A few days before we all found out we couldn’t go anywhere, my watch stopped. An unrecognisable and unwanted premonition of what was to come, the hours no longer passed in a predictable way on my wrist, and instead they were confined to a tiny wicker pot next to the bed. This watch is mostly a gold-coloured metal, one that tarnishes, the wrist-strap narrow and embossed, gently snaking with a sort of latching clasp to secure it to one’s arm. I found it perhaps a whole four years ago in a second-hand shop in London, its hands motionless, not knowing whether it would function properly but figuring it could be mended if it turned out the time could not be told.
It seems that the older an inanimate object is, the easier it is to mend, and this is something that suggests all of our ever-complicated present-day conjuring leaves us only with large accumulations of broken objects and technologies, things that have to be mended with many more things and resources, rather than with only skill, or time—imagine! a world where we are able to fix all of our belongings with just these two prehistoric options!
While wondering when it will be possible to wear my watch again, I’m finding importance and subtleties in the more unusual ways of noticing time passing: ghastly-bright flowers opening in the garden before falling unceremoniously to the ground by the end of a week, watching fat melon seedlings grow larger by the day, the increasing spread of miracle spiderwebs, the collecting medley of dust on the floor and the surfaces that I will shortly be vacuuming away, grasses becoming alternately more and less green as it rains for days and then doesn’t, shadows pulled longer as the sun lowers again, again, again.
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
Loose ends for an article being published who-knows-quite-when, proofreading for other people, and a new book idea. Working on this idea has looked similar to the following:
The idea makes itself known
Slumping in the garden in half-sun-mostly-shade with a notebook, staring at leaves and seeing what thoughts come up, smash them gently down onto the paper while feeling inordinately distracted by birds
Lying in the garden in mostly-sun, getting far too hot and writing out thoughts more coherently in the notebook
Sitting at the desk and typing out the idea slightly more formally, sending this over to my long-suffering literary agent, Jennifer
Jennifer says she is intrigued, and requests that I send more
Sit at desk and think further about presentation of the idea, about possible ways to shape a narrative, do a couple of illustrations (see below) to assist with my explanations before sending over lengthier notes and the drawings to Jennifer
Jennifer says she likes the idea additionally and will show to others in the (currently virtual) office
Others also like the idea, Jennifer requests more
I set to work on a fully-functioning book proposal and monitor my unrealistic expectations concerning its potential and the theoretical finish line
A continuing
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Time passing.
(A slow and for-no-particular-reason display of drying-up rhododendron flowers that I had threaded pointlessly together on string before hanging them from a small metal hook in the ceiling. I don’t know why the hook is there (I am currently living in a rented property), but it looked wistful, and the colours and shadows and changing hues at differing times of day gave it at least a temporary reason for being.)
We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods.
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
(There will be some talk of moods in the next newsletter, as recently the good-est friend wrote to me about parts-of-the-self and being and collections and certainty and it has been heavily but comfortably on my mind since.)
The end.
