No.142

Nov 28, 2020

Things are OK, and they are very much not OK. Although the year is promising to end soon, it will not be the end of the confusion and pain and the disregard for how life in many places needs to look now. However possible, and to large degrees, we must fill ourselves up with patience, with consideration, and do this because Kurt Vonnegut likely said it best: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Why are humans so good at consistently breaking that rule?

So where to begin, with November almost done and with nothing and everything to show for it? Begin at slow. Begin at winter sunlight and the condensation that sweeps up from the edges of window frames. Begin noticing beauty before breakfast, when you’re hungry, begin with rest and warmth and trying to put worrying to one side so that even if just for half a day you can fill the other side with your goodness and your possibility and with sewing buttons back on.

(I hope your backbone is feeling strong.)

Begin at noticing why your neck aches on the left, and then try not to feel frustrated when a sock goes missing in the machine. Begin with watching a candle flame in the dark for five whole minutes, with letting yourself collapse when it gets too much—it is all too much these days, and often. Make yourself tea, but also make someone else tea, and make yourself get into cold water for a while, if you can. Begin with failing and with that being alright. Begin with laughing when he tells you that he dreamt about green onions.

Begin with forgiving December before it’s even started.

WORK & OTHER NEWS:

Waiting to hear back about one thing, about another thing, and also about some more things. Trying hard to balance notions of must maintain schedule with notions of the world doth fall apart always and forever. Trying hard to feel more comfortable with shorter sentences, although I don’t think in short sentences. Trying hard to be more blunt. Realising that I’ve actually been working hard to keep myself in a small space, creatively-speaking, a space that is kept quietly closed by dusty fears and a creaking perfectionism. Making plans to stretch creative muscles out again with oil pastels and with doing whatever I want. Some of what this means:

I’m going to delete Twitter (we always felt pointless to each other)
I’m going to spend more time curating work and thoughts on my website journal rather than on the useful-community-nice-but-too-fast-and-hollow Instagram
Shall be trying hard to liberate my Instagram from white space because as a constraint it is not working anymore
Will make original work available because I’m not sure why I’m not selling original work
Will make small efforts to be slightly louder in all the conversations that we can’t have right now
Be more accepting of creative tiredness

My website looks very different (by ‘very’ I mean ‘I’ve moved everything around and changed a silly number of details and images that likely nobody will notice but it was satisfying’) and things feel much clearer as a result.

I expect that I’ll to be adding and changing things for a while (because like when a tooth has fallen out you can’t help but repeatedly reach your tongue to the place it has fallen from), so if you have spent any amount of time on my website and thought well, that thing is missing, please let me know.

(Also—I thought that I was able to take myself more seriously with a general absence of colour, but it turns out that way of thinking has an expiration date, and that I can actually like working with colour.)

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Paintings and a drawing or two by Andrew Lansley. They seem to suit November, they suit the colder nights and hoar frosts that don’t leave the until midday, and the way my sister said on the phone yesterday from Scotland ‘Is that snow?’