This morning I left the house at some point before 7:30am, walked in the just-getting-light-now between the half-asleep headlights blinking through light rain and then through Victoria Park, where hundreds of gulls were standing around like small feathered sentinels on grass, the sort of grass beginning to resemble a sea of gentle mud in the way it sometimes can in late November, all of those bird bodies patiently waiting as if for the rest of the city to wake itself up. Even at this time of day (and I suppose one shouldn't find this surprising in London) there are countless people out in the park, many of them running, making either identical loops in the space, or selecting to take routes that are slightly more erratic, over and around the paved paths that split the ground into pieces.
I admire the determination of these people, I do, but today for whatever reason their running began to seem absurd and alien to me, and it looked as though each one, at varying velocity, was running away from something—not towards anything and not just for the sake of running but actually away. In some cases it looked like they were running away from something as fast as their legs could manage, and such was my mood that I had to actively try not to laugh. I tried to work out whether I was any different in my walking, or whether I was precisely the same as them, only quite a lot slower, but several hours later, long since returned, I'm still not sure.
ON ANATOMY AND FEELING:
Receptors on the tongue can detect perhaps
eight flavors: salty, sour, bitter, and sweet
routinely, umami and kokumi
if one becomes accustomed to the pairings
and partings of Eastern cuisine, and of course
iron and ash. This will explain your taste
for the subtler mushrooms, buttery wines,
and sunburnt shoulders, the mouthfeel of every Yes
you regret. In each inch of skin one finds thirty feet
of nerves prepared to fire or fail, almost
two hundred committed to touch, ten times
as many dedicated to real, remembered,
and expected pain. In a lifetime you will shed
half your weight in skin, cells expended in the search
for the pains you prefer or deserve. The brain (and this
may be the sovereign paradox of the body)
cannot itself feel pain; it must explain
sensations to the organs and extremities
using strong Saxon words, as you would describe
love or culture to a foreign, feral child.
When the head aches blood is to blame, or the heart
to be precise, pumping with a rhythmic disregard
for all the damage it will do, smug in its seat
just left of center, not quite where you think,
darker, too, and smaller, balled like a fist.
Practical Anatomy, William H. Wandless
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Photographs by Hannah Karsen from a series titled 'Although I have never been here before and know nothing about this place'.
There is a small spider in the bathroom—the overly thin-legged, ephemeral, and delicate-looking kind—that has been suspended in what seems to be exactly the same place, near the crease and meeting of walls, for three days. In fact, it could be more than three days, because I was away for the previous four, so really it could have been there for as many as seven days. I stare at it while brushing my teeth and wonder what, if anything, we might have in common.
(I realise this newsletter didn't contain much, or indeed anything, in the way of actual news, but there we go.)
The end.
Copyright © 2018 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.