It is ten past nine before I unfurl properly to write, the trees outside glowing in cold sun, a mid-grey sky darker and promising—ah, there, it rains.
Sleep last night brought strange dreams, in part because we had watched a documentary in the evening about the US-Mexico border, about the pains and stories and confusion and lives that collect there. In dreams, a large family is trying to flee a faceless terror, stepping softly through trees and promises to spend night after night shaking in the clutch of a dense green forest. Waking before the alarm, set at 5:33am, for you but not for me, although an anxiousness about not hearing it meant a restless sleep for us both, I think.
“I'm going to get up now, because I'm already awake,” or something like this is mumbled in the direction my left ear. I glance at the clock—5:01am—and later am glad you got up when you did, because I didn't open the gates for you until almost an hour and a half later and because nobody likes to rush. Cardigan to protect against the dark, shoes slipped on as I step out, still half-asleep I'm sure. But what met me on the other side of the door was an entire sky of stars, bright and shocking even without glasses on, and a sliver of curved moon low to the horizon which you stop to point out to me before driving away.
Closing the metal gates and walking back around to the house I am met with the brightest edition of the Orion constellation I've ever seen, and my heart pulls like a fierce, dissatisfied thing. Then sliding back into the warm pool of sheets, just enough heat left to warm back up from outside before deciding to close my eyes. Behind them, the stars are all still there, a slice of universe printed under my eyelids.
BOOK, CONTINUED:
Yesterday morning I staggered quite rain-sodden into the local post office with a cardboard box containing thirty-five slim packages—each one was a book, or two books, or in some cases three or four books, but all of them the same book. They left for the US, for the UK, for Italy and Spain and Canada and The Netherlands and India.
These were the fifty first-edition copies of We Will Be Close Again, the arrival of which a few days previously sent me into a small spin of excitement—feasibly the most excitement I’ve felt since last June. Now that the first editions are all en route, there is the minor matter of numbering, signing, wrapping, envelope-ing, labelling, and posting the 150 copies of the second printing (of which about 30 remain available).
The repetitive nature of this task I found hugely satisfying, so I’m having to be unnaturally stern and finish some other work this weekend before I allow myself and the numerous hours to dissolve into a packaging glee.
(A small robin has appeared outside the door, I will pause briefly to go and provide it with some seeds.)
WORK-RELATED NEWS:
Some of you might remember me mentioning the Russian translation of Eating the Sun a few weeks ago, and I’ve now sent off all of those lettering files, adjusted illustrations etc. This will be the first of my books translated into Russian, and I’m quite beside myself about it. I’m also beside myself because in the upcoming spring issue of Orion Magazine will be an illustrated essay that is perhaps the most me thing I’ve had the opportunity to write in a long while. As soon as I’m able to, I’ll put an excerpt in here. Oh! to be happy with a piece of work!
Aside from an ongoing assortment of small, nibbling-feeling duties and tasks (and the packaging-up of 150 books), I’m also undertaking something larger. As of right now I’m not sure whether I can write about it, but as of next newsletter I will know because on Monday I have a phone call, and on this phone call I can ask that particular question. In the meantime, how arguably pointless to conclude the work section with something I didn’t actually tell you about.
(I like this work-related section, I do, but sometimes it can feel more like a section in which I prove to you that I work often and a lot, that I’m not spending days on end gazing mindlessly out of the windows at the ever-changing weather—although no doubt it would be alright if I did. I try to remind myself now and again that I don’t need to do a lot of work, I just need to do good work—there is enough of everything everywhere already, so we must go gently and with consideration when adding more.)
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Recent work by the Melbourne-based painter Lucy Roleff, who I first fell in love with around the time of newsletter No.136.
Today it feels right to end with what I’m currently reading, which is Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. It’s fascinating and brilliant—because it’s Rebecca Solnit—detailed and thought-prodding and a slightly odd thing to be reading during a lockdown because it is a history of walking and I’m reading it while not being able to walk anywhere of distance or depth. From its pages, this, which I have thought about every hour since:
“Something was happening everywhere, every minute, something to be happy about…”
— Harriet Lane Levy, 920 O’Farrell Street
The end.
This is love, if you ask me. Setting an alarm at 5:33am for them, seeing them out, looking at the sky, crawling back into a still-warm bed. Miracles in the mundane.
(Also, I finally ordered my copy of the book!)
How lovely I imagine your hours, I imagine a lovely air surrounding you.