Dearest friend,
This is quite the bumper edition of Unformed Field Notes. It’s been a while since the last one for reasons too varying and mundane to go into. I wonder how interesting a mundane recounting could actually become now I think of it. Perhaps that’s an experiment for a different day.
I digress.
These are things that have been written and collected over weeks, if not months and so, when I say “yesterday” I did not have one mega 300 hours long day before this one I am now writing to you on. It’s more of a toddler yesterday, that is to say, any time in the past.
Poor Things
I saw it yesterday. I’m still feeling freshly obsessive over it (where you google all the trailers, interviews, stills, read all the IMDB bits and pieces and generally just want to see it again and / or live in it). What a gloriously mangled beauty of a film. I’ll admit, in the cinema I felt a little bit uncomfortable about quite how much I was seeing of Emma Stone, but on reflection, that’s part of the beauty of the thing. To challenge concepts and constructs and thoughts.
I was a bit hazy about the whole thing when I left the cinema, it’s a lot to take in, but the more I think about it, the more I want to think about it. The music jarring but also beautifully blended, the sets like something you might ask AI to create (I feel like this is especially true of the animals now I come to think of it), the costumes so delicious that I can’t stop thinking about having some sort of costume party just so I can try to recreate a look, the acting - phenomenal. Everything about it makes me want more, but also I know that it is a fixed point that can never be tinkered with and diluted. Because to make any sort of sequel would feel like putting a beautiful gin in a tonic. And whilst I no longer drink, I still stand by my ever constant “on the rocks” attitude to good liquor (and films).
Put something interesting in a quote block they say. Make it notable and quotable and all things good. But my mind is like a blanket of freshly fallen snow, a blank canvas awaiting some great adventure or story to befall it.
Storms
In the moment when the whoosh outside is deafening and it feels like there is an invader struggling to get down the chimney and into the house via the stove, I’m sick of them. I never want to hear another storm again, ever. Now that things are settled (more or less) it feels like an oddly eerie silent solitude has settled on the valley. Where did all of that energy go? Does it dissipate? Does it just move on to the next place like a travelling carnival? It’s like an argument that has been, ah, ok, stormed out on. I always assumed the storming out was the noisy part just before the leaving, now I can see that it’s the act of the whole thing, eerie quiet at the end included.
A walk
The scent of washing powder hangs strangely in the air. It’s winter and that has no business being an outdoor scent. Mingling with cold air gives it an almost sinister and conspiratorial essence, as it mixes with the dusk it just feels a bit out of sorts.
The same walk, but later
I’ve been thinking about the woods a lot of late (pertaining to this post here in particular if you missed it). The woods at dusk take on an altogether different demeanour to their daytime counterpart. Full of secrets and whisperings. I know my mother will be reading this and I’ll be in for a telling off for being in the woods at dusk on my own, even at almost 42. Because there are places we must never go as lone women. Even as someone who has tried to not feel those fears, they are creeping in right now with every step.
News and social media filled with sad stories of innocent forays into daily life, that end up a headline. I wonder whether I’m so far away from a road that anyone who might want to - do bad things - would turn straight to murderous thoughts, my body being too heavy to heft to the road for kidnapping. Should I be lighter so I might survive such things? Faster that I can run away maybe. Or with a can of hairspray so that I might blind any potential offenders and literally run for my life. These are all ridiculous thoughts. I just want to watch for bunnnies and dusk time creatures that might take a chance on wandering out into the woods.
Hoar Frosts
I took this photo on yesterday’s walk and have been waiting for some brilliant caption to wander into my head to make a beautiful awe inspiring Notes post.
No caption has wandered in, not so much as a tumble weed.
Instead I had a bit of a breakdown this afternoon. Thoughts of wasted potential, tiredness at unlearning and re-learning ways of working post accident to fit my new goldfish mind. It all got a bit much. It does that some times. In the long run I know I can figure it out. My daughter kindly reminds me that I have come a long way from the mess that could barely pull a sentence together verbally in the early days, that to be writing now is something.
I stare at the image and it arrives, that thought I’ve made a settling space in front of a nice warm fire for since yesterday. I need to be more hoar frost.
Ice crystals form immediately when the water vapour in the air comes into contact with solid surfaces that are already below freezing. The ice continues to grow as more water vapour is frozen. I’m not quite sure exactly what that means for me, in the aftermath of that thought that came so with haste it couldn’t settle before I’d written it.
I think it means I need to believe in the power of the incremental and slow gain.
Don’t expect something amazing to happen with immediate force. Instead, know that beautiful things can grow, slowly but intensely beautifully.
I think that’s what that thought means anyway.
100 Stories*
I am Jo’s star fired ambition encased in Beth’s sickly body. Today is filled with the sadness of all the almosts of the things I never made happen.
(Jo and Beth from Little Women in case you aren’t familiar with the names)
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Big things don’t happen in a place of comfort or happiness. Those are places of still tranquility. They happen in the hinterlands, the borders of possible and joy and excitement, the adjacent lands being ruin, misery and disappointment that must be avoided at all costs. They happen when they most need to.
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I wish that all our stories didn’t end up grooves on a record
Reduced to a sad bridge that no one can remember.
The ups and downs of our days told by a needle
An origin story made like it was cut from steel.
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Lilac whispers land softly on Winter skies. Fire silhouetted clouds illuminating the transitory time between day and night. (Written about Sunset on 13th December 2023)
*100 Stories began years ago as a sort of early prequel to Unformed Field Notes. It was an idea that came from a place of wanting to write a book of thoughts - some real, some fictional, but not having the time or patience to commit to actually writing a book. So I decided that writing it, by any means, even if it took a decade, was the way to go. Thoughts, snippets and stories have been collected; in phone messages and memos, scraps of paper, emails to myself. When there are 100 of them I will set about putting it all together and publishing it.
Be more hoar frost seems to be something I’ve been embracing without realising.
I hope these wintry days are treating you well? (sliding into autumn in the southern hemisphere?)
V.V
Still with me? I love writing letters, but even more I love getting them. Share your own snippet / story / thought with me in the comments below. It’s not quite a letter back, but I’d love it all the same.
If you know someone who would enjoy this post, please do pass it on.