January, one line a day
Left Hand 3 by Shane Drinkwater
1 - Road my bike all the way around Lake Annecy. I’m so proud of myself! 38 km in 2 hours 11 minutes.
2 - Super cloudy, couldn’t see the lake. Sad. Went to the Chateau Museum in Annecy, it was just meh.
3 - Hiked Roc de Chère, found the sun and it was glorious. Raclette for dinner!
4 - Prepared the house for departure/renters. Can’t do anything about the butter stain Míša created in the living room. Bad dog.
5 - Drove to Gif-sur-Yvette to collect S & H. Got a tour of campus and had Pizza for dinner.
6 - S & I drove from Paris to London and listened to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez most of the way. Gross fast food, until we got home and ordered Pho from deliveroo.
7 - Catch up day - unpacking, laundry, groceries, dealing with the admin of life. Training - set a goal to do a 5 seconds free-standing handstand.
8 - Went to the Chiswick Public Library to work and was underwhelmed. Lots of homeless people (I think we’re supposed to call them rough sleepers now? Which sounds worse to me?) and teenagers who are sneaking vapes and snogs and crisps. There’s only one bathroom, which has a long line, requires a key and is freezing cold and malodurous. this is not going to work.
9 - Impromptu dinner part with A and her girls! Made the creamy adobo salad with bbq tofu. plus really good bread and butter.
10 - S & I went to see the matinee performance of Mousetrap! super fun. dinner - braised coconut spinach with chickpeas.
11 - S’s birthday! She had an existential crisis. Dinner at Din Tai Fung, which is now 100% over-rated in my opinion. Good cocktails though. Then saw Dr Strangelove in the West End staring Steve Coogan - which was better than expected.
12 - Brunch with V&Y at Chiswick Fire Station to discuss NYU. Finally signed up for Goodreads so i can track my reading this year.
13 - Went to a Subatack Writers Group in Hammersmith - and yeah, nice group of people, supportive network, etc…
14 - Went to see the new Lightroom Exhibit: Vogue | Inventing the Runway. Beautiful!
15 -Blood tests came back - hormones out of whack. Shocker.
16 - Apparently I’m to be eating LOADS more protein than I’ve been getting. I mean seriously, when did eating become such laborious thought experiment. I have to learn how to count grams of protein and aim for 30g per meal - and don’t forget the fruits and veg! And fiber! And water! So fucking boring and exhausting. To determine how much protein you should be eating, you basically have to figure out how many grams of protein you can consume without killing yourself and subtract ten. That’s your number. It’s virtually impossible. If all I did was count fruits, vegs, ounces of water and grams of protein I’d be busy all day. How dull.
17 - Family dinner at DGrande - two pitchers of margaritas and a giant bowl of queso. No idea how much protein. Then the Bob Dylan movie, A Great Unknown, which was fine I guess. I liked the music and the era.
18 - Inspired by Madge Gill and Myinerest - I wrote words /scribbled furiously / channeled gibberish onto a page and it was cathartic.
19 - Drove S to Gatwick and spent the rest of the day reading on the couch and feeling sorry for myself for being so boring and lazy.
20 - Splurged. or rather Invested in my happiness. I joined The London Library (TLL). It is my favourite place in London.
21 - Women’s Prize meet-up at The Ivy Club for Writers/Patrons. It was the most fun I’ve had in a very long while! Interesting, smart and kind women.
22 - great food day. bfast: protein smoothie. lunch: took my lunch to TLL (haloumi sandwhich with spinache and tomatoes + apples and peanut butter) dinner: planthood terriyaki tofu rice bowl with broccoli and purple pickled cabbage.
23 - Managed a 2.5 second handstand with good form. getting stronger. Later had accupuncture with Maureen and she “cleared my kidneys” which is related to hormone levels, energy, edrive, etc… i think? i doon’t know exactly, but felt better afterwards.
24 - J’s bday lunch! Great friends, not a great restaurant. The food was just average and the place was so loud we couldn’t hear each other.
25 - Quiet and sad today. not sure why. just feeling blah.
26 - Did everything I was supposed to do today. Still feeling blah.
27 - I spend the whole day in the library. B took Mìša to work and she pooped in the middle of the common room.
28 - Decided to let go of the memoir I’ve been working on for three years. It’s time to move on.
