The winter issue of Orion Magazine arrived, and although I personally feel such publications are best held and loved on paper, there are several pieces from the issue available to read online. Below you can read the first paragraphs of my Root Catalog column, and perhaps, if you have very good eyes, read in its entirety from the photograph:
Lately I've been using a small, faded red sticky note as a bookmark, moved so far between perhaps seven or eight different volumes, the lightly adhesive edge gradually becoming less and less effective at holding onto anything and instead collecting more and more an alternate residue of microscopic dust, lint, and other things which seem to be enjoying their determined accumulation. At some point I wrote on the note in black pen 'French, ressentir, to feel again' but I do not remember which book this came out of, or indeed if it was just something I heard or crossed paths with and the sticky note happened to be the closest paper thing to hand.
We are talented and unfortunate creatures when it comes to resurfacing and reliving many of our largest feelings. We are often made sad by the unbidden ones we would rather forget or lay to rest, though just as frequently we can unknowingly vanish months or years of our lives yearning for feelings that long ago slipped through fingers, feelings that could only ever exist in particular times or locations. We want them back, or some of them back, cleanly and desperately, whether or not we notice or accept the inevitable enmeshment with place or person or circumstance. Such feelings do not occur in isolation.
But there are things I wish for us to feel again, such as the feeling I imagine would be the result of witnessing natural phenomena like mile-wide flocks of passenger pigeons in the US in the years before the last wild bird was shot in southern Ohio in 1900. I would like for us to feel again the things that we loved meaningfully before and gave up on, or those which we cannot quite manage to remember as our minds become overgrown. I would like for us to feel more astonishment, because it seems we are all becoming relatively or increasingly numb to it, or at least unable to recognise it very well, or whatever it is that means people don’t notice snails.
POSTCARDS FOR PALESTINE:
Amidst the horror upon horror upon horror we bear witness to, do what you can to help. If you live in the UK or the US, our governments are complicit in this genocide, arming a country with weapons that has now murdered thousands upon thousands of children, thousands of families. You can email the people who are supposed to represent your views, and ask for this to stop. If the equivalent massacre of the last fifty or so days were being carried out in America almost 2.5 million people would be dead, and if that helps you imagine the scale of what is happening, good, though there shouldn’t need to be comparisons. What is this world for, I wonder, if the lives of children are explained away, thousands of tiny bodies taken for access to fossil fuels and power. I am struggling to comprehend any writer or poet or artist remaining silent amidst this—a world that feels it can justify taking the life of even one infant in the name of land, or subjective belief systems, is not a world that would ultimately care about you, either.
If you find yourself unwilling to discern truth, or verify sources, unable to acknowledge the senseless suffering, the sinister wretchedness of our supposed democratic countries, unable to see how this is in fact about everything, about how we are going to live from now on as people, on this planet, unable to see past learned beliefs, I’m simply not sure there is anything in my work for you.
There are resources out there (like those provided by humanti project) if you are looking to take some action, like emailing your MP or Representative to demand ceasefire and demand prosecution of those who have aided and abetted war crimes.
Humanitarian organisations have stated they’re unable to help without immediate and complete ceasefire.
We have already not done enough, and at this stage there is no enough—this needs to be the focus of work.
ORIGINAL PAINTED WORKS:
As acutely absurd and confusing as it feels to try and maintain threads of a profession or a schedule of projects and emails right now, here is a link to the original paintings I have made available. These works are from 2019-2023, and touch on many different themes—community, landscapes, climate, daily life and the ordinary. After 10 years of having my work available solely in the form of the books, this initial collection of paintings will be glad to have the opportunity of loving homes.
100 DRAWINGS FOR $100:
Back at the end of September, I asked readers of this newsletter whether the idea of making 100 original drawings available for $100 each was an idea of interest, and having wondered about the right way to do this for now two whole months, I’ve decided that simple is best.
Titled straight-forwardly the ‘100 Drawings Project’, and comprised of 100 original drawings, all pencil with gouache detail on paper, each one available for $100. Examples are shown on my website, and an optional choice of ‘people’ or ‘landscape’ can be chosen. All will be a size of 7x10”, signed and dated on the reverse.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Green-stuffed watercolour works by Melbourne-based Marc Martin.
November ended, December began, and because grief is stored in the mouth I have no soft new words to end with, so here are three poems from the archived newsletters:
we are doing either an awful lot of seeing without looking,
or too much looking without seeing,
or both—
going around with arms firmly closed and eyes
even more closed than that. — No.86
I keep noticing very small things, here.
A moonlit snail,
a daylight moth,
or something that a person has thrown and
discarded
into a piece of green nature — No.104
I want to stress though, because I think it is worth
stressing,
that it is never the right time to stop being kind, or
generous, or patient,
The only worthwhile things to come out of any
sort of dissatisfaction
are the shimmering, tender, freshly affirmed ideas
about understanding and love and poems and time
—about noticing and paper and really just doing what you are able to do, but sometimes a little more. — No.119
