week 49; 2022

Let’s be honest, it’s not the end of the world.

The week: working, walking, reading, cooking, sleeping. Sleeping before midnight and eating healthy meals at regular times has kept me in good spirits. Occasionally of course one must get drunk and read sci-fi to prevent popping. This all seems very sustainable, but it’s seemed that way before. Hopefully having this record to refer to will help me later. Getting ready in the morning as if I’m going out even if I’m not; working at the desk; keeping a notebook (md paper) and a good pen (copic multiliner sp 0.3) by me when I’m working; cooking, eating; tidying, cleaning; sleeping before midnight; going outside; limiting television and podcasts; avoiding social media; and above all closing the computer or switching off the phone the moment my task is done (do not think about the next thing to do while looking at the screen, even if the next thing to do ends up including the screen.). It’s all normal stuff, really.

Reading Deming’s Out of the Crisis to prepare for next year. Most of the content is familiar due to lectures on the material conducted by my port-filled father between the morning hours of 2 and 5. Apart from that, in mornings and in evenings I wander around outside listening to music (Broadcast, Soundcarriers, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins, Natalie Imbruglia, Garbage, Britney, No Doubt, pop and dreamy jangles y psychedelic miscellany); reading sci-fi; consulting the tarot; cooking; cleaning. Also reading several tarot and magick books at the moment and been writing quite a bit. This will no doubt blossom into something eventually, but for now it is what it is.

Soho on Saturday, I’ve been going often since I learned there is a train from near my apartment that goes straight to Charing Cross. I went to the Atlantis book store and bought a few books (DuQuette, Wang, Foster Case), but not the books I was looking for. I got home about 9p.m. with such a craving for curry chips that I got some and ate them and went straight to bed and slept until 9a.m.

On Sunday I was reading a biography of Pixie and it mentioned that Yeats introduced her to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (including Eddy Waite) at the Watkins book store, which it turns out is still open. So I hopped on that cx train and took a look around there. Opened in 1894, Thoth logo, Thoth carpet. It has a lot of cool stuff but not the books I was looking for. Still, I bought quite a few items and a couple of new tarot decks and a couple books and some incense and a dragons blood and white sage smudge sausage. I asked the person behind the till how come they don’t make any fuss about it being arguably the birthplace of the pixie deck and they said “there are many stories with no survivors”. I’ve never heard a smudge stick be called a “smudge sausage” before and I hope that I die before I do again. She died, Pixie, in Cornwall. She’d been living in Lizard, but she died in Bude. She’s buried in St. Michael & All Angels Churchyard and nobody knows exactly where because there was no grave marker and the records were burned in a fire. Apparently local memory says she’s “beside the wall next to the woods in the churchyard”. Buried in an unmarked grave. Well, at least she got to be a Cornish Catholic lesbian for a while at the end. We should all be so lucky.

Tonight I’m super tired, but it is a good tired. My self-imposed schedule has me finish most of this year’s work by Thursday. Friday morning will be spent on Avatar 2 at the Odeon. Now I will stop writing this post and head into the kitchen to hoke out something that can be done with chicken. The most exciting dish I’ve made this week was probably dolma with lamb mince and mint and vine leaves. This will probably be a sandwich. Can’t remember who I’m writing this for. Is it for me?