29 - Got an official induction tour of the TLL today. The librarian thought i was famous and i couldn’t talk her out of it. Then went w/B to see Johnny Flower play with Lady Blackbird at The Palladium. Johnny left tickets for us, so I said, we should probably stay behind after the show to thank you. We agreed to make it quick, because we were both exhausted and it was already past our bedtime. Instead, when Johnny saw us she said MUCHAS! WHERE WE GOIN?! We ended up closing down the tequila bar across the street from the venue.
30 - Tried to make healthy choices: ate well, exercised and took a nap. But I still feel sad and demoralized. If I’m not working on a book or a project, what am i doing? Besides filling my days and writing about them in my journal?
31 - Spent the entire day journaling. Then went to M&H’s house for a dinner party and we played games and i laughed so hard mascara ran down my cheeks.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
This book was delightful! A few favourite passages:
1 - I’m just saying,” Jinx said, seemingly more lucid now, “when you’re lost in the deep dark forest, the thing to do isn’t to get scared of the trees. You have to find your way out again.
2 - You can't tell me that if it was men and a medical decision would result in their penis splitting open and them not being able to hold their pee for the rest of their life, they wouldn't think that should be their own decision.
3 - It really makes you wonder: What kind of truth would require this many lies to tell?
Ladies are quite impossible.
Describing her occupation as ‘spinster’, Virginia Woolf takes out lifetime membership to The London Library in 1904.
She later recounts in her diary of an infuriating chance meeting with E.M. Forster. “…met Morgan in the London Library yesterday & flew into a passion. ”Virginia my dear,” he said. “You know I’m on the Committee here. And we’ve been discussing whether to allow ladies.” Oh but they do – I said. There was Mrs Green… “Yes yes – there was Mrs Green. And Sir Leslie Stephen said, never again. She was so troublesome. And I said, haven’t ladies improved? But they were all quite determined. No no no, ladies are quite impossible.” See how my hand trembles. I was so angry.”
(credit: https://stjameslondon.co.uk/news/the-london-library-a-history)
Image via Lit Hub. Penguin Modern Classics, various editions: To the Lighthouse (1966), The Waves (1964), Orlando, Mrs. Dalloway (1972; from a painting of Woolf by Vanessa Bell), The Voyage Out (1970), Night and Day (1969), The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Jacob’s Room (1965; cover design by John Sewell), A Room of One’s Own (1963; cover drawing by Paul Hogarth), To the Lighthouse (1964; cover drawing by Duncan Grant)
The clouds will burst and the sun will shine again.
1 - Madge Gill at the Eades Family Home c.1904. Courtesy Betty Newman.
2 - “The clouds will burst and the sun will shine again.”
A Few Favourite Quotes from The Wedding People
1 - Having a mother helps you believe that everybody wants to hear every little thing you think. Having a mother helps you speak without thinking. It allows you to trust in your most awful self, to yell and scream and cry, knowing that your mother will still love you by the end of it.
2 - She doesn’t see the point in staying alive only to do all the same things that made her want to die.
3 - Some people are like religious children that way, mistaking suffering with goodness.
4 - It is nice the way everyone here keeps asking this, even if it’s just their job. Each time feels like another chance to practice asking for what she needs.
5 - Maybe this is the part of her life when she gets to start saying what she means, for better or worse. Because no amount of truth can be worse than the feeling she got after years of hiding from it.
6 - The wife is the reason the man becomes the architect. The mistress is the reason the architect keeps building.
Circular Time
Images found on Pinterest and altered to suit my mood. Sources of images, to the best of my ability:
Dancers: Barbara Morgan’s Martha Graham photos (1940s).
Braided hair: Contemporary/stock image of elderly hands.
Spiral illustration: Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (ca. 1900).
Underwater silhouette: Modern stock/CC photo (often labeled “Underwater dancer”).
Twisted tree silhouette: Another modern, likely personal/stock photo.
Woman & children ring dance: A late‐19th/early‐20th‐century Pictorialist photograph, probably from Alice Boughton or Gertrude Käsebier.
The Silence in Between
“Mozart said that music is not in the notes but in the silence in between. I think that's where our souls are – hidden in that silence. Evil demanded little of me – it merely asked me to stay silent, to do nothing.”
