No.203

One of the books finished this week, Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot, was something of an unexpected marvel. The first thing I read of hers was the highly memorable and disconcerting Some Things About Flying, which was by all accounts a very odd introduction to a writer. The UK publisher of both these book editions was The Women’s Press, an interesting and more recent finding.

A feminist publishing company founded in 1977 in London, it had an important presence throughout the late 70s and the 80s. The spines of their books are striking, diagonal black and white stripes that are satisfyingly easy to pick out in a second-hand bookshop, and which I have read represented the electric cord of an iron—their logo was an iron, which functioned as ‘a witty play on the symbol of domestic labour associated with women’.

Gaining Ground was, initially, slightly chewy, but then rapidly became something I felt quite ravenous about. It is the story of a woman who chooses to leave her husband and two young children for an existence of near-complete isolation, and raises important questions about autonomy and solitude when the role of women was primarily seen as one of care-taking, nurturing. Even now, 43 whole years after the book was first published, those questions still felt relevant and deserving of real attention.

While it did not entirely give me a feeling of wanting to select a few choice objects and leave my present existence in the dust, it did cause me to think deeply about fears, and trajectories, and choices. At one point the main character pointedly wonders what she actually fears, and what she has been taught to fear, and while this may seem a fairly obvious thing to wonder, I found this idea very arresting. As someone who has since time immemorial been riddled with a variable but potent selection of worry, anxiety, and fear, it has felt worthwhile to think about this. We are taught to fear so much. A quick glance around the planet makes it quite clear that a lot of things are not only built on various species of fear but also require it to keep running. And in some increasingly insidious ways, we are all being held apart and together by fear.

Our bodies are not thanking us for existing in stressed, fearful ways, and neither is the planetary body we live on.

What I’m feeling resolved to try now is simply running brazenly and with authenticity towards more things to see what happens. I think this running will initially be accompanied by some fearful notes but I’m also supposing this feeling would wear off over time—surely it is possible to rub some of the fear away, with so much of it having been written in pencil, and by other people?

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

The summer 2023 issue of Orion Magazine, Fairytales for the Climate Crisis, arrived on my doorstep a few days ago. I’m yet to properly sit down with it and feel astonished at the contents, but wanted to include in this newsletter my column in full, as it isn’t available to read on the website:

(If this is far too small to realistically read/it isn’t possible to zoom in, let me know.)

The issue explores “the ecology of this ancient storytelling tradition, one rife with lessons, warnings, and hope. Inside, Ken Liu constructs a fairytale with the help of an unlikely sidekick: AI. Anne Frank is a warrior princess in Kate Bernheimer’s close reading of The Diary of a Young Girl. Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link discuss horror, fairytales, and why the terrifying is sublime. Kate Lebo eats oysters and remembers selkies. Kapka Kassabova celebrates the impossible survival of a colorful Breznitsan tradition.”

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Pencil on paper works by Ross Taylor, who was born Northumberland, England, and is currently based in the rural Macedon Ranges in Central Victoria, Australia.

“I did not want to affect or change the life here; I wanted just to be part of it, have it accept me. It was necessary to put away fancy human urges to capture or control, or just to make some kind of difference, to be noticed; it was necessary to be an animal. I did not know that right away, and made mistakes, but as time, years, went on I became, I think, part of the wildness, inseparable from it and acutely aware of my very minimal place in it. And I have found it comforting, that I am not so important.”

— Joan Barfoot, Gaining Ground