
Just found this at the bottom of an old photo folder. Probably 2005, by context of surrounding photos? Clearly Liverpool Street Station. Possibly… haunted photo?
Once swallowed, the piece of paper lodges in her oesophagus near her heart. Saliva-soaked. The specially prepared black ink dissolves slowly now, the letters losing their shapes. Within the human body, the word splits in two: substance and essence. When the former goes, the latter, formlessly abiding, may be absorbed into the body’s tissues, since essences always seek carriers in matter – even if this is to be the cause of many misfortunes.
THE BOOKS OF JACOB, Olga Tokarczuk trans. Jennifer Croft. And this is the first paragraph of the book. An utterly astonishing way to start a novel. Put the bar waaaaay up high there right at the start of a thousand-page novel. Damn.
Warm days forecast for the next ten days. September is most often pleasantly temperate these days.
ON DECK: Two scripts, outline, bits and pieces. I also ordered a pruning saw and a pack of short bamboo canes so that I can finish prepping the garden bed at the back for vegetables and wildflowers at the weekend.
INBOX: 90.
READING: Finally started Olga Tokarczuk’s THE BOOKS OF JACOB last night. The prose is so good (trans. Jennifer Croft) it’s depressing.
LAST WATCHED: A repeat of an old documentary about Roy Jenkins, a politician from my youth only barely remembered today. What I didn’t know: he was apparently bisexual and polyamorous.
CONDITION: Frustrated, moody, mass of aches and pains. Was up at 3am eating painkillers (and playing with new cat, who is slowly settling in. He likes chicken and cheese.).
2330: Tend Soil
Sep 17, 2023
In the boundless ocean of the social seas, where ides and winds whip fleeting trends, the Artist must make sanctuary.
Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/09/17/301-2330-tend-soil/
Note to self: I really need to do a massive cull of my RSS feed reader now, before I post the next list of my reading. There’s a ton of dead blogs in there, and, frankly, a lot of what remains is boring the crap out of me, which is holding me back from actually opening the reader on a regular basis. I’ve just knocked around 500 pieces out of it and still have 600 unread posts. Gonna be doing some simplification this autumn, I guess. I want to be excited to open it and see what’s new again.
I also need to figure out templates and formats on this thing. “Status” and “Aside” post formats seem no different from the usual.
I remember being floored when I was told that suicideblonde on tumblr posted every twenty minutes, all day.
“I’m looking forward to new ways,” he said. “It’s just, I got as far as this. And that’s what I do. That’s it. And if I could just muster up the energy, God willing, to make a couple more, one more maybe, and that’s it, okay? That’s as far as I got. You keep going until you can’t. But what I mean is that you gotta rip it out of your skull and your guts. To find out what the hell you really…what do you really feel should be said at this point in life by you? You gotta say something with a movie. Otherwise, what’s the point of making it? You’ve got to be saying something.”
If I’m lucky, then, other than the above noted, I’ve clipped out all the dead podcasts and these are all live and active.
Okay, this one might start off a little strange, but we’re getting toward the bottom of the Holding Tanks and it’s getting time to reload ’em. Back half of this one is a trip to the library. You like the library, right? (There’s even one of those artists…) Off we go!
Download
The first piece is as woozy as I feel today, only nicer. (Beluga Brando, Become My Lungs, Become My Lungs, for future ref)