No.243
A sparrow’s heart beats four hundred and sixty times a minute.
I don’t remember where I read this, or when, but I noted it down. In the same way that I consistently note down occurences or overlaps or remarkable—in that I will internally remark upon them—informations or exchanges or sentences which fall out of people’s mouths and my surrounding environments and for whatever reason sound perfectly right. Such as:
“Do you think the Queen uses this entrance or do you think she helicopters in?”
“She’s dead, Jerome.”
This exchange happened last weekend between two friends, part way through cycling a large distance across the bleak, almost entirely tree-missing Scottish landscape seemingly in order to acquire a huge number of insect bites and lie in a cold river. I do not find myself on a bicycle particularly often, and so my method for the large distance was to simply not let my body know that my mind didn’t think I could cycle anywhere near that far. I fell off only once.
‘It wasn’t that far from the edge of things if she remembered rightly.’
Having completed the cycling portion of the aforementioned long cycle, our group of four finds itself in a pub with dark, immovable wooden tables and dead animals on the walls—two of my least liked things—and a concise crossword pilfered from a copy of The Guardian left lying around for, presumably, people to remove the crossword. At some point during word proceedings, or perhaps it was during the actual eating phase, cannot be sure either way because it was written on the crossword:
“You left me two mackerel fillets when you went to Dallas.”
Out of any additional context, I find this to be perfect.
‘I am interested in translations, the man says, and the different things they will find themselves saying, while all trying to say the same thing.’
Two days ago another notable moment, brought into existence by an elderly town resident and her dog—the two are from a distance often indistinguishable, their hair the exact same shade of white—as I walked along the main street to the one-and-only supermarket.
She was walking towards me from the other direction, and about ten metres away I see her bend down to pick up something tiny from the pavement. I think, almost instantly and having seen a small glint, it is surely a penny. As we approach each other, closer and closer on the shaded side of the road, she finds my eyes and I start to say That’s very good luck! but before I’ve finished she’s pressed what is in fact a two pence coin into my left hand—the hand I do not write with.
I tell her No, no, you must keep the luck! but she’s insistent, using her own fingers to press mine tightly closed around the cold coin. So, and since we seem to now be the only two people on the planet, I thank her and we drift apart. I haven’t noticed the dog at our feet, such is its gentleness.
Then when we are a few meters away in the direction the other has come from—tracing each others’ lines—she calls after me, something I don’t quite catch because I wasn’t expecting further communication. Turning back I form my face into a question and she repeats herself: Don’t spend it all at once.
This is amusing to her, and beautiful to me.
I don’t spend it anything like all at once, and it has stayed in the right-hand pocket of a pair of linen trousers since.
‘The visitor is beautiful even when she is pretending something with her face.’
Halfway though today I find myself at the window watching people pour like ants out of the Catholic church down the road following a wedding. Alerted to this hours earlier by a lengthy playing of bagpipes, a period of silence, then loud whoops and cheers as the newly-tethered-together couple is whisked up (down) the street in a VW campervan that looks like it might only just reach the other side of town before some part of it starts smoking.
I wonder how much of what was contained within those church hours anyone will remember. Photographs will have been taken, which always ensures less is actually being committed to deep memory, deep body-time. What kind of lives all those people are returning to, peeling off their cold-for-August wedding attire, the unbuttoning and unlacing and unzipping and wriggling and forgetting to take anything to the dry cleaner for months afterwards, sweat stains in shirts becoming immovable.
I hope they’ll be happy.
‘And I want and need as many languages as I have selves.’
— Ali Smith, Summer (the previous three inset quotes also)
A BRIEF NOTE:
I’m nearing the end of a period of research for a new book—research amid the actual writing, such as timings require—which means for another week I’m still interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to contribute:
THIS WEEK TO FALL IN LOVE WITH:
Colours and seasons from the paintings of Norwegian Neo-romantic Harald Sohlberg (1869–1935). Perhaps we could live in all of these, together.
“I don’t have anyone to tell my secrets to,” he said.
“The universe is too busy.
— from Moon Talk by Dunya Mikhail, translation Elizabeth Winslow and Dunya Mikhail
‘Outside, the trees were breaking themselves into pieces.’
— Jenny Offill, Last Things
(Links and actions for a Free Palestine and Essays for a Free Palestine, a free ebook from Verso Books.)
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These paintings! Absolute perfection.
Ella, I especially am drawn to the paintings you have shared on this particular newsletter.