putterings 130 < 131 > 132 index
Here’s my driftwood. joining the swatches.
It’s hard to learn anew how to make it through from dawn to dark without all the props and pointers inside my father’s house. Without plant-watering, yard-pottering, chair-rocking and channel-zapping, I expected it would be exciting; I expected that the freedom from routine was somehow greater than the freedom to determine your own routine. I wanted to get up in the morning and not know exactly what I was going to do that day. But now that I don’t, it’s terrifying.
— Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015; Mariner Books, 2017) : 131
see Interview / Sara Baume: ‘I always wanted to be an art monster’
The author recalls her youthful dreams of a Turner prize victory and the run-in with doctors that led to her second novel
Alex Clark, The Guardian (18 February 2017)
—
Here’s my driftwood. I prefer the pieces with swatches of crackled paint. I bring them home and nail them to the yellow walls, each abutting the next, joining the swatches. I think of it as a colossal jigsaw, an abstract assemblage of infinite proportions, and sometimes I wonder if, along with his overlong feet, my father bestowed on me his restless compulsion for remaking.
p 102
—
pottering not puttering; “current reading” my (poor) excuse.