I thought for a good while about whether or not to write anything today, because sometimes tucking words into the ordinary cracks of a life—walls, floorboards, under the sofa, between books, inside jars of rice and pasta, windowframes—can be a more valuable and reverberating choice than scattering synonyms across a page. But, here we are, because I got stuck thinking about action and inaction and then thought to hell with everything.
I’ve been reading a lot of the news lately, as a whole humanity seems to spew forth news, and absorbing it is a bit like trying to absorb sea urchins. In other words, not in the least bit comfortable. The unrest of the world picks up pace like confused and erratic wind patterns, while here the literal winds are battering coastlines at gale force speeds (being Ireland, the sun is also out for brief, shockingly blue and serene periods in between the severe storm warnings). At 4am last night the howling was loud enough to wake me from strange dreams of broken glass, particles from other oceans rushing past the windows as I struggled to slip back to sleep.
The Atlantic weather systems this weekend are described as ‘disturbed’ and I think to myself yes, many other systems are disturbed this weekend also—soon, Tuesday 3rd, one of the days that the world is holding its worried breath for, and I recoil to think about the outpouring of hatred and mistrust that is lurking-in-wait behind the mouth of an orange-faced, cruel and idiot man. This morning birds struggled to land in leaf-less trees outside, a single magpie sheltering ineffectively along with ten or eleven rooks, and surely if birds weighing no more than small pebbles can manage to land in gale force winds a country’s population can choose tenderness over the tyrannical.
WORK-RELATED NEWS
My nervously-awaited editor-agent call happened on the third attempt, because the clocks changed and I was a diabolical hour too late, because the second attempt was derailed by a headache that felt like a bison sitting on my eyes. It was a good call, a very excellent one by all accounts, and now I have much work and thinking to do in the next couple of weeks—the aim of this vaguery and ongoing back-and-forth is, of course, deciding upon an idea strong enough for a fourth book.
By the time the call came around at 6pm yesterday I had found the opportunity to make the terrible mistake of drinking a large quantity of coffee in the late afternoon, and as such I was a blend of shivering, skittering heartrate, clammy skin and overheating knees. I am lucky because when I reported these symptoms over the screen in lieu of a greeting I was met with understanding and a discerning non-judgement. Oh, how they put up with me.
In other news, edits for the Orion essay swim to and fro, and I try to find the time to work on all the other project strands at once while trying to maintain some semblance of optimism or momentum, which is exceedingly difficult to do at times (see also: at all the times).
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Paintings by Melbourne-based artist Jesse Dayan.
“... we have to love inside the history we’re given, but must resist, like radicals, being made into mere creatures of a mere era.”
— Carol Shields, Unless
(What I want you to understand from the line above is that you personally are not a mere creature of a mere era, and of course that you have to love, too, love inside the history in which you happen to find yourself.)
(More precisely, not being a mere creature of a mere era looks like choosing to believe that you can change the era, and then doing so by whatever means necessary.)
The end.
