Highbury Fields, earlier than I'd like

either it's pretty or it isn't.

Should probably still be sleeping after seeing in 2 am, possibly 3, surely not 3. God not 3. Instead, walking across Highbury Fields. A morning not dry, not fully damp either; trees on the turn and that damp mulching smell of leaves rising as clouds thicken. Shortly, it will rain. Glad to have brought my umbrella. A good luck charm, like to think it keeps away the rain more than it keeps it off; the days I don’t bring it, it always pours. Around me, people hurry. I should be too. Deadline to meet and a fuzzy head. That second old fashioned again. Wonder where they’re going. Too late for the people with real jobs, too early for the school run mums. Not bankers, not lawyers, media maybe, allowed in late. First drops of rain.

You know by now what it looks like. What it smells like. You know autumn. Maybe not this one, not a London one, but your one. It would be tyrannical of me to transpose mine on you now. Insulting to assume you need the smell of it, the sights and sounds of it explained more fully, as if there exists a certain paucity in your imagination regarding the specifics of autumn. Think through a difficult scene as I walk. Specifically suicide . The temptation to make the ugly sound beautiful. But Patricia Lockwood answers the problem along the lines of either it is pretty or it’s not, you can’t make it sound pretty. Would be able to quote this verbatim only someone kept the copy of Priestdaddy I loaned them. But the essence is there. Art exists to make the stone more stony. Not prettier. Don’t make it mossy if it's not. Lockwood again answer this in The Rape Joke. Who makes a joke of rape? Not Lockwood. She turns the rapist into the joke. It does not sound pretty because it is not. Let the ugly be ugly. Skies open. Umbrella up, out of luck this morning. Hurry, platform boots a mistake. Again. Must learn to dress for the weather. An editor once turned pages and pages back at me. She said beautiful, made me cry, but what are you really saying. Pages and pages of saying nothing. Disingenuous prose. Half way through Blue Nights Didion turns to us, tells us she’s written it all to conceal the fact of Quintana Roo’s death, a fact she is concealing from herself. She does not make this fact anything other than the fact it is. Gives it to us, as is. No florid prose. Think of the eternal struggle of working within language. A medium as tough as any other. Some people, content to throw paint all over the canvas. My son, excitedly telling me his work looked like Picasso. Me, asking if he could draw a perfect bull. You must know how to add before you can subtract. But also not to add so much. Show as close to as is as possible, not as you wish it to be. Pooling water now around my feet. Possibly too harsh a mother. Brightly lit café, not in the mood this morning for paint all over the page. Or language. Or any of it. Leave with cardamom bun and coffee so hot it’ll still be warm by the time I make it to the Victoria Line, so tired I nearly end up in Brixton. A mistake. A child in my way. Curling hair, flushed cheeks, pudgy hands, the way each and every child has. Beautiful, the way each and every child is. Looks up at me, eyes so wide their face needs to grow into them. I smile. The mother apologies for the child being in the way. It’s ok, I say, and realise the fact of my finding this child as lovely as I do is a symptom of a nostalgia only possible because my children are now older. I have largely forgotten the elation and horror of those early years and now children this young are only impossibly sweet, in the way things only the things you no longer possess or have never come to know, are.