19 / blush rose, white poppy, marigold
[ambient electric guitar, industrial air conditioning, birdsong, distant—but not overly busy—traffic]
Hello.
How have you been? How goes the close of 2022? What phenomena have you found yourself faced with?
In my neck of the woods, summer is asserting itself with languid determination. Each afternoon, my living room bakes under direct sunlight, and every bright evening seems to stretch on forever. The sky—today almost entirely cloudless, but full of spectacular forms all of yesterday—fades to white at the edges, lending the city the look of a classic painted Hollywood backdrop. Most immediately overhead, that pure blue of light meeting distance.
I have been reading a lot, this second half of December. I say that like it’s novel—and they are, [Christina Aguilera voice] ha ha!—when in reality I am constantly reading: fiction and articles and poems and The Internet of it all, on that glass-covered rectangle called my phone. But I had been missing physical novels, for their expansiveness and their quietude and their ache, and the worlds therein. So I cashed in the Unity Books voucher I’d got for my birthday, and bought myself several books, and thus began the summer reading.
With the summer reading came the rearrangement of my lounge, to make better use of the space and sun. I’ve taken to throwing the windows open, tucking myself into the bench seat in the corner, which acts as a frame to one of said windows, and reading through the early evening, on this closest thing I have to a balcony. It’s exposed to the elements, but comfortable; I’m at home and in the world at once.
As the books go, the list has thus far consisted of Johanna Hedman’s The Trio, translated into English by Kira Josefsson; Elif Batuman’s Either/Or, after I read an extract from it in The New Yorker; and Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, which I’m yet to finish but will probably get to over the next couple of days.
I loved The Trio immediately. On the back of the book, Francesca Reece calls it ‘the love child of Normal People and Brideshead Revisited’, which triangulates a lot of what I enjoy in a novel, and set expectations that were, blissfully, met. I wish I could give you a taste of it, but it’s a book that exists in such totality—owed to both Hedman and Josefsson’s translation—that to give you choice quotes would, I think, rob you of something. Or give off the wrong impression. There are moments of familiarity in characterisation—a well-off, emotionally distant young woman; her warmer, seemingly more easeful male counterpart; a depression reveal—though (and? but?) I can’t fault them, really. There is also so much else, distilled with an adroit hand. I wanted more of (or, indeed, any of) one particular perspective, but was denied it. There’ll be a formal reason for that, but there’s a potential textual one, too, and I think the textual one hurts more.
Reading these novels has made me want to write a sustained work of prose fiction. I mean, of course it has; this is not news; everyone in the world fancies themselves half a writer and is on occasion desperate to write a novel; and also, really, what is wrong with that—but there is a settledness to these works that I enjoy. A rootedness, an agreed-upon spatial arrangement. A slightly ugly font, even. And while none of those things are denied to poetry, I do feel there’s a distance between my poetry and the world of prose fiction. I’d like to write something that isn’t fighting the dimensions of the page. Something fastened down, almost tangible. I suppose we shall see.
We joke that sometimes weeks feel like years, and in the same vein this year has felt like several lifetimes. There have been so many iterations of the self. So many work contracts, so many different commitments, such distinct experiences fortnight by fortnight. I have been so frequently stressed. Almost by rote, like I’ve felt like I had to be. And at the same time, as is true always, there has been magic. Gifts of absolute slipperiness and chance, thrills of timing, of everything—perhaps by the skin of its teeth—working out. There has been so much media, and I am still out of my mind about it, haunted by melody lines and purée-rich ensemble casts, acting choices rolling around my head every day. Those brown eyes; those green eyes; those hazel ones. The sky, like a geode, cracking open again. This second half of the year I have had a life the self of January to June wouldn’t have dared contemplate. And for once, I don’t just mean that about work! God!
If I really wanted to round up the year, there is probably so much more worth saying. But really I am trying to step out into nature, into the analog, into a hum that is external rather than the static in one’s brain. I have a friend expecting me this afternoon, at her house, for the next few days. We don’t have to write each other all those letters anymore. And I’m trying to stop denying myself things that improve my day-to-day life. I’m trying to allow myself ease. Perhaps that’s the resolution. Perhaps that’s all it has to be.
Anyway, much love. As always, I wish you every good thing.
T