No.275

I've been noticing more the importance of cross-examining feelings, especially those that aren't being particularly helpful or contributing anything useful. This investigation is done simply by physically moving yourself through different events and environments, through different volumes and varied scenery. In doing so, one can quite swiftly and effectively sift the loosely-knit feelings from the denser ones, because the sort of feelings that stand up and leave without a fight when you open just one window, when you cut a piece of ripe fruit almost perfectly in half, or when you run as fast as humanly possible down a hallway—those feelings are not the ones you need to keep going back to, and certainly not the ones you need to carry.

(Tiny snips of blue taken from the ‘lacuna’ entry in Words to Love a Planet)

I want to stress, because I think it is worth stressing, that it is never the right time to stop being kind, or generous, or patient. The only worthwhile things to come out of any sort of dissatisfaction or meanness are the shimmering, tender, freshly cemented ideas about understanding and love and poems and time, about noticing and paper and really noticing what you are able to do, but sometimes a little more.

About half an hour ago I decided that instead of finding it strange to be a person,
I would choose for the remainder of the day to feel like a wilderness.

‘Crepuscular animals are those that are active primarily during twilight (that is, the periods of dawn and dusk). This is distinguished from diurnal and nocturnal behavior, where an animal is active during the hours of daylight or the hours of darkness, respectively. The term is not precise, however, as some crepuscular animals may also be active on a moonlit night or during an overcast day. The term matutinal is used for animals that are active only before sunrise, and vespertine for those active only after sunset.’

(For some reason this feels like permission to be active on a moonlit night or during an overcast day.)

I have run out of things with which to occupy myself, so I fight with one of those familiar sinking sensations, bare hands against its weight, feels like looking down at fistfuls of feathers, wanting desperately to both hold them and let go, and so instead of deciding I just hold and hold and hold.

The world doesn’t want to go quietly, it doesn’t want to subside and just let me listen to my blood streaming-gleeful round in circles, instead it’s grief-and-good-filled in all directions and the loudness of that becomes very apparent when I lie here trying to persuade the streetlights to go dark.

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WORDS TO LOVE A PLANET:

In 40 days the UK edition will be here, and the US edition close behind 12 days after that. My lovingly illustrated, culturally diverse dictionary of over 200 words from over 80 different languages will soon be out and about in the world, which means that for the next few weeks I have no choice but to harp on about the importance of preorders, and encourage you to support my work in this way. I believe this is the proudest I’ve been of a book yet, so I’m therefore quite confident in my preorder harping:

Much to the relief of the publishers I’ll be posting more about the book and its making over on Instagram in the coming days and weeks (although it seems to be getting more and more complicated to just post a damned picture there without wading through what feels like an entire roomful of embellishment options, and the result is some mixture of dismayed, enraged, and discouraged).

(Although: if you’re based in the UK you might wish to wait a few days and check Instagram for details of a preorder offer between February 17-20th, but you didn’t hear that from me beforehand.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

The art of English painter and decorative artist Dora Carrington (1893–1932), whose own work was overshadowed during her lifetime (indeed never exhibited during her lifetime) by the fact of being enveloped within the Bloomsbury Group, her long relationship with the writer Lytton Strachey, and the various other spheres of love in which she existed and circled.

Farm at Watendlath, 1921

Iris Tree on a Horse, c.1920s

Gerald Brenan, 1921

Spanish Landscape with Mountains, c.1924

Portrait of Catherine Carrington, c.1926

Exotic Flower, 1920-1930

From The Art of Dora Carrington, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1994

The Mill at Tidmarsh, 1918

Lytton Strachey, 1916

SLICES FROM BOOKS RECENTLY READ:

Conversation between people who have not the least idea of each other’s whereabouts.

. . . the only consolation I can give you from my great age is that everything diminishes with time, unless you want to keep it alive.

— Every Eye, Isobel English

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A radical sympathy with all people based on their integrity as becomings, not beings; as people who experience the potential freedom of their own souls, so to radically know that people experience themselves from the inside, and not one person alive has ever experienced themselves from the outside.

All I want are moments and more moments.

It is amazing how easy it is and how it costs nothing to italicize something.

What you call abbreviation is actually impatience.

— Alphabetical Diaries, Sheila Heti

See also: I will now put on all my clothes to go outside into the -2 degrees and attempt to rake frozen soil, brandish woodchip, stack logs, and behold the snowdrops and crocuses that have been making themselves known.

AGAIN AND FOR HOWEVER LONG NECESSARY: Reading list for a Free Palestine. / Ten free ebooks for getting free from Haymarket Books. / Support verified Sudanese support campaigns. / Email templates for a Free Palestine.

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The Sometimes Newsletter is an entirely reader-supported affair. If you love reading, and are able to, please consider becoming a paid supporter to help ensure its continuation—as a thank you paid supporters usually receive one or two special pieces each month. Alternatively you can subscribe at no cost to receive the regular numbered posts by email, and the main archive currently remains accessible to all.