The Same Sunlight, an extract
light in spite of it all
This is a short one. A moment to look back at light in the shallows of the Argyll coast, and to look forward to more light, more of it each day, in spite of it all, as though it has no idea, because it has no idea, as far as we know.
— The Nature Library is open on Sundays from 10am-4pm, located at 122B Montgomery Street in Irvine, Ayrshire. If you have any questions about visiting, get in touch at thenaturelib@gmail.com.
— This Sunday 16 February, you’re invited to the library to celebrate light in all its forms. An Index of Light is an informal gathering to read, write and make in response to passages on light from throughout the collection. Drop in anytime from 12-4.
— TODAY please celebrate your local library and libraries everywhere for the Love Libraries campaign. Libraries are sustainable by nature; a circular economy of borrowing and returning, an economy of trust. They’re invaluable amidst crises of climate, cost of living and misinformation, and really, truly, can’t be celebrated enough on any given day, let alone when across the world books are being banned, booksellers arrested, and libraries cut and closed on our doorstep. Pay a visit to your local library, bring a friend. Visit a library you’ve never been to before. Share with whoever will listen one of your favourite library memories — maybe you stumbled on something which set you on a path you didn’t expect, or introduced you to a new favourite writer, or a new favourite work by an existing favourite writer, like when I came across Ursula K Le Guin’s essay Without Egg in the Honan-Allston branch of Boston Public Library (the library itself also becoming a new favourite).
— At the end of the month, The Nature Library will be popping up in Edinburgh as part of Glacial Narratives, an exhibition by Mary Walters, Elizabeth Bourne and Adam Sébire which both raises awareness of the wonder of ice and asks questions about its disappearance. I had the pleasure of contributing an introductory essay to the exhibition’s publication, available at Patriothall, and pulling together some of the iciest and bluest texts from the shelves to accompany the artists’ work.
The Same Sunlight, an extract
first published in Gutter Magazine, Issue 30
With Sunday’s celebration of light at The Nature Library and the launch of the next issue of Gutter approaching, I wanted to share an extract from The Same Sunlight, a piece which was published in the last issue of Gutter. These reflections from my time as a snorkelling-artist-in-residence at the Argyll Hope Spot — a sentence I will never tire of — are some of the most fun I’ve ever had writing. There are a growing number of these responses to the translucent, luminescent, gelatinous, multi-limbed, spiked, feathered and fluttering lives I encountered in the shallows of Scotland’s west coast. Here are two of them. The rest are coming.
SEAGRASS
The meadow flickers in the light-filled shallows, each stem flashing fluorescent green and some of them adorned with a miniature version of a common sea creature, as if they too have grown from seed and sprouted in the sun. Urchins I could place on the tip of my pinky (I won’t) are grape coloured—not those plump on the vine and ripening in the dry heat of an Italian hillside, but the gushing purple of something artificially grape flavoured, slid from plastic onto a soon-stained tongue. A starfish the same colour hugs—I mean literally embraces, with tiny purple arms—a blade of grass and slides down the stem to safety. In other words, away from me. Never before have I encountered or even known of the existence of the candystripe flatworm, but there it is, rippling like white silk over the sugary sand, in between sea squirts and sunbeams. Light weaving through light. Up at the highest tips are the sorbet coloured snakelocks anemones. Velvety pink and green tentacles swirl and sway to the rhythm of the water and the seagrass bends beneath their weight as a flower bows to a pollen- laden bee. The meadow dips and sways, all of it dancing in the same sunlight we do.
SEA SQUIRT
When I think of bioluminescence I see an abyss untouched by the sun, where animals of the deep shine in light of their own making. And yet up here, in two feet of water, sea squirts illuminate the crystalline shallows like neon signs aglow on a hot afternoon. Rods of crisp white light bend and curl inside bulbs of barely-there jelly. Why do they glow when they already bathe in light? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Why only glow if you live in the dark? They are so beautiful I want to scream. These are some of the oldest creatures on earth, which is to say, they’ve been here the whole time, only I was in the dark before now. They’re either lightbulb sea squirts or football sea squirts, but neither name feels right. They’re not cumbersome like a football nor would they smash like a lightbulb. They’re not to be kicked or screwed or held by my hand or anyone else’s. But I can look. I look and look and look, just close enough to be touched by that impossible light, that light for light’s sake.
song/book
Only a mini post today but there’s always space for a song and book pairing. A Shining by Jon Fosse, with A Forest by The Cure.
There’s the forest in front of me, it’s just a forest, I thought. All right then, this sudden urge to drive off somewhere had brought me to a forest. And there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or another, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else.
A Shining, Jon Fosse
I hear her voice/ Calling my name / The sound is deep / In the dark / I hear her voice / And start to run / Into the trees / Into the trees
A Forest, The Cure
The Library in the Woods, Eas Mòr, Arran. Part of an ongoing project photographing the libraries of Scotland. Information below on an appeal for funds to repair and restoration areas of Eas Mòr forest following storm Éowyn.
Currently reading: Playground, Richard Powers
Read: A win against oil giants: Stop Rosebank’s court victory and next steps, Lighthouse Bookshop
Call for change: The deadline for Marine Scotland’s Call for Evidence on the state of inshore fisheries management closes on February 18. This consultation is open to the public and anyone can contribute their views. If you care about the future of Scotland’s seas, please take a moment to tell them so. Head here for more information; consultations are notoriously a nightmare to fill out but even if you only answer one question, it counts.
Celebrate: Glasgow and Edinburgh launches of Gutter magazine next week
Support: Eas Mòr Forest, the dwelling place of Eas Mòr’s unique Library in the Forest, suffered significant damage in storm Éowyn. They’re raising funds for the restoration work here.
Support: Booksellers Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna of Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop were arrested by undercover Israeli police, you can read about, support and share their Emergency Appeal here.
Read: I loved this response to Rachel Carson and love by
.Read: And this on gathering and joy despite it all by
, which clearly inspired Sunday’s events.Watch: PHSNE Program - Barbara Bosworth & Emily Sheffer Discuss Handmade & Small Edition Books
Thank you for reading and for visiting.
Christina