"I drove to the little shop when it was getting dark. I bought pears, persimmons, chard, butter, and ice cream. At home, I had already made potato leek soup. We know what Marguerite Duras said about leek soup.

Imagine surrounding your own soup. Imagine surrounding it with anguish.

At night I am surrounded by my books, not the one I am writing."—Amina Cain, A Horse at Night

I haven't been writing lately. If I write, they’re notes, here and there, in grotty A5 spiral-bound notebooks, or in my Notes app on my phone. Sometimes I experiment: I try to not give in to the urge to write. Only to feel restless, undone, trailing thoughts behind me like broken seams. What is it I want to write about?

At times I think I am a diarist, a compulsive autobiographer. Along with this little plot of the Internet, I have dozens of physical diaries, three for each year. Each diary is a map of my life. Sometimes I consult them, not a little baffled by the person who wrote those words. I don't recognise these ports, those oceans, that continent.

If I wound all that I've ever written into one long thread, how far would it stretch? Where would it go?

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