Black Things and Bright Things

September, 2021

"I like having a new notebook. It feels like I could start again. I have to finish this one first; that’s the rule. But the new one’s here. It’s here beside me now, waiting. The cover is soft and smooth. It’s not shiny, it’s a matt black which you feel you could fall into and get lost in, like a summer midnight. The elastic feels secure; it holds the pages together, so none of my thoughts can go missing, or escape, or get seen.

“If I write my thoughts down, I don’t need to say them out loud. Saying them out loud gets you into trouble. It gets you locked up. Not for a while, now, though. If they’re safe in here, held in with the elastic, I can let them out gradually, in good places, to good people, and I don’t have to say them all.

“That’s something I’ve learned to know. What is a safe thing to say, and what is not a safe thing to say. Writing’s different. The notebook doesn’t have an opinion: it doesn’t get scared, or angry, or sad about what I write. It just takes it all in. Its face doesn’t change, even if I say the wild things.

“Not all the wild things are bad. Some wild things are good – really good. That’s the things I try to paint. All the things are too much to hold inside me: if I can’t say them, I have to write them, or paint them. Some of the things are very black; they are deep, deep black. That’s the things I put in the book, behind the elastic. Some of the things are very bright – too bright to look at, and much too bright to say. I’d have to shout really, really loudly. They don’t like it when you do that. Some of the bright things are not safe things to say. I can’t put them in the notebook, though. They stop being bright when they go in the notebook: they get flat, and the brightness goes away.

“I’m filling up the space, because I want to start the new notebook. I’m nearly done – only a few lines left. Peter will come soon, and he’ll want to know if I’ve been writing, or painting. I think he knows that writing is black, and painting is bright. This writing isn’t black, though.

It’s for filling up the space.

DONE!

October, 2021

“I didn’t start the new notebook right away. I was so excited to, but I didn’t. I will say why in a minute. This is the new one – I am at the start of the first double page. I like the way it lies flat. The paper feels nice, and it is a nice colour. My right-hand page is a bit painty now. I pressed it flat when I opened the notebook to start, and my hand was a bit painty, so now the paper is painty too.

“If anyone was smart, they would see that I have just said why I didn’t start the new notebook sooner. It is because I’ve been painting. Peter and I went for a walk, and the sun shone. It shone low, because it’s Autumn. It got behind the trees and it lit them and they burst out into fire; into quivering flames and rustling embers, and strong, dark charcoal. That was a bright thing, so I did not want to write it. I did not want to write it until I’d painted it. The painting is done now.

“Peter says he likes it. I don’t like it. The fire went out when I put it on the canvas. The flames stopped quivering; the life died from the trees and the glow went out of the – the – the thing that I saw. It doesn’t have a name, and that is another reason why I can’t write it. But it is a bright thing. So bright, I can’t quite look at it. So bright, I can’t make it; I can only feel it.

“This is how a bright thing becomes a dark thing. This is how a bright thing ends up in the notebook.

November 2021

“Peter has been telling me stories about a painter. He showed me a picture too. It looked like a firework display, but Peter said it was just supposed to be the night sky. He said that this was how the painter saw it – spirals where the stars were. He saw spinning stars, not still stars, and then he tried to put the spinning stars in a painting.

“I hope he felt better about his stars than I feel about my trees.

“These are the black things. The wind is everywhere. It batters at the windows and at the roof, and it creeps in under doors. It comes in like a blade. When I go out to meet it, it becomes a solid surface: an ocean-liner, a snow-plough. I am nothing. The wind has all the power. It has destroyed the fire in the trees. It has scattered the elegant boats on the lake: they have lifted their sails and flown away like an arrow in the sky. We shall not see them again until the Spring. It is black. It is black in the sky. The ground is black. My mind is black, and I put all these black things in my black notebook.

December 2021

“I made another picture. In between the black, there are things so bright. I went on thinking about that painter and his stars for a long time. I went outside to look at the stars. It was very cold. I did not want to lift my head to look at the stars, because the wind was going to attack my throat, and slice its way into my breathing. But I did. I did look up. My stars are not like his stars. They don’t spin. They loom. They loom forwards, and then they recede. They get bright, and I want to paint them; then they get dark, and I want to write them, but I cannot. They are living things – it is very difficult to put them in a painting. I tried. I tried really hard. But the paint dries, and then the stars are stuck.

“Peter still talks about the painter. He says that the painter had a lot of black things, too. He says that the painter got sad because he had so many black things. One day the black things took him away. I asked Peter how he knew this. My black things aren’t in my paintings. Peter said that the painter didn’t put his black things in paintings either; he had notebooks too. Notebooks like mine. I think that the painter sounds like an interesting person, but Peter says that no-one liked him very much. Only his brother.

“I haven’t got a brother. I’ve just got Peter.

January 2022

“Sometimes, the black things are all I have. They go into my notebook, and they come out of my notebook, and they take the black with them and they bring the black with them and the cover of my notebook becomes the inside of my head and the inside of my thoughts and it wraps itself around my eyes and my hands. It extinguishes the bright; it absorbs it; it smothers it. The bright vanishes like a flame under a bucket. The elastic cannot keep this in. It can’t keep it out. The black is free to ooze and to blanket and to muffle and to suffocate. My book is black. My pen is black. The sky is black. My thoughts are black.

“My heart isn’t. It isn’t. My heart isn’t black.

“February, 2022

“There were stars in the ground today. Bright white. They broke the black. They forced it back. They stood above it and shook in the wind. They are the vanguard against the black. They pulse with life. I can see the life below the ground. It is coming – it will be here soon. I can feel it under my feet.

“I’ve finished the painting. Of course I have. I wouldn’t write the bright things until I had tried to paint them. I got the little earthbound stars. I got the broken ground. But I cannot paint the life below the ground. I cannot paint the pulse.

Peter likes the painting. Peter always likes the painting. He wants to borrow it. And he wants to borrow the sky-stars which are stuck, and the frozen fiery trees. He wants to take them to show to someone in London. I said he could. They are my bright things, but they are not bright enough to be real.

March 2022

“Peter came to see me. He was very happy. He told me that a lot of people in London had liked my paintings too. I was very surprised. Perhaps in London they don’t see the trees in Autumn, or the stars at night, or the first snowdrops.

Peter said that, if I wanted to, I could let someone in London have my fiery trees, and they would give me money for them.

I asked him how much money. He said, twenty thousand dollars.

I thought that sounded like a lot of money. He said, it is.

I thought about it for a little while. Then I said, okay.

“I think that, with twenty thousand dollars, I can buy some more paint. And a new notebook too. I think the twenty thousand dollars is probably a good thing.

It is a good thing.

But it is not a bright thing.