Michelle Bailat-Jones
novelist/translator/reader, here for the sharpened pencils, books & writing talk, for all things language and foliage, for all the shiny things & shadows. (Eng, Fr, 日本語, Ital) Rep'd by Simon Trewin.
www.michellebailatjones.com
- Reposted by Michelle Bailat-JonesWe gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”
- mountain-gazing, light-tracking
- Dull gray sky today, -5 outside and windy, move from nautical twilight to civil twilight like pushing aside a heavy curtain. Lights on inside, winter brights fighting their tiny fierce battles.
- Quiet house. Coffee. Watching the shift between twilight phases over the neighbor's barn. This world. Such monstrousness. My phone tried to autocorrect that to 'monstrous nessuno' which makes no sense but still feels true (monstrous nobody).
- Brisk and fire-tinged at the edges for the last entry of this year's catalogue of (dawn) twilights
- Reposted by Michelle Bailat-JonesI've had a great time selecting some pieces to mark the solstice and year's end at @necessaryfiction.com, and am grateful to the writers who shared their work. Here is the first gathering of lights, with three more to follow in the days ahead.
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- Annie Dillard, "Waking Up", The Abundance
- "Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as the diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."
- Midwinter morning, books out and sharpened pencils morning, music-on morning, quiet projects and quiet thinking morning. Four degrees outside and gray for the shortest day of the year.
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- Garden morning. A half-hour of cold, winter sun. The pumpkin leaves, like curled paper now, hang from the homemade summer trellis that will collapse as soon as we get snow.
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- Train station in the village. A mouse or a shrew is moving slowly from one shrub to another, under a tunnel of leaves. Peeking out between each rustle.
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- Train. Carrying an overblooming top-hravy amaryllis and seven novels. The amaryllis keeps threatening to fall onto train seat neighbor because I care mostly about not dropping the novels. Amaryllis blooms hit stranger. I feign innocence.
- Walk down from the station this morning. Passed the man who goes out from his hotel in a bathrobe to get his newspaper.
- Nightwalk. A house on the hill above the village has arranged two old teapots into its rock garden. A neighbor a few doors down left all the apples on their tree and dozens hang frozen, half-dead, from the bare branches. Quietly shiny in the lamplight.
- Reposted by Michelle Bailat-JonesWould you like to know how to make a zine? Here's easy step-by-step instructions on how to make your own without the use of a computer by @thorazos.bsky.social
- Recent loot
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- My fellow editors and I @necessaryfiction.com have shared a few of the books we really enjoyed this year for our latest Recommended Reading. I love hearing about what my colleagues are reading, and you might, too necessaryfiction.com/reviews/reco...
- Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jonesthings Copilot has tried desperately to help me with this morning: a thread 1) suggesting '10 compelling titles' for a spreadsheet I use to log student attendance
- At the florist this morning two men in wellingtons discussed peonies. One loved them because a good shower would scatter them and color up the lawn. The other loved them because they were bold, bright.
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- Evening run along the lake in the dark. Small clusters of sleeping ducks float just offshore, barely visible. Kids on an invisible playground laugh, then cry, then laugh.
- "That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular - shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hand -
- Everyone at the station can see their breath, everyone keeps their hands in their pockets, the man who lives beside the station is whistling in his garden, whistling and crunching his boots across the frost.
- Train outrunning a storm on the lake, a puddle of sun somewhere on the French side, birds restless in the wind along the lakeshore
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- Dawn walks in the very quiet
- Spot the swan in this 1953 untitled Laure Pigeon? And her face is always somewhere, too
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- Train morning, cataloging graffitti on drystone vineyard walls, spotted a basketball hoop fixed into the center of a highway arch, the lake like an ocean out the compartment window.
- 7am view from the coffee cup: nautical twilight and quite spindley, -1° but the rain has stopped
- On a train, finished my book but will wake my snoozing dog to get the other one in my bag. It's dark outside so window gazing offers me only my own face or the family on the other side of the train.
- Walked across the city, collected details, eavesdropped, watched all the busy and not-so-busy people. Saw outdoor sculptures, fallen leaves, the last of this year's flowers.
- Window gazing, last night's long walk around a city
- Intrepid train buddy (or sleepy, as is usually the case)
- View from the train tonight is very billowed clouds and stark fields. Lone trees with many spindles, backlit by the sun.
- Today's company on the fainting couch
- The joy of listening to the Swiss teens in the car: "J'ai dead mon test de maths"; "Elle est en flirt avec ce mec"; "oh em jhay". (For my language loving heart, it's hilarious...trying to work out how 'dead' has made its way to French in this way)
- Quite/quiet wintery ce matin
- First snow almost every in Switzerland today ❄️💙
- More texture.... new entry for the catalogue of tiny pleasing things
- Bookish goodness on my walk to a bakery yesterday
- Wisteria, coffee cup, silence, book
- Train views: looked in vain for chimney fox on the way down to the lake, but 1 black cat spotted on a children's playset, surveying its backyard kingdom from the top of the slide
