No.165

Nov 27, 2021

November, a list:

I cannot be the only person who intentionally takes as least twice as long to peel a satsuma or clementine than they do to consume it
Low winter light on the underside of bird-of-prey wings
We stand and watch as a team of neon-coloured people construct a ferris wheel in a city centre—the entire thing seems to be unfolded from large trailers in a dance of grease and metal
I knelt down on a side street and filled my bag with fallen Ginkgo leaves
Later I read that the tree, Ginkgo biloba, is a living fossil, that it is the last living species in its order, that it was cultivated by early humans, that some of the trees growing in China—where they are native—are taller than 150 feet, and that a 2020 a study found that they display no real signs of ageing and that they just grow and grow and grow, producing their phytochemicals indefinitely
Additionally its genus name, Ginkgo, is attributable to a spelling error that occurred three centuries ago and I like this fact intensely
I wonder how leaves decide when to let go
It is good to point at interesting things when walking, but mainly I look up and exclaim at the birds which drink a different air to us
Your hands will always get colder than you think
You will be most tired on the days where being tired is most inconvenient
I am waiting on the arrival of a book documenting a selection of Australian contemporary still life painters
Why do my thoughts only seem to gather themselves at 11pm
Today I have been disappointed by a biscuit, amongst other things

BOOK-RELATED NEWS:

Some of you may remember that this past spring I put together a small book, Close Again, to briefly investigate and illustrate the ways in which we had been so apart from other people for the duration of the pandemic, the small moments of closeness and connection that were so missing from our lives. This project was personal, and I felt protective of it, so I didn’t think to mention it to my literary agent, and instead self-published 200 copies of the book that in turn I posted to some handfuls of different countries.

I think it might have been during this posting phase, I’m not sure, but someone from my Italian publisher contacted my agent with something along the lines of ‘Wait—she has written another book! But we would like to publish this book!’ which was remarkable and unforeseen and shortly followed by interest from Japanese, German, and US publishers. (I remember walking out of the house to tell you while you stood in the doorway of a shed making something out of wood, with sap-smelling shavings everywhere.)

All this is to say that the Italian and German editions have since been published, and that the US* and Japanese ones will follow soon. It is published under the title ‘Di nuovo vicini’ in Italy and ‘Wir werden uns wieder nah sein’ in Germany, and I should have certainly mentioned all this by now.

*The US edition is being published by Andrews McMeel, hopefully on January 4th (my early copy pictured above).

In a few days time I will transmit the entirety of my next book, and no doubt I will report various feelings about that in the next newsletter, but for now I am book-combing, which is like beach-combing, but instead of looking for interesting shells or stones I am looking for tiny specks on paintings left by the scanner, or leftover errors in the manuscript. I am also writing another something for Orion Magazine which shares the same deadline as the book, and consequently feel squashed, like finding oneself being crushed slightly against a fence by a very large animal, in a nice way.