I find myself torn, pulled in different creative directions a lot lately: the visceral need to write quickly, darkly, truthfully, while tangled up unhelpfully in the self, but also the desire to participate in necessary discussion about culture and language and humanity; the creation of something that deals with thoughts, rather than feelings.
In a lot of ways, I feel more restless than ever, and while this is exhausting and on occasion unnerving, it also causes me to realise how different I could become, how much more complete, how much more everything. Satisfaction and contentment are two words that always leave me a little wary, because it seems that to be satisfied can translate as being slow, that being content can leave you wandering into the territory of monotony. While I'm undecided on how much weight I should be giving to them, I do know that they have a place and time; I'm not opposed to the idea that they might actually need to feature slightly more frequently in order to stay sane.
ON THE JOURNAL THIS WEEK:
Mary Oliver reminding you that you do not have to be good, and some scribbling that speaks of feeling waterproof when the weather turns grey, or unpredictable, or unwanted.
WORK AND BOOK-RELATED UPDATES:
- there is soon to be a translation of Lost in Translation (yes, I know) published in Brazil, which is exciting to the point of silly
- a reader of the Spanish edition called it 'one of the most original, clever and tender books I have read recently' and that was just very delightful
- I'm still working furiously on the proposal for the next (hopefully) book
- fell in love with an ampersand which now keeps me company when working in my home-studio-everything-heaven-abode (pictured below)
- by the end of this coming week, I hope to have made available in my personal store some original screenprints that are currently not helping anybody because I'm just hoarding them and/or being terribly sluggish
- the 100 day project I'm taking part in on Instagram is coming along very nicely if I do say so myself (I do)
AN IMPOSSIBLY BEAUTIFUL THING:
These photographs of frozen lakes in Lithuania from 300 feet up by Mantas Bačiuška leave me feeling both cold and struck dumb with wonder at how never-endingly ravishing this planet is.
The end.
This was a very visually muted newsletter, but actually I'm finding myself using less and less colour in everything, probably as a subconscious way of coping with how awfully chaotic the world is seeming right now. How are you holding on to the threads of daily life, the normality that is so important, the rhythm and hum of people doing people things, the minutiae so worth noticing?
Farewell, see you next sometime.
Copyright © 2017 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.