The posts which are titled “This and That” are parts of my day-to-day life. They are sometimes reflective, and usually about an aspect of my creative life–whether as a maker or receiver of others’ creative efforts. As in the post from just before the end of last year, A Site of My Own, the phrase is inspired by this quote from Virgina Woolf:
. . . as I walked through the dark streets I pondered this and that, as one does at the end of the day’s work.
A room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
The rumination of the mind, then, upon the things one has done. It is a type of constant attention in which nothing is diminished by qualifying it “this and that”, but rather the gathering in for consideration of those things that one has worked upon and thought about.
I like this sort of attention to one’s life–the daily (quotidian), non-marketed, regular-special way of living. I don’t walk dark streets as much now, however, as I did, say, in my twenties, but a middle-of the day walk in daylight can be just as considered.
The site above is the opposite bank of a walk–the sort paved only by the regular tread of human feet–by the edge of a canal, which passes under a bridge. My grandfather used to take me and my brother there for a walking-outing, and he called it the ‘Troll Bridge’. Even today, people go there to fish, and more often recently, use as a landing to insert their paddleboards into the water, as the site has bay access not too far off.