Writing on Routine

I like when things become new routines. Something happening for maybe the third time or working out to a degree where you don’t need to think about it happening again. It is a see-through thing rather than a painted one because even if you put effort into something, a thing only stays when there is that realised closeness. Then it is routine. Routine is different from repetition because routine is care and attention and time and often also holding, whereas repetition is organised and cold. Routines are your regulars. They are the load bearing things, realised or not. They are the in-group, the hangings on your wall. A routine is learning all of something, which can be through investigation but is often just through revisiting and the closeness it brings. I like it most that way, the softness in something slowly changing without you controlling its direction. Mark making and feeling those marks, maybe pressing them in further, maybe dulling them, all without really knowing. I like walking about. I also like running, plodding, skipping, wandering, loping, and other ones that I’d have to show you in person. I swap between them going around my close streets. The walk will pick itself in pace and mood and any rattly things to bring along. But the start and end points are the same, and you know about how long it takes and you know which side of the street will be sunny. There are street crossings you don’t have to remind yourself to look up at, the assumed safety built from the many previous times. Little bits might be new each time but they are friends in new clothes not new people. Routine is comfort but not uninterest. That space of feeling safe with something is a space where plenty of newness can come out of a broader set thing. Routine can make things really textured. Little bits of paint brushed onto material over and over again brings out all sorts of bumps and grains. And the paint might take to certain bits differently and the brush might snag the material to create little deposits. I like this messy learning of something through routine. Something drawing me back in. I can choose to think about why or just leave it as a blurry fun thing. I like something that has a lasting appeal so obvious I can taste it and it is thick and flavoured. I know why I want it and I know what it does for me and I can go to it to get that thing. I know how its little sparks will hit me and I sit with it in a long discussion of enjoyment and impulse that lasts our whole lives together. I like mysterious things too. Things that I can see very clearly but I don’t know why they keep coming back. I have a balcony with a tiny ledge that isn’t meant for standing on. You have to clamber over the bed and then lower yourself out of the window and it is dirty and not private because it is shared with three other flats who use it to throw things out of their bathroom when they can’t be bothered taking them to the bin. When it rains this debris becomes mulchy. I go out there every day. I like to go out there and hang my thoughts on the passing planes. They blink their lights to tell me all was received. I like it especially when it is wet and I can get briefly soaked and then back into the warm room. I bend back to unsteady myself a bit and make my view all sky. It is very easy to put four pins in my view corners because there aren’t any blockers like when you are on the ground. Only colour only background. I also like the train noises and the car noises and the wind being a bit blowier up there. All atmosphere nothing specific. It is a resetting thing and a malleable thing. Routine as a repeated odd space of your decoration.

This is an essay from This is What It’s Like.Click here for more information