No.205
Three nights ago the world shifted, by which I mean that summer both began and ended in one fell, clouded swoop. With the longest day of the year comes an acknowledgement that the summer will also end; the nights no longer stretching but instead the seconds and minutes of extra dark beginning their gradual encroachment.
Outside the living room windows plum-sized coal tits furiously empty feeder after feeder of unshelled sunflower seeds, caching them in moss and who knows where else. (I initially type caching and my finger misses the first ‘c’ to become aching, which also seems appropriate.)
They must have buried hundreds of the black seeds by now, but they keep returning, undaunted and tireless, choosing specific seeds above others and tossing out the undesirables onto the roof or the windowsill or into the herb pots we’ve planted. Some things have now started to germinate in the pots too, and you question whether perhaps the entire town will come out in sunflowers by the end of summer.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
If you missed last week’s newsletter, I included in this section a little about why I’m now including the option of being a paid contributor. There are for now no restrictions on receiving and reading the normal newsletter, or accessing the full archive, but there are going to be additional posts, for example new short stories or previously unpublished writing, that will be sent only to subscribers who have chosen to support in a monetary way.
I came to feeling it was correct not only to include this option of supporting the newsletter generally for those who want to, but to also acknowledge the impact of that support by sending out additional writings.
(For example, the first paid piece to go out is an extended version of the introductory paragraphs of this newsletter, covering additional topics such as hospitals and old notebooks and the practice of stacking logs.)
If supporting in this way isn’t for you but you do wish to support my work somehow, then buying one of my books is a sensible solution.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
More recent paintings by Melbourne-based Jesse Dayan, whose work was also loved in newsletter No.188.
A few books that are waiting all papery and impatient and musty-delightful-smelling in my reading pile:
Dancing in the Dark by Joan Barfoot, Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame, and The Visitation by Michèle Roberts.
“I wrote my story very quickly, as if I were afraid that it would run away.”
“Our happiness or unhappiness, our terrestrial condition, has a great importance for the things we write.”
— Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues