No.271
It has been, I know, a while. Certainly a while longer than I’d anticipated or planned for, and within the last month I have been intermittently concerned about the passing of time, thought amongst other things it has been too long! and then but there is nothing to say about anything! and then the whole point of this is that it’s sometimes.
You see: I’ve had thoughts but they have all seemed relatively shapeless, thinnish, or the kind of thoughts which, when you look at them more closely, seem to have never been there in The First Place. I tell you something only to realise it isn’t the first time, or I tell you something and suspect it isn’t the first time, or I tell you something and then feel annoyed that it wasn’t the first time. These days it can be difficult to trace my thoughts back to The First Place, as in: difficult to know where the origins are, what it even meant or tried to mean in those initial instances, or if the thoughts were supposed to mean anything. I feel that we can pick up thoughts in error, those which would have perhaps served us better as the kind which you simply remark upon in passing, like a particularly bright leaf stuck in a gutter, or a bird briefly making itself known overhead.
Last night it occured to me that the generally-held wisdom—suspicion? perception? begrudged truth?—of not knowing what we’ve got until it’s gone might in fact be applicable to the entire Earth. Are we only going to know the Earth if we lose it? If people are only realising what goodness looks like after they have lost it why wouldn’t that be transferable to entire ecosystems, a planet? This worries me, and I worry that it’s accurate. I then, out of nowhere, remember the term focus group.
For the first time this autumn the temperature slipped below freezing overnight, so I woke to silvered, displeased-looking grass and trees-as-statues, and the car took a full fifteen minutes to un-frost itself. I also couldn’t initially open the door. The red Japanese maple had, over the course of the previous week or two, dropped a large quantity of its leaves onto the front of the car and so those had frozen art-like, along for the ride.
The ride the leaves went on was twenty minutes long, roughly parallel to the river in the direction of what is—for around here at least—a sizable mountain. Sizable to my mind because it already had a scattering of snow on top, though also not sizable to my mind because I have spent time living in Washington State. The river-mist which at 8:30am was hugging itself to the floor of the valley was enough to make you think everything could in fact be fine.
Later, having been into the loch and convinced I either have hypothermia or a nonexistent thyroid, with the mist lifted and the mystic-untouchable feeling of an autumn morning firmly punctured, I consume a coffee and then another cup of hot water and then three stroopwafels in an attempt to heat from the inside out—this doesn’t particularly work even though I am encased in many-a-clothe including a woollen mohair sweater and a knit scarf so heavy it takes me several weeks every year to acclimate the neck to wearing it again. By the time I’ve actually warmed back up it seems to be going dark again and I figure that four winters deep into Scotland it is time to purchase a coat so warm and voluminous people will think I’ve gone mad.
Already at this time of year I can sit the mortal coil next to a fully closed window and the coldness being promised by the exterior world will convince me the window is surely in some way open—that there is a sliver of openness somewhere, a compromised edge, a weak spot where the winter will let itself in.
Back in October, visiting Greece, people said it was autumn there and I believed them but I was also not fooled. While away I read seven books and got scared when wearing goggles to swim into the ocean and you sang various single notes as loudly as you possibly could inside a tiny Byzantine monastery filled with half-faded paintings which sat otherwise silent and immovable in the middle of a densely vegetated valley.
We likely do not consider enough the action of taking a volume from up on a bookshelf with an index finger.
I find the email from my US publisher which says We’ve sent the files to the printer—hooray! but also we do need to adjust our pub date and so I shift the body over to make room inside for another two weeks. This makes me think of dark wooden church pews, the kind which have been worn so smooth and so slippery by centuries of sitting that it makes you wonder how anyone can still keep their grip on something approximating Beliefs. By the time this revised book publication date comes around I’m expecting I’ll be a whole other person—namely one who has spent the winter warm because they acquired a laughably large coat.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Pieces from a recent exhibition of Lucy Roleff’s work in Collingwood, Victoria at the Nicholas Thompson gallery.
It’s a respectable night; I like it well enough.
— Danielle Dutton, Sprawl
In the autumn, electricity withdraws into the earth and rests.
When I was talking about geniuses on the couch, Lars said, they just add objects to the world.
— Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries
This is mindless, I thought, and very unflattering—stop it at once. But I
didn’t stop because I was so curious to find out what changed if I
carried on.
— Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
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.) / (Ten free ebooks for getting free from Haymarket Books.) Also: (Support verified Sudanese support campaigns.)
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Ahh Ella, I just opened the link you shared to your new book and gasped at the cover — it’s stunning! Please keep us posted when it’s possible to pre-order, I can’t wait to read it 🤍✨
I missed you