February ending, a list:
It is longer, this month, this time, and somehow one extra day feels like an extra lifetime might in fact be available
I saw a rook carrying a twig roughly twice its own body length
This weekend we are looking after our neighbour’s two cats, which also means looking after their wood-burner, which also means I may decide to not move for 36 hours from underneath the fire-warmth and the creature-warmth and the sheer weight of thoughts which have accumulated lately
“Americans can’t deal with death unless they own it. If they own it, they will celebrate it, like in the air force base museum of the atomic bomb, where whole families of camera-toting tourists gather after the required i.d. security checks. In the gray-carpeted rooms, they walk the mazes of portable screens and platforms and enlarged photographs of death and incineration as seen from a discreet distance. The distance is far enough so you can’t see the bodies, only the architecture.” — David Wojnarowicz, 1991
I send a friend exactly three teabags inside a brown paper envelope with a note that says something highly descriptive like ‘three teabags’
Trying to get things done in a reasonable time is difficult when mostly everything about this time we are living in seems unreasonable
A family member I spoke to the other day used the word ‘massacred’ to describe seeing trees cut down during a television programme
Tonight (Friday 23rd) is a full moon, known as Snow Moon, and the only “micromoon” of the year, which means the moon is at its furthest point possible from Earth during its orbit, also known as its apogee (a universe-incident I wrote about in my third book, Eating the Sun)
So tonight, early tomorrow morning, our moon will be 253,000 miles away, and I suggest if you look at it you look at it longingly
Friends leaving for almost two weeks deposit with us the things from their kitchen that would become inedible if left behind: one wrinkled swede, the largest sweet potato I’ve ever seen, 7 limes, the last inch of a pot of yoghurt, a grapefruit, a pomegranate, 4 large potatoes, and as a most thoughtful addition a two-thirds empty box of After Eights
For the seventeenth time so far this year I wonder whether I have an iron deficiency and then do very little about it
HOW WORK IS GOING:
Publishers are looking at my book proposal, having thoughts about it, having suggestions about it—good ones—and I’m trying to find the required energy for enthusiasm and optimism and all of the other ‘isms’ that are necessary at this early stage. This is, some days, easier said than done, because honestly it seems relatively callous to suggest making even more books when the libraries and bookshelves of Palestine are being erased.
This being said, being felt, I do believe the book I’m proposing will help people to better understand not only their relationships to the fragile natural world but also every other person who shares the planet.
More on this, supposedly soon.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN DIFFICULT LOVE WITH:
Palestine in photographs, taken by Alessandra Sanguinetti between 2003 and 2004, after the second intifada.
And what I think, each time I have thought these images since, is how many of these people are still alive, now? Because really, they all should be, every last one.
“The little sister of Khalil Abu-Thaher stares at her brother, her own worry and trepidation prevent her from disturbing the teenager who sleeps standing up. His head injury is not visible, but we know that something is not quite right in this dreamy image. The sandals in the hallway of a Gaza home, pockmarked with the bullet holes of an Israeli attack, do not tell a story, but they invite questions that one might not want to ask. Have the owners of those shoes fled barefoot? Are they still huddled inside? They could be dead, or they may just be sitting down to an afternoon meal.” — Lori A. Allen
“Regretfully, I had to leave all my books behind. I couldn’t bear to make the choice between my beloveds, so I left them all.
Give them back. Give us back our beds. Give us back our offices. And give us back our books.”
— Nabil S., from “It Was All Songs: A Letter From Gaza” translated from the Arabic by Sarah Aziza, published in Mizna on February 12th, 2024
Paid supporters receive several additional posts each month, including things like short stories, longer illustrated essays, and more detailed looks into creative processes. The most recent of these is A Street Three Times, which goes into the process of a painting in depth:
