A Postcard (before the travel)

This is the first of those postcards I recently mentioned, something not-quite-letter, but a hello, nevertheless. I suspect this won’t find its way towards being pinned on a board, or held under a kitsch magnet on a fridge, or used as a bookmark, as those more traditional postcards still seem to do, but it is me, saying hello, to you. (Editor: It’s not as short as I thought it might be, however and, thanks to the photos, almost certainly too long for some email clients. Open in your browser to see it all if it is truncated for you!)

First, before anything else—isn’t this the neatest, most joyful bookending of a month? (Not my tracker, nor my writing, neither of which are especially neat—this is a practical journal page, after all!) Having five neat weekends and four weeks like this, without a superfluous day before or after is just so wonderful. At least I thought so, enough to share it as a Note.

I have been easing into reading more posts and letters here lately, not as many as I once did, nor as many as I’d like, but every step is one in the right direction. If you are at all interested in the truth about royalties and how an author might make a living, then this letter from

Monica

Byrne is certainly worth a peek. (And, as I said in this Note, do have a read of The Actual Star, it is one of those books you keep thinking back to, long after reading it.)

Q: Can an author make a living from royalties?

I am writing this letter a couple of days ahead of sending it. This is my new normal, ensuring all my Substack posts for the week are drafted, edited, formatted, and queued, all within a few hours on a Monday (and an extra hour for replying to messages and comments, spread throughout the week). I simply cannot afford any more time than this. When I can, I’d like to move the writing back to the preceding week, but that will involve getting ahead, somehow.

The coming weeks, you might receive even fewer letters from me. We will be travelling to Paris in less than a week (again, as you read this), then flying to Vietnam, on to Bangkok, then up to Chiang Mai—Ailsa’s first long-haul flight (I am hopeful this goes well, but we’ll see…!). I am looking forward to reading, a lot, hopefully. Catching up with your letters, a book or eleven, and always, always, more research for works in progress.

I do not know what either the Wi-Fi/internet or time situation will be like, especially as I am hoping I will have several articles to draft, edit and submit in June, but I will do my best to at least send something, every so often, including photos along the lines of those shared in this postcard.

I know other writers who simply pause their letters for a summer holiday (both of us will be working on these trips), but I’d like to keep sending something, if I can. It may include:

• Photos of food I eat (oh, but I’m so very looking forward to pad kaprao—there are seemingly a million ways to spell this, from phat kaphrao to gaprao. In Thai, it’s ผัดกะเพรา and I think it’s my favourite Thai dish. I think.).

• Urban photography (strangely, I have sometimes found myself missing things, such as the tangles of wire so common in SE Asia, bundled and then topped with a horde of excessively vocal, complaining myna birds).

• Rural photography—we’ll be spending a lot of time out in the country, staying with relatives, surrounded by rice and near the river and, at this time of year, there should be clouds, which makes photos more interesting than the hazy sky of the dry season.

• Probably insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, plants, fruit (okay, almost definitely FRUIT!), storms (it should be rainy season, but whether that translates to rain these days is often anyone’s guess), and more.

I think I will reserve my thoughts on what has changed about Chiang Mai (at least, thoughts shared in longform writing) and how heading back, after some years away, makes me feel, as I would quite like to pitch a few articles on these topics. You’ll probably get some snippets and musings, however.

It was June 2017 when first I arrived in Chiang Mai, and it was a few weeks before the first whisperings of pandemic when we left for Europe. I sent my first newsletter whilst still based out there. I met Aurélie in Chiang Mai and, as such, it will always hold a special place in my heart (it also made Aurélie sick, something, whether parasite or bacteria or virus, doing strange and long-lasting things to her digestive tract. [I know she’s not the only one to develop long-term health issues after an extended stay in the city, either.])

Here’s the opening to that first newsletter, in case you’ve not read it before (I shared it when I discussed four years of sending a newsletter¹):

At this time of year, in this place, the mountain exhales at night. Her breath is cool and descends to the city below, bringing with it the scent of the deep, dark places she hides, of lush flowers and constant decay, accompanied by a whisper of secrets and charms. The nights end still in darkness, when the monks in the temple begin their chants and ring their bell or strike their gong, setting off a daily cascade of soi dogs, each howling their welcome to the day, barking their devotion. The sun rises some hours later, tropical-swift, giving only slightly less daylight than in the middle of summer, framed by the harsh calls of myna birds and the roar of the waking airport.

I shall miss this and I shall not. For I keep these moments close, a part of me as much as any other. Soon I shall say goodbye to Chiang Mai and the little house on the edge of the jungle; soon I shall head to a new adventure and gather up fresh scents and vignettes, populate mind and memory, snippets of lived-experience drifting into my fiction unnoticed, colouring the drab with the paint of what makes us human.

In the years since, we have lived in Portugal and in France. There was a pandemic. Ailsa was born. Aurélie and I got married. We have not left Europe in that time and the world is a very different place now to when we waved goodbye to SE Asia. A different place? Yes. But also, I suspect, no. We are human, after all, and humankind will keep following the same path, laughing at the same things, crying at others. The irony of travel is that we cross vast distances and time in order to learn we are, at heart, all pretty much the same, even with those to-be-celebrated differences between cultures. A human is a human and we are a part of a glorious, natural, whole.

For those of you who are reading Death In Harmony (thank you!), I will keep sharing weekly episodes, having now queued the next seven parts.

Finally, for today, here are a few photos from the weekend, here in Isère. Aurélie was running² and Ailsa and I were walking down near the river, which of course was also an opportunity to do a spot of foraging. This year, I’ve dedicated more time to collecting, drying, and preserving different plants, and I’ll be talking more about that, later in the calendar. On Saturday, it was the turn of red clover (Trifolium pratense), mostly by chance because there was a lot in bloom, gathered carefully, avoiding all the patient crab spiders (Misumena vatia) while admiring the bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) and the parasitic thyme broomrape (Orobanche alba).

Many thanks for reading. Do please share The Crow’s Nest if you enjoy reading it, or like the photographs and think others will, too. Photos, as usual, are all mine.

And, if you have anything you’d like to ask or add, I cannot tell you how pleased your comments make me—I always read them and, eventually, reply. Thank you.

1. As I drafted this piece, I noticed that the number of letters I have now shared on Substack stands at 201. There are also 19 drafts, and 7 scheduled posts. Which is a lot of words.

2. Running, and runners, is and are a dark art to me. I love to sprint, yes, but slower running, over distance and time? That is beyond me. Sometimes, I think I should give it another go, but then I also know that, if I were to go out for a run here, I’d be stopping every few strides to check out a flower, a track in the mud or dust, a lichen, a rock, a tree…the list goes on. I have so much respect for those of you who run!