Diary 07

“It could not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling.” To the Lighthouse, V. Woolf

“Just after dusk a woman ties a sheet
to some branches in the woods, all four corners splayed out to create a square of white tension. The screen is made from cotton. Cotton is incapable of producing images on its own, so she shines a flashlight on its surface from two-feet away. She steps back and the circle of light grows wider and fuzzier. This satisfies her.”

The intimacy with writing that I experience in dim light, facing a blank wall. I write better in front of a candle than I do in a screened porch or sunroom. The daylight distracts me. I’m not denying it altogether, as most of my experiences are lived out in daylight and that content channels into what I write, but when I sit down to work I expect to be equipped with all of the information, all of the imaginative scenarios already, in vague light at my rocking chair with a corner to dissolve into.

Sitting on the patio of my dad’s airbnb, I’m parallel to a spot that looks much like my own bed in the mornings: an empty, ruffled seat, where he had had his cup of coffee that morning, a wooden table strewn with an open notebook, another smaller journal, a bible, and a leather zip-up binder. His briefcase is a worn chestnut-colored leather, the handle chafed of some of the material, and it sits open, upright and sturdy. Everything is either wood or leather, in shades of rich brown with edges slightly worn. I have the oddest feeling, beholding my own aesthetic in my father’s belongings, surveying the way he assumes a seat. Everything that I find beautiful was admired by my father first. Every behavior that I claim came from observing him in his dailiness. It’s been a weird morning, encountering the continuity of family characteristics (apple, tree; tree, apple). How much actually belongs to me?