Something To Hold
This one is about little delights, and finding something to put things in.
Recently I printed out something close to 150 photos from the past couple of years and put them into an album. There's gaps in there, for various reasons, but it feels complete enough. There is something wonderful about being able to physically flip through a bunch of snaps from the past years. And I do mean snaps, I made sure when I was picking pictures from my Flickr archives I grabbed images of small moments like stuff I'd made, or what the kitchen looked like during a holiday, or silly selfies.
I've been taking pictures for a long time (over 27 years!) and the bulk of prints I have are from when film and processing were cheap cheap cheap. Because they were inexpensive and I was a teen, a young person, a lot of my shots are snaps of things I made, silly selfies, the stuff in my room. And it's so cool to time travel with them.
Image description: A photograph of the corner a couch and cluttered table. On the couch, open, is a photo album, each page with slots for three images. On the table are stacks of more prints, in some sort of organisation. The prints that are visible include selfies, sunsets, stuffed animals, costumes and landscapes. End ID.
There's a delight to certain types of objects. The smallest thing can hold so much memory or joy inside it. I think a lot about a specific scene in the short Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore. It's Eeyore's birthday and both Pooh and Piglet had found presents but ruined them somehow (Pooh ending up with an empty jar after eating the honey, Piglet with a popped balloon). They hand these gifts over, feeling they've failed their friend, but Pooh finds a good way to spin it:
"It's a Useful Pot..." Pooh says, "And it's for putting things in."
Eeyore puts the deflated balloon in the jar, takes it out again, returns it to the jar, takes it out again. There's a familiar feeling there, like when you find a really cool jewellery box or pill case and maybe you don't have the right jewellery or meds to justify it but look at all those little spaces made so specifically for specific things!
I actually ended up doing my whole senior project on this concept in college, making a bunch of weird little papier-mâché boxes of different sizes. They all sold too, as did quite a few in a gallery show I did shortly before the senior show. Which, yay me sure, but the point is that it felt like such a celebration for me of other people finding the perfect Useful Pot to put things in. Actually let me share a little anecdote from my now 20 year old presentation:
[Here's] what a friend told me after he purchased one of the pieces from the show. He had been riding his bike in Portland and saw something glimmering on the sidewalk. Stopping his bike, he looked at it and saw that it was a clear marble. "It was nothing special," he said, "but I have never stopped my bike for something like that before." When he came to the gallery, he found a box that, to him, was perfect for that marble.
Like, how cool is that?! What a joy, to help someone in that way, and what a joy to find things that ignite delight and are worth giving their own little place to live. You do have to sometimes try to actively seek them, but that's everything. There's some little object of cheer out there waiting for you to find it, and perhaps even just the thing to put it in.
Books themselves are objects to hold, whether they be physical, on a device, or words carried by our ears, and since we're now into the depths of fall and just past spooky season, here are some different books that all offer those late autumnal vibes. Links go to the Storygraph entries for each title, a great place to check out content warnings and find ways to read them.
- The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy This is the first of the Danielle Cain duology, they're both novellas and Margaret Killjoy is very good at weaving a fully inhabited and delightfully spooky world. Her novel The Sapling Cage just came out, if you want a longer tale. I've always loved her ability to craft characters that feel like real and familiar people.
- Lute by Jennifer Marie Thorne is pitched as "Wicker Man meets Final Destination" and I swear to you that I didn't realise it was aimed so directly for my interests when I first picked it up. I love a good folk horror! I love a good approach to a classic motif!
- Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, this is one of those books where the book and the film are telling different stories, but they're like cousins who both excel at the stories they tell. The movie is a comfort watch of mine and I was thrilled to learn that the narrative style of the book feels like being told a story, which is also lovely and comforting.
Here are some things held!
Image description: A photograph of a hand holding gently a small pinecone in an open palm. The cone has begun to sprout, with a dusty green seedling of about three inches merrily growing from the top of the cone. End ID.
Image description: A photograph of a hand, with a tiny battered helm perched on the pinky finger as though it were a head. A solemn face has been drawn on the pad of the finger. End ID.
Image description: A hand backlit from strong sunlight through a window. The hand faces the viewer palm-forward, lightly cupped. The placement of the thumb creates an aperture that causes the sun to glint with bursting rays.
Some links and little delights:
- A friend sent me a post with stills of elephants scraping salt from a cave and I remembered the delightful Attenborough-narrated clip of them carefully navigating the pitch-dark cave and was delighted to be able to track it down. Every animal in this has such a "trying to go get a glass of water but without turning on the light" energy.
- Pockets by Amal El–Mohtar over at Uncanny feels like a good match to the themes of this newsletter, the power of little objects.
- Do you know about deck prisms? They were an ingenious way to let light belowdecks in a non-fire hazard way during a time of candles and kerosene lamps. I love looking at them (heres one that maybe I'll get someday). You've probably seen similar techniques used on city streets, which are called pavement lights or the very cool "deadlights".
- Hello! Hello! Hello! by Fiona Jones at Clarkesworld is such a little delight of a story. I love this kind of narrator, one who doesn't know the full of things, but is chatty in a way that lets us, the reader, realise what is going on in a way they cannot.
If you've thought of donating eSims, this guide was very helpful, and Crips for eSims for Gaza is a good option if you can't easily manage topping them up. There are also more traditional donation targets like the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, UNRWA, and Doctors Without Borders. If you prefer giving directly to families, Gaza Funds is a nice resource that facilitates finding campaigns.