No.269

September ending, a list:

1. When Mary Oliver said in a poem she wanted ‘to think again of dangerous and noble things’ and also ‘to be light and frolicsome’

2. As winter begins to make its promises we painted various external wood-clad things in dark pine tar, which smells exceedingly strongly in a pleasing and natural way but a way that lasts for as much as a month—I find this surprising

3. While at work you noticed a man notice several people had neglected to close the door behind them, the man in question went over and closed it and you told me afterwards this was notable

4. Friends gifted to me a Japanese tamagoyaki pan

5. It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason. — Ray Bradbury, from ‘The Lake’

6. There is much to be said about (sad about) northern hemisphere Septembers but I find by the time you’ve come to terms with it your time is up and the trees have turned over their leaves to pink and yellow and red and so these weeks too quickly feel like the items you will forget at the back of high cupboards because you won’t consistently see them when opening the doors

7. A book in the stack (read: the strewn variously) to be read:

8. You broke a dinner plate

9. You also installed metal baskets on both of our bicycles and one of the first thoughts I had was I can now cycle to the library and put books in there

10. Of late I seem to have temporarily abandoned any semblance of lists or planning for the days, which I did quite religiously for years, and this has meant more things forgotten, more ideas misplaced, blank pages, and yet it seems like the correct way to go about this time, at least for now—I have composed an alternate system of promising myself baths as an incentive to get certain amounts done

11. Charles Wright describing September in A Journal of the Year of the Ox as ‘the bed we lie in between summer and autumn’

12. We resumed morning porridge eating in earnest

13. I can’t in the slightest explain the feeling I have when seeing and hearing migrating geese overhead, something which happens perhaps every couple of days here in this strip of Scotland—I also think there could be a more precise word for when you hear and feel something in the very same moment—but it might have something to do with the fleetingness, the unfathomable distances they are travelling, their ever-changing patterns in flight, their strange, reassuring size when seen standing on solid ground, the fact that it’s possible to hear their high-up calls even through closed and double glazed windows

14. The berries on the rowan are turning to orange from their summer red, and soon enough they will be covering the earth below, and soon enough the blackbirds will descend again in large number to consume them

15. Sometimes it’s possible to simply miss the window of breakfast

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WORK-RELATED THINGS:

This month contained first pass pages for the new book which looked like: five hundred tiny comments on the manuscript and their ensuing tiny edits, then even more tiny comments and more tiny edits specifically relating to non-English terms and their accompanying text—English is one of more than eighty different languages represented in there. I’m both pleased with and proud of the meticulousness that the team at Andrews McMeel has given this book, the love they’ve shown it also, and I look so much forward in the coming weeks and months to sharing more about it—the final cover design we went with, the themes of the seven chapters, the fact that to my immense satisfaction there will be a complete alphabetical index of terms at the end, etc.

In addition to the above: final design tweaks and a proofread for the expanded edition of an anthology Orion is publishing slightly later this year, as well as last read throughs and adjustments for the autumn issue before that gets sent off to the printer—the cover image is one of my absolute favourites within the entire Orion cover realm, and as the third issue post-redesign it also feels like things are very much getting into a proper visual rhythm. (If you read that paragraph and thought huh? then by way of an explanation: I’m the magazine’s designer and as such am responsible for those matters.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Paintings by Luigi Zuccheri (b. 1904, Gemona del Friuli; d. 1974, Venice), who made his own pigments from stones collected at nearby riverbanks and who for a good while painted humans being dwarfed by creatures and birds and insects and foliage—all of which were seemingly Untitled.

Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.

— Wallace Stevens, ‘The Dwarf’ from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954)

Again and for however long necessary: (Actions for demanding a Free Palestine and an end to genocidal occupation.) / (Reading list for a Free Palestine.) / (Postcards for Palestine, free PDF downloads.) / (Send a physical postcard demanding an end to UK arms sales.) / (Ten free ebooks for getting free from Haymarket Books.) Also: (Support verified Sudanese support campaigns.)

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