Ongoing list of books read, since this blog went live:
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A belated birth anniversary to bisexual recluse icon, motherfucking mystery dame, and spiritual mother Greta Garbo. (An old experiment in watercolor portraiture, gold acrylic, and a collage using William Morris’ wallpaper facsimiles.)
Hadn’t had the energy nor the desire to wade into my Traveler’s Notebook in weeks, so for my reintroduction I’m taking things slow and simple with an illustration by Lilian Snelling (1879–1972). Here’s my index of the past week. (People have asked me how I use a Hobonichi and TN simultaneously: The Hobo is my diary; the TN is a summary, written in my illegible cursive in a feeble attempt at privacy + oddly enough, more space for art-making.) [Inks used: J. Herbin Cornaline d’Égypte, J. Herbin Corail des Tropiques, Noodler’s Cayenne, Robert Oster Forest Green.]
A few of what I call Hardly-Collages, made in my August diaries. When I cannot summon the paragraphs to match the feeling, when I cannot think and cannot write, I have old paper to fall back on to help me fill the page.
Quick flip-through of my August diaries. These pages had been difficult to fill, for reasons earlier stated. And though I know that there’s nothing wrong with blank pages, for me they meant spaces in which The Black Dog could slither in and settle. And so I wrote. And when I couldn’t write, I asked for help from old paper.
I am bipolar. I’ve been struggling something fierce with the intricacies of my mental health + anhedonia and its attendant demons and sorrows more so the past few months. There have been pockets of brightness here and there, made more luminous by the dim blankness that surrounds them. I keep writing in my diary, I keep writing about the good and the bad, I keep writing to myself. And when I cannot write, I reach for old paper and what spark of art is left in me, and I try to make. Which is to say: Hello, it’s been a while.
I finished reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION a few days ago, and the lingering feeling is that of envy: Envy for the heroine’s clear-cut goal to sleep, envy for her (material and metaphorical) privilege to hibernate and self-sabotage and self-destruct. In many ways, and despite that envy, this was a consoling read: I am not alone in, at times, drastically wishing the world away.
Signature potato-quality flip-through, featuring my July diaries. I’ve previously mentioned how cleanly bisected my July was into keen, joyous contentment and into dead-eyed walking banana peel, and both halves caused their fair share of challenges re: writing discipline. Archiving happiness in retrospect, struggling to remember every moment of brightness—then the challenge to get up from bed and even flip open a notebook with its expanses of demanding space. (August, so far, is a continuation of the latter. Teeth are grit.)
Out of it. Snippets of last week.
July was firmly and cleanly bisected into two weeks of unalloyed joy and two weeks of feeling like a potato that has grown sprouts. But I wouldn’t ever trade The State of Being Potato for all that welcome, heart-consoling happiness. On to August we go!
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