- The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson
by Josie Ferguson
Always, on this day
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdich, The Painted Drum
M.K. Ciurlionis, 1906/7, from The Zodiac
Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
~ Danusha Laméris
Maira Kalman
Notes of: Orange
First Row: 1. Rose Clearfield, 2. Andre Brasilier, 3. Sarah Jarrett, 4. The back stacks at The London Library
Second Row: 1. Karyn Lyons, 2. Nancy Drew, 3. unknown (Pinterest), 4. Jamie Chase
Third Row: 1. David Burdeny, 2. Yikartu Bumba Turlapunja, 3. Art Unlimited Market, etsy, 4. Sally Strand
Fourth Row: 1. Guo Fengyi, 2. Mark Monroe Preston (?), 3. Karyn Lyons, 4. Les Goodman (?)
Horizon
I hope I haven’t already driven
past my greatest moments.
I hope there is something beautiful on the horizon
that’s just as impatient as I am.
Something so eager,
it wants to meet me halfway.
A moment that is diligently
staring at its watch, trembling with
nervousness, frutrated,
and bursting at the seams,
wondering what’s taking me
so long to arrive.
by Rudy Francisco
Image via @well_hello_april
Fragile Beauty
A few of my favourites from the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish at The V&A South Kensington.
Dakota Hair, 2004, by Ryan McGinley
Alec Soth, The Farm, Angola State Prison, LA, 2002
Bruce Davidson, Black Americans, New York City, 1962
Robert Frank, Tolly, 1955
Sally Mann, Deep South
Automatic Collage
Madge Gill’s automatic writing and Myrninerest.
Base: The Flatiron, Edward J. Steichen
Overlay: Madge Gill’s automatic writing
Spooky Lady: Madge Gill’s Myrninerest
(Fear of) Choice
There isn’t a right answer.
There just isn’t. The game show
where the bells ring and the points
go up and the confetti falls
because you got the answer
is a lie. The preacher who would assure you
of how to attain salvation
is making it all up. The doctor
who knows just how to fix
what ails you will be sure
of something else tomorrow.
Every choice will
wound someone, heal someone,
build a wall and open a conversation.
Things will always happen
that you can’t foresee.
But you have to choose.
It’s all we have—that little rudder
that we employ in the midst
of all the eddies and rapids,
the current that pulls us
inexorably toward the sea.
The fact that you are swept along
by the river is no excuse.
Watch where you are going.
Lean in toward what you love.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
–Lynn Ungar
KwangHo Shin on Behance
Madge Gill
Excerpt from The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel:
Madge Gill (1882-1961) began her hypnotic drawings and embroideries after experiencing astonishing visions. As haunting as they are mesmerising (she felt her work was guided by her spirit, “Myrninerest,” each work leaves me captivated, musing over who this figure (or figures) is, how it came to be, and waht visions Gill experienced to feel such compulsion to create it.
Born illegitimately in Walthamstow, London, Gill was raised in an orphanage and later forcibly sent to Canada to work as a labourer. On her return to the UK,, she took work as a nurse at Whipps Cross Hospital but continued to face hardships. Suffering from life-threatening illnesses, the loss of an eye and a whole set of teeth, Gill gave birth to a stillborn child, then lost a son to the Spanish flu epidemic.
In March 1920, though, her life suddenly changed. Controlled by higher powers, in a ‘trance-like state’, Gill began embroidering and producing ink drawings at aggressive speed. Later admitted to hospital where she was put under the care of Mr Helen Boyle, a progressive doctor who encouraged her automatic drawings and writings, Gill’s artistic practice thrived and was championed by her son, Laurie. (…)
While the figures in her work remain unresolved, scholars have suggested they might be self-portraits, or images of her Myrinerest, her dead children of the family she never knew. All we know is that in a letter to a friend, Gill once wrote, “My pictures take my min off the worries.”
In Praise of Mystery
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
- Ada Limón
Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub
From The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel:
When covering the liberation of Dachau, Miller wrote “I implore you to believe this is true” in a note to British Vogue, accompanying one of her most significant articles, titled “Believe it”, featuring a devastating image of deceased, fragmented, skeletal and starved bodies pile up on one another, their bare bones made visible by her night-time flash.
Never afraid to enter into terrifying places, on the same day she left Dachau, Miller - along with her friend the Jewish photojournalist David E. Scherman - broke into Hitler’s Munich apartment. It was here that they famously photographed Miller sitting in Hitler’s bath, his muddied bathmat evidently stained by her military boots.