No.215

This month has been the most month in a long while in various ways—happenings, news, weather, change, migraines. I’ve been surprised at the sheer muchness of the first half of September and wondered at why the universe isn’t keeping a few challenges or obstacles tucked up in its sleeves for later in the year, or perhaps they are coming anyway.

It would likely be fair to say that the world right now feels quite rickety. Is this the wrong word or the right one? It’s difficult to hold so much knowledge of it all, the facts, at the same time in one’s mind—how declarations of love can exist concurrently with groups of stranded whales, carefully moulded cheeses in warehouses alongside the war in Ukraine, the rhubarb in the garden growing confidently as the seas heat up. It is, truly, a lot, and there is a disbelief in how everyone still carries on with things. Why aren’t we all lying prone on the ground wailing at various and pained volumes?

This is something I tried to address at more length in Everything, Beautiful, in a chapter titled ‘Holding Onto Beauty When Life Unravels’, and that chapter is about the sum total of the answers I personally hold on the topic right now, at least today:

“I’m not sure whether the kind of beauty that exists in the midst of tragedy needs much in the way of an introduction, because you’ll know about it, but it is certainly deserving of discussion and a looking into— the way you might peer into a small, curled flower, wishing to see further but not wanting to damage it in any way.

One of the hardest things we can choose to practice is finding beauty within the more difficult and unravelling parts of life. It is not always possible, and there should be no pressure (we shouldn’t feel that we must find beauty in these things), but the relationship between beautiful and awful can be astonishing, and with some noticing and some tenderness, we can grow in expansive and thoughtful ways as we live through the awful. I’m talking about the beauty that never leaves, even within the confines of grief or illness or hardships too hard to name. When we are consumed—partially or wholly—by the dark, it may be that we need to squint or use a magnifying lens to see the small pins of light, but they are there.

Finding beauty within the darker, damaging things does not alter the weight of them, but it can, if only for a second, provide reflection, provide breath, provide safe pockets in which to shed tears or fury or terror, glimmers to hang our hopes on like coat hooks in a hallway.”

AN EXCERPT:

When you move yourself through a landscape and pay attention, you will most likely get into the habit of noticing things that look different, or appear out of place, or are remarkable in either ordinary or un-ordinary ways. I have noticed: whenever the cloud is low and dense enough that I cannot see the ridges of the larger mountains and can therefore pretend they are larger, like those in the Pacific Northwest; if potholes in the road have been smoothed over; a rare instance of police tape; the change of the heather-covered mountainsides from purple to a different purple; the handful of weeks when the air is magically filled with thousands of flying Lythrum salicaria seeds.

The season of geese has only just begun, and last week was the first time this year that I heard and then later saw some. The hearing happened before I left the house, from my study, and even with the window closed I could pick them out—shouting “goose!” to no one in particular. Then driving, two separate and small ‘V’ groupings up at the highest of heights, barely visible in a grey sky, in time but out of time, migrations to some-place warmer as the first frosts become detectable in the scent of the air.

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(The above is excerpted from a longer piece, Last Unseen Season, going out tomorrow afternoon to paid supporters.)

WORK-RELATED:

In a nice turn of events, I’ve realised it’s possible to link a PDF here, so below is the option to download a catalogue of current available work.

This is first time in 10 years that I’ve made original work available, as my illustrations primarily land in my books, and that most often feels right in terms of their creative conclusion. This catalogue features a couple of original pen and ink illustrations from my book Eating the Sun (2019) alongside an assortment of pieces made during a handful of recent years.

Available Works 2023

11.4MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Please get in touch with any enquires via email, or via the contact form on my website.

If purchasing original artwork is neither something you find appealing, nor have the wall space for, becoming a paid supporter of the newsletter helps to ensure that in an ever-changing publishing landscape I’m able to continue to dedicate the hours to writing—it being written with the hope that adding small pieces of attention and gritted beauty to the noise of the world will make an honest, soft-edged, affecting dent.

Also: a new book proposal is limbering up! I’m hoping she’ll be ready to see the light of publisher-day before the month is through.

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Photographs by Frankfurt-based Evelyn Dragan, whose work I fell in love with in No.137 (an October) and No.159 (a July).

Just finished reading: Indelicacy, Amina Cain

Now reading: Migraine, Oliver Sacks (entirely belatedly, having had debilitating migraines for around six or seven years) and something else I’m yet to decide on which will hopefully add a bit of lightness to the whole affair—suggestions are welcome

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