No.160

Yesterday we saw two sea eagles, and I don’t think life can be exactly the same after seeing something that like. I also don’t think life can be the same no matter what came before or what comes afterwards, each minute ticking past like a small line drawn into a stone, which you can feel variously about. But it follows, then, that carrying stones around is something that you might be able to do without.

As creatures we are not very good at living calmly alongside all of the change, all of the chaos, especially when so much of it is entirely of our own design, our own making, or own wrecking. This is why, I’m sure, people become so fixated on determined routines, on punctual and orderliness and portioning up their existence until it resembles more of a spreadsheet and less of an animal. There is a time for those methods, of course, and coping looks so different for everybody, but I do wonder sometimes if we simply aren’t designed very well for the world we’ve made and if everybody is trying to ignore the fact by looking busy.

I haven’t found a great number of solutions when it comes to living alongside the turbulence of everything, but I do have a few for now: lingering looks at the moon, less plastic, more swimming, fewer schedules, the beautiful kind of boredom, neck stretches, stretches of time alone.

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

There seems to be a shortage of moments in which I’m not thinking about the work that needs to be done between now and November 1st, but I suppose that’s alright for now.

I’m currently storyboarding the 208 (approximately) pages for Everything, Beautiful, which might sound like a lot of pages, and it is. I didn’t complete this process in such detail for previous books, but the comparative shapelessness of this one in terms of what can go where, what anything will look like, of ordering and sizes and sequences, means that having a fairly clear idea of its unfolding is needed before I actually unfold it—I think this is mostly for the sake of my sanity, but the book will benefit too. The manuscript is more or less complete though, more or less where it will be when next August comes around and brings with it beauty beauty beauty.

In addition to the book I’m working-worrying on something for the upcoming winter issue of Orion Magazine, and watching rain out of the windows more than I probably should, and getting cold feet about the idea of autumn, and trying to figure out which paint colours will be completely used up by the end of the year.

During the coming weeks, the weeks in which I’ll be working fuller-than-time on the next book, I think it is safe to assume that these newsletters will contain more in the way of work-in-progress, small pieces of pages as they gets painted into being, routines or lack thereof—essentially, all the things readers of this newsletter have mentioned being interested in before and that I never quite got around to including.

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Work by London-based photographer Elena Heatherwick—her images have bewitched me for a good couple of weeks now, with the ones below a small selection from various places: Rome, Mozambique, the Aegean Sea, Ukraine, Kew Gardens.

I’ve been thinking about reading lately, and about how, if you’re paying attention, reading books can be almost dangerous, or dismantling, in that it can cause you to realise and understand how things could be different, can highlight dissatisfaction that you hadn’t noticed before, imagining better or kinder for yourself, and I believe this is why there are people who seem almost scared of books—wary of them, as if they might bite, or turn around and shout something obscene as you’re crossing the street.

This disruption books are capable of is so important, and it cannot be found anywhere else, at least not in the same way. They are unlike any other object, magic and terrible things really, causing great chasms to appear where they weren’t previously, providing escape from a reality that is increasingly difficult to feel settled within, hundreds of thousands of words keeping the lonely company, giving those who are suffocating space, silently unravelling and remaking all the corners of the people who dare to pick them up, who dare to read the deep things.

The end.