No.83

Jun 23, 2018

It has been a long time since we last met, perhaps two or three weeks; forgive me. Or, can you? Can we forgive people who we don't really know? I'm not sure that half of us even know what forgiving is, or what is meant to happen post-forgiveness, because we all carry on minding about things just the same, still holding on, still missing.

There was a moment earlier today when, while writing an email to someone, the word 'thoughts' tried to correct and change itself to 'ghosts', and as nonsensical as the leap seemed to be, it was more than enough to stop me mid-sentence. I stopped because consider how accurate, how often that is the case; consider the fact that we are sometimes more able, more willing to recognise and listen to ghosts than we are to thoughts. But it was also an interesting comparison to make because certain types of recurring thought could very easily be classified as recurring ghosts, and I don't know why we listen so intently to those, and while I could pull whatever this is out forever, I'll stop. Here is a quote:

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

Arguably, too much, but the cover for the Universe Book (which is how I'm needing to refer to it for now, as the title changed, as I still don't know quite when I'm meant to shout loudly about it) has been approved by various people I've never met, and I've seen the draft version of what will be printed on the back of the book, in terms of an explanation, what-is-it-exactly, a blurb*.

I will also gaze upon sample designs for the page spreads this weekend in order to send feedback, designs that have been put together by a very delightful human called Sabrina, and we begin to think about what goes precisely where, the text and the illustrations being all neighbourly, page numbers and details and colours and tiny things that few people will notice.

*Does anybody use 'blurb' much any more? As a word said aloud it somehow involves parts of your mouth that you didn't know were in there, which seems to me an inordinately good thing for a word to do.