No.132

The last three weeks have felt like a lot of things. They have felt like lying in a sleeping bag with arms down to the sides and unsure whether that is claustrophobia or not, and they have felt like wanting to set sail in a coracle for a small island with only tall seabirds dwelling on it. They have also felt like car sickness, a world and its shapeless time moving past very quickly with a distinct lack of anything to hold on to. But these weeks have also felt like paper, the leafy promise of it and the words it can carry. I think about the phrase ‘set in stone’ and compare it in my mouth to ‘set on paper’, deciding that stones probably shouldn’t be made to carry words, that the particular permanence of stones is too risky, that only paper will do.

A lot of things stick to me more at the moment: emotion, thoughtless comments, photographs, roadkill, observed interactions, eye expressions of strangers, the mould of fruit. Fragments of sentence stick too, and the following has been pulling at my hair since the middle of June:

The sticking is, I think, a way of the previously routine, unwanted or unremarkable things taking up more room—they can run rampant when our lives are condensed and made simpler. (A tiny maggot found inside one half of a cherry is now the most notable minute of a day.) The indistinguishable background hum of life from before lockdown is now playing at a much higher volume, asking like some strange orchestra of awkwardness and miracles to be noticed again, again. All those transparent threads holding the world together that we take so thoroughly for granted, the ones that leave a bad taste in the mouth and the ones that are honey-like nectar, asking that we don’t forget them when this bizarre sweep of time has left us behind.

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

I wait to hear back about my most recent book proposal (a charming agony) and fill the work hours with a mixture of proofreading for other people, testing out strange short stories, making lists about how I can expand work outwards more often, worrying that I do not have many (or any) go-getter bones in my body, drawing that which demands to be drawn, contracts, emails, and the joyous keeping-up-to-date of taxes.

In the coming newsletters I will be adding a new work-related section to discuss and talk about and press into a few of the things y’all were interested to know more about, such as:

• Routines (or lack thereof)

• A bit about writing craft

• Books I return to

• How I find what I fall in love with

• Works in progress

I’ll simply be picking one thing for each newsletter and then doing some fervent digging. If you are reading this and thinking ‘Aha! Oh! But I too have an interest!’ then please do leave a comment, which I believe appears as an option when you reach the end of the newsletter page, be it in your inbox or reading from the main newsletter archive.

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Work by Budapest-based Marietta Varga. These photographs have a certain quality that is difficult to pinpoint, but I believe it’s that when looking at them one feels they might also be remembering something. I want there to be a word for feeling sure that you are remembering something but without necessarily needing to know what the thing actually is—remembering without knowing what you are remembering.

“So is it true that we live on the surface of a sphere, exposed to the gaze of the planets, left in a great void, where after the Fall the light was smashed to smithereens and blown apart? It is true. We should remember that every day, for we do tend to forget.”

— Olga Tokarczuk

(For we do tend to forget.)

The end.