While the Storm is at Bay

Today wasn’t a day for thinking, or producing, or even deciding. After several days of akathisia episodes — the kind that rearrange your senses and make the world feel too loud in every direction — the most I could do was sit quietly and look at something that didn’t ask anything of me.

It’s a big, beautiful, museum-styled book I’ve been keeping near the front of the stack in my living room recently. I rotate which book faces outward every so often, and today this one felt right: creatures arranged like specimens, colours held still, shapes that don’t demand interpretation.

So I spent a while with Animalium.

I didn’t read it.

Reading was impossible.

But I could look at it — and that was enough.

There’s something calming about a page that stays still, and yet can be touched. No motion, no urgency, no narrative trying to pull you in unless you choose to engage with the text. Just a clean grid, good typography, a pleasing colour palette, and a quiet overall arrangement that soothes the senses.

After the week I’ve had, that’s as close to peace as it gets.

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• A Christmas gift to myself
• A few of the drawings I destroyed this year
• THE AKATHISIA FILES: PT 5
• THE AKATHISIA FILES: PT 4
• “I like rocks.”