No.226
January ending, a list:
We seem to be here already, which is wholeheartedly surprising
The last newsletter (No.225) referenced my inability make anything remotely tidy, but I’m happy to report that in the past week almost all of the things in my study have found a resting place and I will surely forget immediately where those exact places are
Firmly in love means accepting that you are firmly uncertain about absolutely everything, and that is lovely
“The secret of blue is well kept.” — Jean Cocteau
I paint the early morning view from the west-facing kitchen window:
A strange day on which to be carrying on. Birds carry on, rivers carry on, libraries carry on, garbage collections carry on, the collective shriek-hum of everything carries on—though really I believe it should all stop abruptly if you consider that 13,022 Palestinian children have been killed in 111 days
Those small, twisted up pieces of eraser always end up on the underside of socks
In Icelandic the word for light is ljós, the word for poem is ljoð
How many lives can one reasonably get away with living? I conclude it’s just the one, and most people simply like to pretend otherwise
I cut things out carefully for later purposes:
Trying to see strangers with binoculars but failing, time and time again. Are they watering their plants? Are they sleeping with one hand underneath the pillow? Are they hungry for something other than every single day?
You walked home from work tonight, having forgotten you drove there in the car this morning
The large swim of feeling, trying to look normally toward people who are carrying on (see item 6) and going about their daily perceived importances—going out to lunch, getting flustered by traffic queues, choosing new curtains. White phosphorus has been rained down on children, burning into their tiny bodies, and people are still going out to lunch
I attend the second family funeral in the space of around a month; the curve of someone leaving the planet is unknowable
Thinking about how, during years when humans lived seasonally and with the land instead of with the internet, we used to commonly sleep in two parts: a first sleep until the very darkest earliest hours of the morning, then waking to eat, visit neighbours by candlelight, sing, any number of other things, then returning to sleep again until the light properly began
See also: gloaming
One ceramic object was broken into approximately thirteen pieces on the kitchen tiles
From my desk I can see the windowsill where the neighbour’s two cats like to sit, curl, observe, sleep during the day, and it didn’t take long for the total of their daily activity to look far more realistic than my own
A single but large doughnut was dropped on the pavement by someone (presumably someone now disappointed) just outside the front gate the other evening; for whatever reason it felt fully ridiculous to pick it up and walk with it up the driveway in the dark to the compost bin
HOW WORK IS GOING:
I am feeling the need to record things
Feeling the need to record—
How the sun failed to really find its way through the clouds this morning
How I noticed starlings iridescent green in the tree and thought ‘Ah’
How cold my fingers get at the computer
(I despise the computer sometimes)
Sometimes I also despise the people doing mindless things
Like ordering nonsense objects and poking at their phones
Like not believing far away souls or events have anything to do with them
(They do)
Anything better than finding a packet of biscuits at the back of the cupboard?
They are still in date thank goodness, and also antedate in the late 1500s as to mean “to date before the true time”
Better to be in the true time than stuck to the past—it will hold you there
Antedate but really I suppose antidote this is what we need in this true time, for disinterest and dismissal and dictators and feeling very down
True time like all the times we looked right past one another and saw blue
Like a few times a day I truly do hear old plaster falling down behind the wall—
Of its own accord!
While in the bath (because it is a full moon) I consider telling you about the biscuits I found at the back of the cupboard but by the time I am dry I have decided against it
I am myself in the true time, with biscuits
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Painted works by Dahye Choi. Somehow, every single one of them made me feel slightly better.
“I want to live…
I have work to do on deck
not to save birds from our famines or sea sickness
But to study the deluge close-up
And after?
What do survivors do with the ancient land?
Do they take up the same story?…
Wait till I pack my bag Death
my toothbrush soap after-shave and some clothes
Is the climate warm over there?
Do the seasons change in the eternal whiteness?
Or does the weather stay fixed in autumn or winter?
Will one book be enough to read in non-time?
Or should I take a library?”
— Mahmoud Darwish, from ‘Mural’, translation by John Berger and Rema Hammami
Paid supporters receive several additional posts each month, including things like short stories, longer illustrated essays, and more detailed looks into creative processes. Companion Piece for No.225 is the latest of these paid posts, and an excerpt is readable below:
Companion Piece for No.225
The morning of January 20th I wake, roll up the blinds on the west and south sides of the house, and the snow is gone. It is as if I dreamt it being there at all, and the only evidence of the -9 temperatures is now the frozen-solid bag of ericaceous compost in the garage, and the ice which has managed to survive wrapped up and insulated inside a dark green tarpaulin. Some things simply don’t hold on.
A beautiful wandering of observations. Thank you.
“the curve of someone leaving the planet is unknowable”…..for the loss of your family members, for the loss and harm of Palestinians that also affects everyone whether people realize it or not….that line somehow gutted me 💔