No.201

May ending, a list:

1. A book I’m currently reading contained the phrase “to just be unspectacularly ordinary” and I’ve been thinking a lot about this

2. The swifts’ screeching has become louder and more constant especially during the most insect-filled hours

3. For the last week or so I’ve experienced an intense craving for satsumas

4. It isn’t anywhere near hot, but it’s pleasant to not feel tensed against cold for what is probably the first time in about eight months

5. I received a letter from Santa Cruz

6. I need to order a blind for the room where people sleep if they come to visit—even three weeks away from the longest day of the year it is madly bright in the evenings, the sun not setting itself until almost 10pm, light lingering long after this

7. The plants are enjoying these long hours but those who need to sleep are not

8. I think to myself I will go for a run, and then don’t

9. At this point in the year increasing numbers of people visit the area where I live and as such there will frequently be few-to-no vegetables left at the store so you have to go and get your lettuce leaves nice and early

10. Some days the air has been entirely filled with tiny, fluffed, fast-flying seeds

11. The ruling feeling this month has been one of restlessness and it seems as though the majority of time has been spent picking things up before putting them down

12. Various large changes to life make themselves known, and while on the phone to my mother I note that it all reminds me of someone trying to keep up with single-handedly and manually pruning a tree or shrub that just will not stop growing extremely fast

13. Lists feel manageable, longer form thoughts do not

14. I purchased at least seven books which quickly went from reassuring to overwhelming

15. Behind the garden there is a densely wooded, wild garlic-lined section coming up from the river, and while doing nothing in particular I found a baby bird, likely a robin—I was reaching to pick up a piece of rubbish someone had thrown into the green and the floor of the forest, still covered in part by the decaying wet leaves of last winter, perfectly concealed this small, panting feathered thing—which we quickly concluded was still being fed by its parent

16. I have thought about the baby robin every day and night since

17. One chocolate éclair was consumed

18. I’m freshly amazed—and could use the word staggered—by how little attention, especially of the curious variant, most people pay to their surroundings

19. The small calathea plant made itself an incredibly tiny lilac flower, which was gone within two days

20. If you go down to the river you will perhaps see things, for example, ospreys

21. I like to imagine that when the wind picks up and all the branches let go of their loose leaves it is supposed to be an opportunity for us to do the same

22. This list is much longer than others which I’m taking to mean that May needed to contain an extra amount of endings

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Works from last year by Newcastle, Australia-based painter Ileigh Hellier.

“There are not as many examples in the city of the impossibly far and the impossibly close. In the country there is the closeness of the grass as you lay down on it, and the vast expanse of the sea stretching up to the sky. In the city, everything is of equal significance, from everything being so equally close up. True perspective is pretty much impossible. The buildings do not sway in the wind, so it’s harder for our ideas to sway. You cannot look at a building for several hours, while in nature you can look at anything for several hours, because nature is alive and ever-changing.”

— Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“She has spent a lot of time on her own and certainly that makes a person susceptible to overthinking simple transactions and occasionally losing perspective.”

— Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19