Commonplacing
Hello friends—
still working on a return and finding the right rhythm to posting again, but sharing some things I loved reading the last few weeks.
I know that vampires are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m obsessed with how fantastic Sinners was. The music, the ideas! This essay outlines so many of the reasons why.
An interesting read on the influence of ancient India across the world, and how the ancient world was (of course) a far more global, interconnected world. But: “Centuries of the “civilizing mission” of colonialism, however, made the historical truth unrecognizable.”
Fell in love with Moritz von Schwind’s Katzensymphonie, which led to a cat society where Johannes Brahms, Julius Otto Grimm, and Clara Schumann were members, whose constitution included the clause: “Uncat-like speech or actions shall be duly punished before the Chapter, and any member who opposes this shall be expelled from the order.”
Loved this look at the work of Clara Peeters, a Dutch 17th century artist whose still life paintings are a true feast (sorry not sorry).
I loved Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk, and also loved reading this excerpt of his new book, Right Story, Wrong Story: “All this wrong story is moving towards an important message: there are some inefficiencies, multipolar traps, perverse incentive structures and self-terminating algorithms in the current global system that could use some analysis from an Aboriginal point of view. At the same time, we have to be realistic and acknowledge that ‘ancient wisdom’ is not your one-stop shop for salvation through regenerative design.”
The wonder of a mushroom color atlas and the dyes they create.
And the delight of historic post cards with images of people reading.
And finally, a poem that I can’t get out of my head after reading it:
The Endlessness
At first I was lonely, but then I was
curious. The original fault was that I could
not see the lines of things. My mother could.
She could see shapes and lines and shadows,
but all I could see was memory, what had been
done to the object before it was placed on
the coffee table or the nightstand. I could sense
that it had a life underneath it. Because
of this, I thought I was perhaps bad at seeing. Even
color was not color, but a mood. The lamp was
sullen, a candlestick brooding and rude with its old
wax crumbling at its edges, not flame, not a promise
of flame. How was I supposed to feel then? About
moving in the world? How could I touch anything
or anyone without the weight of all of time shifting
through us? I was not, or I did not think I was, making
up stories; it was how the world was, or rather it is how
the world is. I've only now become better at pretending
that there are edges, boundaries, that if I touch
something it cannot always touch me back.
—Ada Limón
I read Dalrymple’s book earlier this year for my book club. I was charmed and appalled in equal measure. I agree with your linked article that a ‘prequel’ based on the more ancient world is desirable and urgent. (So much history, so little time or funding, right?)
I just wrote an elaborate comment and then somehow clicked somewhere on the screen by accident and the whole thing went pooof.. 😭 Let's see if I can do it again...
The essay about postcards - fascinating! I never knew that people were turning personal photographs into cards and mailing them. I was in fact surprised to find out that, clearly, there's always been people for whom it's ok to openly share personal moments, not only words but also images. The parallels with today's social media are obvious, though today's scale is of course much larger. Still, we are very fast to blame technology, but in fact it's always how we choose to use the technology that matters.
And Ada Limón's poem... I really need to check more of her writing. It's not the first time here on Substack that I come across one of her poems that stays with me.
Thank you so much for these, Freya!