Courage, Silence, the Deliquescent Dregs
— It’s the delightful deliquescent dregs of August. The golden hour is doing the old razzle-dazzle like its life depended on it.
— Let’s take a look at the archives. Perhaps this post, “August Light, August Poetry.” Or, this one, “Summer’s End.” Here’s one on evening light in the summer.
— Another from the archives on the so called idyllic writing life.
— Well, the idea that it is in writing that we can create ourselves. One of the ways. This is the thing about making, creating. It’s not even the thing that you end up making, but it’s how the making makes you. I’ve always loved that. And so of course we makers despair at the present time when it feels like that is being taken from us, from the futures of those would-be artists and writers, our youth. I spend a lot of time reacting in my mind to the sloppola. But on the ground level, I’m still doing my writing, I’m taking photographs. I’m making this and that.
— What we have is silence, the silence between words and passages of words, as Jenny Erpenbeck says here.
— We also have courage.
“hey, friends, courage,
life is beautiful”
— Adam Zagajewski, from his book Eternal Enemies
— When you have a day where you’re not certain if life is beautiful, I encourage you to take a mirror outside, into the garden, or the forest. Walk around with it and look. Prop it up here or there.
— When Rob is working on a painting he will often check it in a mirror so that he can see it afresh. I sometimes feel like I should be holding a mirror up to pretty much everything these days for a reality check, at least metaphorically. Which is also an old art forgery detection trick, as the reflected image often gives a sense if something is ‘off.’
— Lately we’ve gone down a bit of a Maigret rabbit hole. We watched the Rowan Atkinson miniseries. Some of the older ones from the 90s, and then Rob watched a few of the Michael Gambon ones. We each read a couple of the novels. In short, we’re not experts or diehard fans or anything, but I did really enjoy the 2025 update with Benjamin Wainwright. Why does Maigret appeal so much these days? For me, it’s perhaps his famous mantra, “to understand and not to judge.” This version hasn’t received wildly stellar reviews, a lot of folks finding it a bit weird. For me it was good weird. I thought the charisma / chemistry was lovely between Maigret and Madame Maigret :) As usual, a year behind for me as I got it from the library. The next season is coming out in October of this year it seems.
— I hope you’re well and can enjoy some of the golden light of August. Some of the silences of the season. Wishing you continued courage and a little of that old August razzle-dazzle.
