write books, it always astonishes me that people write books.”
— Alejandro Zambra
