There is also a curious aspect I hadn’t thought of – that of writing facing the front of the house again. Our bedroom faces south, to the back garden – I am now adjacent to the north-facing window looking out onto the front garden. And, suddenly, there is a strange mental shift to being part of our village facing the front rather than the back.
Notebook, Lydia Crow, 7th January 2023
It’s always a good day when there’s an update from Robin Sloan in your inbox. The other day I was particularly delighted to read his comments on C.S. Lewis and Donegality. The three books referenced have all been added to my “to read (one day)” list.
There seems to be a direct link here between the consideration of Ward’s analysis and the concept of place theory, specifically sense of place. Having not yet read the book mentioned (“Planet Narnia” by Michael Ward), I imagine there may well be a reference to Edward Relph and Yi-Fi Tuan (and others) and their work on space, place and placelessness, especially given Ward considers in this vein Donegal and London (both, obviously, physical places).
Applying the theory of sense of place to literary works, rather than identifying (a) sense of place in texts, is something I’m interested in considering further, not least because I am currently working on a fiction project where the place(s) mentioned could be said to feature as the main character(s).
I am certain there will be much written on this already in other guises. Please do let me know if you can think of any interesting texts.
The good stuff can’t be named, only sensed; we are like deer desperately licking our snouts out here. Even so, it’s helpful to have some language to throw around. Balancing and patterning. Meshes and nets. Donegality!
TRESPASSERS — There’s room for everybody by Robin Sloan, 6th January 2023
I have started reading Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words by Boel Westin. Again.
The book had been on my reading list since it was first published, and on the shelf beneath my bedside table for nearly as long. I started reading it last year – or was it the year before, now? – and managed a few chapters, distracted, before life got in the way and it languished there by my bed for a while, then beneath my bedside table once again.
Reading it now – it feels disingenuous to say “re-reading” – I have no memory whatsoever of chunks of the chapters that I waded thickly through before. This time, I am absorbing everything, and it slips down easily. Not like before. I wanted to read the book – I had wanted to read it for a while – but the noise of the world meant that it stuck in my throat. I couldn’t absorb it, digest it.
I am exhausted. I can’t actually remember when I last slept through a whole night, what with a newborn baby and pregnancy-related insomnia before that. And a pre-schooler, and a dog who insists on stealing most of the space on the bed every night.
But that’s just physical tiredness, and par for the course right now. All-encompassing at times, yes, but bone-deep tiredness is always better than brain-deep tiredness. And, to my delight, I am increasingly finding myself in the marvellous situation of no longer feeling fuzzy around the edges when thinking. Every newsless day that goes past, I feel a little more alive. Sparks of clear thought are becoming more frequent, and I’m scribbling down ideas to ponder or develop further.
In the beginning, there were Japanese microseasons. The first post on this site was made when, depending on your translation and reference source, “dew glistens white on grass”. Now, “springs thaw” and soon, “pheasants start to call”.
The site had been a thought in development for several years by the time it first went live. We had chosen the name Elosa for our shared home before we moved in, way back in August 2017, being as it was a shared representation of our names at the time: a half-initialism, a half-acronym. Euan, Lydia and Osa. It’s what we call our current home, and it will be what we call our next home.
In the years that followed, our family changed shape. Osa became Ghost Osa, remaining an ever-present entity in our family. Scapa and Araucaria, or Auri for short, came along. By pure accident, as I realised later, their names moulded Elosa into a true acronym, based on all of our initials.
Now, we are Elosae. Elowen arrived on the 8th of December, thoughtfully letting me attend her sister’s Nativity two nights previously before kickstarting proceedings with my waters breaking at midnight. A day and some later, there she was: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and bigger than her sister had been when she arrived (nearly four years ago, now) by more than a third again. Our little Elowen, or Elfi for short.
Auri adores Elfi, which is fortunate. So far, she has resented none of the changes made to accommodate her new sibling, and delights in showing her off to anyone and everyone, certain in that way that pre-schoolers are that everyone will be as interested and besotted as she is.
When the tree and the Christmas decorations were taken down last Friday, we moved my desk into the sitting room. Not simply an aesthetic choice, though I love my hand-crafted, bespoke desk: during my maternity leave, I will be spending the majority of my waking hours in this room with Elfi, so having my desk and all its accompanying paraphernalia to hand for any snatched spare moments (as this one is, right now) was a practical choice, too.
As I type, Elfi is asleep in her crib next to me. She is already filling the Moses Basket more than Auri did a few months in. It’s strange to see her in clothes than Auri wore when she was so much further along.
Now, as I type here, I can glance down at my sleeping baby. Wander across the sitting room – suddenly spacious after the good madness of Christmas – and finish off my cup of tea in a kitchen slightly smoky from the treacle-burnt ham fresh out of the oven.
Notebook, 7th January 2023
When Auri was born, she was definitely a Bowditch. So many people commented on how much she looked like Euan or members of his family. On my side, she most closely looked like two of my sisters, Holly and Diff, though I see me in her when she smiles her mischievous smile, full of devilment. Straight out of the family photograph album.
