Michelle Bailat-Jones

“There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature of each one to communicate its mental contents… We cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.”

— Walter Benjamin (1916)

The reality show country is waging its reality show war with decisions made by its reality show dictators...but conducted by actual people and affecting actual people.

Vase of fading tulips on a desk, one is folded over touching the desk like a ballet shoe en pointe

Tulip practicing its 'pointe work'

"Let the stars fall. I have no idea
what hope is, but our people
have taught me a million ways to love." Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
onbeing.org/programs/len...

Walks, rain and more rain, handmade brights in a window

February 28, 2026 Early this morning, the U.S.

February 28, 2026

"No cause, no God, no abstract idea can justify
the mass slaughter of innocents." Edward Said

We gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”

mountain-gazing, light-tracking

Dull gray sky today, -5 outside and windy, move from nautical twilight to civil twilight like pushing aside a heavy curtain. Lights on inside, winter brights fighting their tiny fierce battles.

Quiet house. Coffee. Watching the shift between twilight phases over the neighbor's barn. This world. Such monstrousness. My phone tried to autocorrect that to 'monstrous nessuno' which makes no sense but still feels true (monstrous nobody).

View of a wooden jetty and "vigie" with sunrise

Brisk and fire-tinged at the edges for the last entry of this year's catalogue of (dawn) twilights

Oh, lovely, hope you enjoy it 💚 I got to teach some excerpts from it recently, in French and English, and it was great fun to discuss and look at again after so many years.

I've had a great time selecting some pieces to mark the solstice and year's end at @necessaryfiction.com, and am grateful to the writers who shared their work. Here is the first gathering of lights, with three more to follow in the days ahead.

LINDA GREGG THE LIGHT CONTINUES Every evening, an hour before the sun goes down, I walk toward its light, wanting to be altered. Always in quiet, the air still. Walking up the straight empty road and then back. When the sun is gone, the light continues high up in the sky for a while. When I return, the moon is there. Like a changing of the guard. I don't expect the light to save me, but I do believe in the ritual. I believe I am being born a second time in this very plain way.

Linda Gregg, The Light Continues

“Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.”

Annie Dillard, "Waking Up", The Abundance

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as the diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

Midwinter morning, books out and sharpened pencils morning, music-on morning, quiet projects and quiet thinking morning. Four degrees outside and gray for the shortest day of the year.

early morning dark, with coffee

"A lighthouse keeper's ethics: you tend for all or none
for this you might set your furniture on fire
A 'this' we have blundered over
As if the lamp could be shut off at will
rescue denied for some

and still a lighthouse be"

Adrienne Rich, "For this"

A dry pumpkin leaf, lit by sun.

Garden morning. A half-hour of cold, winter sun. The pumpkin leaves, like curled paper now, hang from the homemade summer trellis that will collapse as soon as we get snow.

Back home in Vermont after months in London. The river is melting. A friend asked me why I’m afraid to take pictures of the river. Haunted, obviously. Every river is.

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the
moors—

Keats

Train station in the village. A mouse or a shrew is moving slowly from one shrub to another, under a tunnel of leaves. Peeking out between each rustle.

Snow is covering us. Close your eyes and sleep. Close your eyes and dream.
This is one story. There will be another.

Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods

Train. Carrying an overblooming top-hravy amaryllis and seven novels. The amaryllis keeps threatening to fall onto train seat neighbor because I care mostly about not dropping the novels. Amaryllis blooms hit stranger. I feign innocence.

She is fierce and interesting

Indeed! I see him a few times a year, always makes me smile. He either lives at the hotel or visits often for business.

Walk down from the station this morning. Passed the man who goes out from his hotel in a bathrobe to get his newspaper.

Nightwalk. A house on the hill above the village has arranged two old teapots into its rock garden. A neighbor a few doors down left all the apples on their tree and dozens hang frozen, half-dead, from the bare branches. Quietly shiny in the lamplight.