Illuminations, Matches Struck Unexpectedly in the Dark
When the path feels endless, and you are sick of waiting for signs of hope
From my Instagram
Dear Reader
I am travelling ok. But this is a bit of a difficult time for me. Things that were not righted years ago, because I did not have the strength and wisdom to face them all, must finally be corrected now. Several decades of mess.
Mostly, I am far enough along the path now that I can see where it ends. There’s been a lot of progress and I remind myself of that. این نیز بگذرد
And this, too, shall pass.
I find relief in many things - ordinary joy, extraordinary beauty. But, sometimes also in the gloomy things, like lines from John Ashbery’s poem. Knowing others have had difficult times is a source of comfort and hope, no?
If you are ever feeling like it’s a long path, then this month’s newsletter is for you.
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Enduring I
I HAD THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING ALONG WELL
But I was mistaken.
- John Ashbery, As We Know
Reminding Myself that the Universe Has Not Been Built to Scale and Everything is Bigger or Smaller Than it Seems
The universe has not been built to scale—
everything is bigger or smaller than
it seems: the sea, the hole, a ship, a sail,
your line, the hook, your heart—that’s where the nail
of desire drives deep. Sorrow can span
a universe that is not built to scale
even though rungs are strung from star to shell
and back. We end of course where we began
(that ship, that hole, that sea). And so we sail
full speed toward the iceberg—too fast to tell
if size or scale or course is plot or plan.
The universe will not be built to scale.
The dead in heaven, the living in hell,
blaze and burn in the blue of all that can
rise and fall. The ship of this life will sail
until its stern snaps beneath the stretched swell
at the end of the end. We find out then
the universe has not been built to scale
and that our want expands like wind not sail.
- Dean Rader, Relational Self Portrait
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It must be obvious, from the start, that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
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Grief
This is an outstanding performance. A brilliant piece of storytelling. Like Gestalt therapy, but comedy.
Ali Siddiq’s Domino Effect II: Loss is free to view on YouTube. Give yourself an evening to settle in for this one and watch it while it is free. I feel so lucky to have seen it.
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Matches Struck Unexpectedly
The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
- Virginia Woolf
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A Really Good Moment
To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are, it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realise I just had a really good moment.
- Anthony Bourdain
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Enduring II
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
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A Fondness for Nasturtiums
I am not yet good at gardening. Everything is new and accidental. It is like learning to paint with watercolour, you have to look for what worked and embrace it and then blot away what didn’t.
The first time the nasturtiums died I thought it was another of my mistakes. I could not believe it when they grew back the following winter.
The seasons are a lesson in not making assumptions.
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Parenting Teenager Milestones
Your teenage daughter gets her first tattoo.
It doesn’t hurt a bit. You’ve been practicing letting go for years.
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Invited
We have a black cat and when you have to open the front door for it in the middle of the night you cannot see whether it has come inside or not. It is like welcoming in a ghost.
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Conversation with My Husband
Him: You know you're really crap at putting albums away?
Me: Yes, I know.
Him: Terrible.
Me: That's the harshest thing you've ever said to me.
(We both laugh).
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turning
turning into my own
turning on in
to my own self
at last
turning out of the
white cage, turning out of the
lady cage
turning at last
on a stem like a black fruit
in my own season
at last
- Lucille Clifton, From how to carry water
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Bitterly Funny
Rain Dogs is imperfect - the story a little rushed, some characters a little incomplete - but what it is succeeding in doing as a television show is very good.
Rain Dogs is heavily informed by Cash Carraway’s celebrated memoir, Skint Estate. A different writer would have used storylines like homelessness for rock-bottom crises. But the skill in Carraway’s storytelling is that temporary homelessness is just ‘life’, and the real events of the first few episodes are figuring out the ‘queer family’ connections between the single mother and her violent, gay male ‘partner’.
We are not used to seeing such matter-of-fact poverty on TV. The author is quoted here in an interview in The Big Issue talking about this:
“We’re always seeing working-class stories through a middle-class gaze,” says Carraway. “And that’s what I was trying to put a stop to with Rain Dogs.
Her critique is particularly sharp and particularly funny in a later episode when the lead character is providing Only Fans-like content on the Internet under the name ‘Battered Bitches’, while living in a women’s shelter. A situation that eventuates because a condition of living in the refuge is to not get a job, lest it interferes with the funding model of the shelter. And so, its occupants search out ‘cash in hand’ ways to save for getting back on their feet. Oh, the ironies of welfare systems.