Elfi, on the other hand, was born the spitting image of me when I was a baby, complete with dark hair, so she is definitely a Crow. Out of all my siblings, I am the one who has always taken most after my mother, and members of my family have said how much Elfi looks like my Granddad George (my mum’s dad), so she is also very much a Temperton.
Looking at photos of Auri in the same basket, though, Auri and Elfi share so much in how they look. It’s so strange, noticing all these differences and similarities as they each forge their own way, announcing and stamping their own individuality on the world and all who sail in her.
It seems strange that Elfi, a day short of five weeks, is already living through her eighth microseason. Bears have started hibernating. Deers have shed antlers. Parsley has flourished.
So much, so soon, life comes rushing at us.
At the beginning of this year, I stopped reading and browsing news. I have had breaks before and it improved, well, everything. This time, I hardly even feel guilty about not being engaged, not being aware or informed. Family and friends will let me know if there is anything I need to know. And, if they don’t, I’m sure it will work out. My energies – and their energies, too – are better spent elsewhere.
That – alongside re-evaluating my relationship with my somewhat needy mobile – has meant I’ve already been reading more. Currently, one of the books I am reading is Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, the authorised biography by Boel Westin. Reading about her family, you can see the blueprint for what Jansson might become was scribbled from the start, from the earliest of days – but nobody would suspect she would forge, announce and stamp herself on the world as she did.
It is such a responsibility, growing young women: so hard to get right the balance between encouraging, inspiring, providing opportunity and advocating a little too much for a certain path. Auri is so sharp, so observant, blowing out of the water with her analytic curiosity all those phrases we use which don’t really make sense, and making me look at everything afresh and reconsider all that has become engrained over the last four decades. Elfi is at that early and delightfully honest stage, all snuffles and contented murmuring, and then scrunched up faces and immediate vocalisations of discontent if she is not entirely happy. I am learning and re-learning so much from both of them. And, as long as that is the case, perhaps that is what will ensure I, too, grow with the seasons.
This post isn’t what I thought it would be. There were other Things To Say, perhaps announcements to make. If I’d had the chance to sit down and write it in one sitting, blindly type in a furious fit of literary passion, perhaps it would have stayed the way I originally envisaged it. But that would also mean that I would have lost something, that I wouldn’t have let time and reflection reshape what I thought had to be written and guide me in a different direction.
This feels important, this observation and diverted path bringing a sense of relief. It emphasises the strength in not-knowing and growing.
After all, as the beloved Too-ticky once said, “All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured.”
Merry, Merry New Year, one and all. May 2023 treat you and yours kindly.
I have been thinking recently about the disconnect between certain political ideologies and the perceived general consensus, or at least an apparent direction of travel of collective thought, and how this disconnect is in a constant state of flux depending on many, many cultural and historical factors. I think, despite everything right now, there is hope for various reasons: but one of these reasons is that there has been a shift – generational, to some extent, though that’s an over-simplification – away from the credibility of striving, and the drive to constantly strive. Instead, people have been reminded of – or introduced to – a concept of life where to achieve notional goals or amass wealth is not the be all and end all. And, as a result, there has been a move to considering how the state might – and should – support those who value the value of life, rather than value of things.
I have been reading recently about habit creation and, tomorrow, I plan to make a start on a few changes that I’ve been toying with for a while (a restart, in some instances). My preparation is done, and I’m ready to go with a “Getting Started” dry run on making permanent changes via initial trialling of habit methodologies.
I’m sure I will write more on this and my progress over the coming weeks but, for now, this article was sent my way at just the right and complementary time: Why we need rituals, not routines.
It is the first day of September, and there was a slight chill in the air this morning before six, despite it still being dry outside. The seasons are starting to shift.
Until more recent years, I spent more or less my entire life living by the academic calendar, whether as a pupil, a student, working in universities, or as a mixture of these. It’s no surprise, then, that at this time of year I have always felt a frisson of excitement linked to new beginnings and possibilities.
The traditional Japanese calendar identifies 72 separate microseasons through the year. Around this time of year, September, “heat starts to die down”, “rice ripens”, “dew glistens white on grass”, “wagtails sing” and “swallows leave”. Towards the end of the month, after the autumnal equinox, “thunder ceases” and “insects hole up underground”.
I have kept returning to these seasons throughout the year, enjoying their poetry and their reminder that we are all linked to the seasons and the natural world. I will look forward to when “crickets chirp around the door” in mid-autumn, and when “mists start to linger” in February.
I have also fallen rather in love with the idea of my own – perhaps our own – list of personal seasons. There would be less than 72, and not all would be as focussed on the calendar of the natural world; but they would capture those moments throughout the year where a certain thrill of anticipation rises again, as it did the year before and the year before that, at some feeling that you can’t quite capture in words but which you recognise instantly nonetheless. So far, the only season I am certain of starts at the beginning of September. I have yet to decide on a name, but it should feel like the promise of potential and the delight of new stationery. A hint of “bouquets of newly sharpened pencils”, perhaps. The freshest of fresh starts as the year begins to turn, the heat dies down, and everywhere there is opportunity and possibilities.