Let's Just Title This Random Notes and See What Happens
— I don’t think my desk or study has been messier. I keep meaning to tidy it up, make a plan, figure out what to do with the accumulation of books. And I will but I wonder if subconsciously the books that are piling up are an encouragement, a comfort. There are all these amazing books still being written that I am excited to read. I feel like I need to read them! So the books are shoring me up a little against despair.
— I’m tired, in that bone deep, black dog hovering way right now. I don’t think I need to say why, we’re all soaking in it, Madge.
— I took Pema Chodron Welcoming the Unwelcome off the shelf and flipped open to this: “…almost all the suffering and chaos in the world is caused by the mentality of “us and them””
— Pema says, “But even though there are many situations that seem unfixable, I feel it’s important not to lose heart. The question then becomes: How? How do we not let ourselves spiral downward into a mindset of increasing hopelessness and negativity? Or, if we’re already finding ouselves going downhill, how do we pull ourselves up?” She says that overall, “the way not to lose heart is to realize how everything we do matters.” It has to do with remembering the basic goodness in others, and that “happiness is contagious.”
— Like, okay. Okay, I’ll try. In spite of a lot of evidence to the contrary :)
— A poem I bookmarked ages ago:
The Meaning of Simplicity
by Yannis Ritsos (translated by Edmund Keeley)
I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me;
if you don’t find me, you’ll find the things,
you’ll touch what my hand has touched,
Our hand-prints will merge.
The August moon glitters in the kitchen
like a tin-plated pot (it gets that way because of what I’m saying to you),
it lights up the empty house and the house’s kneeling silence
always the silence remains kneeling.
Every word is a doorway
to a meeting, one often cancelled,
and that’s when a word is true: when it insists on the meeting.
— I recently read Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell, drawn by the name Ruth, really, because how can one not think about ruth vs ruthlessness these days? Ruth is a feeling of pity, distress, or grief, and to be ruthless, is to be without compassion, or empathy.
— from M-W: “Ruthless can be defined as "without ruth" or "having no ruth." So what, then, is ruth? The noun ruth, which is now considerably less common than ruthless, means "compassion for the misery of another," "sorrow for one's own faults," or "remorse." And, just as it is possible for one to be without ruth, it is also possible to be full of ruth. The antonym of ruthless is ruthful, meaning "full of ruth" or "tender." Ruthful can also mean "full of sorrow" or "causing sorrow." Ruth can be traced back to the Middle English noun ruthe, itself from ruen, meaning "to rue" or "to feel regret, remorse, or sorrow."
— Of course, reading Ruth, led me back to North and South, a favourite. N&S has been likened to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, some saying it is a “mid-Victorian Manchester” version of P&P. The 2004 screen adaptation plays on that, I think.
— Elizabeth Gaskell’s exploration of class and moments of transformation in industry seem worth thinking about these days.
— I recently took in 5 rolls of film to be scanned. I shot them on my good old trusty Pentax MX which I bought for myself when I was seventeen. Hard to believe how long ago that was. Anyway, I like some of the results. The BW in these above frames are also from that batch which I took over the course of several years. Who knows why it took me so long to take them in, but there you go. I think I learned a bit about time from this process. I love digital photography but it’s all so insta right? And maybe that’s a bit boring these days. Film can certainly be magical, that we do know.
— A post that I am still thinking about from insta, quotes Margarita Mavromichalis, a Greek photographer based in Athens, who says: “Buy books. Don't buy cameras. Just get a camera, a simple camera. Because the camera is just a tool. It's your brain. It's your heart. It's your mind. It's your soul.” Also from the post:
“It's advice for someone starting out, but it becomes sharper when you've been in the work for years and keep mistaking the next step for the next purchase. A new camera hands you exactly the way of seeing you had before, with a couple of stops of noise removed. A book by a photographer you know how to study hands you a page of criterion that works on any tool, including the one you already own. The photographic library is the silent capital of the serious photographer, not a cultural decoration you add when you have time. It is sedimented visual culture that lets you see where others see only subject.”
— This is always the same advice for new writers. What you need is to study your craft, damn it. I’ve read some Stephen King, but not a lot because I am way too easily terrified. His book On Writing is a favourite of a lot of writers that I know. I have been reading an anthology on Affect Theory which is great, and one of the authors, Elspeth Probyn quotes him. She says he is not above shaming his readers: “it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner.” She notes that King is scathing about “people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) [and then] presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.” King says, “Come to it any way but lightly.” And repeats: “You must not come lightly to the blank page.”
— Why would you do any art making if you’re just going to come to it lightly?
— Also, don’t squander your time. We are here so briefly. Work! Do not complain, as Joan Didion said. (Note to self).
— Thanks for being here. I’ll try and expunge the charcoal from my soul before next post. xo S.