In Australia, Rain Dogs is showing on Binge.
For perfection in this genre of ‘bitterly funny’ TV, and I do mean bitter, I recommend the TV show, Patrick Melrose1. Interestingly, in researching Carroway I learned she is a big fan of Patrick Melrose, too.
I love this series so much, but be warned, it is not for the fainthearted.
In Australia, this is showing on Stan.
For other dark comedies I adore, see this previous newsletter.
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“Every time you are put down tell them to go suck their own c*cks”
When I watched Brazen Hussies recently two things struck me. One, it was a relief to see these young feminist revolutionaries from archival footage being interviewed as older women, because then I knew they had survived it all. And two, I was reminded that these intense battles within movements have always existed. From well before the social media toxicity of the algorithm.
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if we win
the war is the same
if we lose
someday women’s blood will congeal
upon a dead planet
if we win
there is no telling.
- Audre Lorde
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“Say your weak things in a strong voice” - Carrie Fisher.
Divorce, not unlike adolescence, leaves its subjects adrift in the caprices of a phase, alert to guidance drawn from lives already lived.
Alert to Guidance
Divorce, not unlike adolescence, leaves its subjects adrift in the caprices of a phase, alert to guidance drawn from lives already lived.
From Lauren Michele Jackson’s fascinating piece in The New Yorker - “The Trials and Triumphs of Writing While Woman: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Toni Morrison, getting a start meant starting over”.
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What Ales You
I was waiting to board a plane and saw a woman holding a book that read The Psychology of.. What she was trying to solve in her life, I wondered. The Psychology of Healing? The Psychology of Better Relationships? The Psychology of Men?
I looked at her and thought The Psychology of Money. When she was climbing the steps of the plane, I finally got a glimpse of the title, and I was right.
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On Grief
And we're all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are2.
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How to Parent Teenagers
Avoid a stupid power struggle. “Oh do it Kelly, how exciting”.
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Nests
God, you have to love crows and magpies!
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never forget that the air in the sky above you now right now
they call a skyscraper a skyscraper because it scratches the air every building going up is defeated by the next rising of glass higher and higher every crane on a skyline is a muscular manly boys toy punching a hole in the sky every victory is a defeat every bird you plucked from the air is a murder every totem lost to your madness is a crime scene but remember this never forget that the air in the sky above you now right now there is a bird no bigger than your fist a heart no larger than a fingertip a wingspan no wider than two hands greeting defying you now a brave and courageous bird born thousands of years past before you were ever thought of before you in your folly claimed that life was a possession caged and conquered never forget that this bird the size of your own heart possesses the only heart that matters our heart always beating and beating you at your own game a game you cannot win up there in the sky in the air with a night sky of stars we have always navigated by a sky of stars you with your machines and lunacy will never reach
- Tony Birch, Below and Above
Let’s Get a German Composer to Help Us with Music for Waiting
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Recommend
I just want to talk about container groupings that aren’t boring or pretentious — and I want pictures of them, imperfections and all. I want to read interviews with other casual but joyful gardeners about what they’ve done with their small balconies and wild and weedy backyards and community garden plots. I want really great comment sections where people can ask questions and get non-condescending advice. I want a place where we talk about frustrations and experiments and hilarious failures — where we follow some gardening best practices and break other ones.
The particular place I want doesn’t exist. So I’m going to create it.
If this sounds great to you, too, then follow Garden Study by Anne Helen Petersen here.
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Finally
Recently, a Royal Commission delivered findings about an abuse of power. It was an outcome I did not think I would see until I was much older. The findings are huge in volume. But, in there, on a page, it mentions what happened to me.
Much has been righted.
Someone quietly sent me an email to say they were thinking of me and quoted the following from Martin Luther King Jnr - “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What a relief that it does. Eventually. Eventually.
Thank you to all who stood up for me, when I was taking a stand. Every single one of you.
Let’s all eat pasta antifascista.
Based on the semi-autobiographical novels by Edward St Aubyn.
From the lyrics of Bright Horses by Nick Cave.
I’ve been reading your work for so long and while I don’t know much about what you’re dealing with I am thinking of you from Aotearoa x
Isn’t Sharon’s delivery perfect? So delicious!
We watched Patrick Melrose a few years ago. The kids were smaller. What a rough watch, but mesmerising. I’m betting Cumberbatch’s casting as Tom in Matt Haig’s How To Stop Time is based on that performance. Have you read the book?