No.191

‘Expectations adhere to each other, forming even greater expectations. Something insignificant is added to the heap, and then something else, until it’s hard to see over the top, and then it’s difficult not to perceive yourself as hemmed in, and then it’s difficult to tell the difference between what is and what might be.’

— Eva Meijer, Bird Cottage

This sentence, read yesterday while trying not to fall asleep at around eight thirty, seemed to summarise most of what January tends to be, or become, for mostly everyone. All the time and everywhere I notice people expecting things, of themselves and others and situations, and it never looks very comfortable, and faces and hopes are usually left fallen.

There are people in my immediate life who make themselves inflexible with expectation, or who are rendered wildly and suddenly indisposed when the version of events they had planned on happening needs to happen slightly differently. Such breeds of expectation demand a huge amount of energy and commitment to maintain, and yet when a few pieces of punctuation move around, the day as they know it can end.

I don’t think it’s wrong to expect, not if the expecting is done with the understanding that nothing might come of it anyway, but there is a certain pliability—like various types of grasses—to leaving particularly those areas of life which we are so painfully encouraged to stuff full of expectations as empty and ever-changing as a windswept shoreline. A few wading birds here, a tidal pool there.

It is important that we can distinguish the difference between what is and what might be, or we are at risk of overlooking the what is in favour of a never-ending line-up of maybes, of if-onlys and somedays and one-days and all of those lives not our own.

I will tell you, too, what the what is consists of, and that is likely all the things you have dismissed so far this year as unimportant, as ordinary, as repetitive, the things which you used to see the shine on and now feel dimmed, the things which look to have started to mould slightly at the edges. It is the way the postman has to turn sideways to get past the bicycles and the way I always apologise about having nowhere else to put them, it is the distance between the washer and the dryer, it is not being able to eat the eggs quickly enough, it is saying see you later and wanting it to be true more than anything else that has ever been true.

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

The spring issue of Orion Magazine will be out soon but not soon enough, and my Root Catalog column is about walking, and rivers, and the reliable lightening of days. Some very blue detail below:

(I also do battle with accountants, time, scheduling generally, overdue admin tasks, tiny new thoughts, and the state of the kitchen cupboards, and that is plenty.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Illustrations by UK-based Charles Bailey.

— Jean Valentine