Sprorsels

or, spring morsels, clearly

I write this on the train, gliding through trees as the horizon dips below the sun, that glorious ball of fusion birthing life.

It’s spring down here, which means the morsel tree bears fruit once more.

I know, I know, most people live in the Northern Hemisphere and therefore it’s flautumn, but for five minutes let’s believe you all live here with me in Australia and together we can celebrate spring.

The scrumptious delights of sprorsels. [Images by Substack’s own image generator. Quite impressed with this one, actually.]

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Often I think that the best times to write are the spaces in between. Those fleeting moments when there isn't time, when you have to submit and wonder at how a compressed state can elicit that which is unfound in the expanse of relief.

And then you look at what you just wrote and consider the delete button.

And then you look at what you just wrote and aren’t entirely sure. But it sounds OK, maybe. So you don’t worry. You keep it.

Thin time, I think that’s what it is¹. That’s what my brain wanted then whilst I let my fingers keep typing.

Thin time.

I think I write best when time is thin, when liminal words can be glimpsed, touched, occasionally snatched—all before they flee.

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A while ago I mentioned I was reading Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. I finished reading it this weekend past². Slow-ish for me, in part because it’s a deep book but also because at work we have to deposit paperbacks in a locker before we’re allowed into the office³, and so I couldn’t sneak furtive reads between all those experiments I think about doing but don’t actually do because I have to sit and look over manuscripts and chapters from my—*rolls eyes at their endless needs*—students. Pfff.

What I mean is: I loved this book.

Less importantly, I annotated most pages with my illegible scrawl in faint pencil, to really try and optimise self-loathing when I come back to look at my marginalia.

I’d show you one of these, but it’s kinda embarrassing.

Here’s one of these:

The green man mentioned here can photosynthesise. He is of my people. Also included, my thumb and Petyr Baelish and a piece of text I redacted for you, purely for my own amusement.

Most pages have this extent of underlining. I’m like a first year PhD student me still trying to read an academic paper and pretending to understand it.

Anyway, this was a slow-burn. A deep and mysterious read. I loved every page⁴. Oh, and Gene keeps nodding to the fact that he’s translating the text from a book he found. I find it delightfully encouraging.

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Speaking of, last week I wrote another chapter of Brae’s meteorite⁵. I didn’t expect all that many to read it because, ya know, we’re deep into a novella and all that chatter about serialisation and stuff and yada yada.

But lots of you read it. So, thank you, sincerely. If only Renn knew of your love⁶.

Terry Freedman

was kind enough to mention Renn’s kiss when speaking about kissing scenes found in books and memories⁷. Thanks, Terry.

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Some morsels ago I spoke of a phrase that kept turning in my head. “My skin, crippled by moonlight.” I don’t know where it came from or why, but it hasn’t gone away. It felt like it wanted to be part of something. Something rhythmic. Something obscure and dark. I tried to turn it into a sentence and paragraph, but the lilt wouldn’t let me.

In the end, I felt the pull of folklore. I’m not sure about it, but this is what fell out:

My skin, crippled by moonlight,

My blood in hands claw-torn,

My hair, lost but for a night,

And hate birthed by new dawn.

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Dune you know that Dune Part II is coming soon? It should have been soon soon this November, but then the writer’s strike struck, delaying it. That now seems to be resolved (is it?), but the film remains slated for next March.

To help alleviate the wait,

Claudia Befu

,

Alexander Ipfelkofer

and I are planning on rereading Dune, adding some commentary to share across our respective Substacks. I’ve Bene meaning to mention it. We won’t Duke it out, but I imagine that after a short overview of the chapter(s) being covered, our conversations will go something like this:

Claudia: Chapter X provides [insert Claudia’s on-point analysis of the worldbuilding, at how Frank Herbert weaves his far-future world into the text].

Alexander: Yes, yes, the literary genius of Herbert’s writing comes across through the [insert clever literary technique that Nathan can only nod at and pretend to understand].

Nathan: I’m sorry, all I can think about is Timothée Chalamet. He’s such a dreamboat.

Hopefully that’ll stillsuit your reading tastes.

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To close, I will dangle over a precipice a mere moment, to glimpse where Jisa will be next:

…beneath me, Siridan weeps. A different kind of beauty to how I saw Vi; different even from my descent with Cloud, spoiled then by distraction. From here, the sprawling mass of lights becomes the map of a city I have known and breathed, lived and cursed. Yet from this vantage it sheds its flaws, smooths them out like pressed cloth, ignorant of the passage of the years and unaware of how it has forgotten the seasons save the bleak.

A sprouting sprorsel.

1. Reminds me of Stephen King’s thinny in Wizard and Glass (I’m sure he mentions these elsewhere, too).

2. OK OK fine, I read Volume 1 of 2. Meaning the first two books. Of four. Maybe five. Not sure. I need a mental breather before the next two.

3. Oh boy, this is getting real thin.

4. Even the stage play (!) that’s buried in the text.

5. Here be a link.

6. He doesn’t. His eyes are still closed, waiting for the return of Brae’s lips. They’re not coming. She’s leaving, oh Renn you fool. Run after her, quickly!

7. You can read that here.