This used to be a lovely spot of stillness amid the trees. We usually pick bucket loads of blueberries here in the summer... I doubt there will be any this year. Just a reminder that I don't really live in the forest, but rather a giant industrial farm for the production of cardboard boxes...

I enjoyed this. Mainly for the the descriptions of London areas where I used to live -- Deptford, Greenwich, Blackheath --albeit in a different era. Despite the rather grim subject matter -- death, the devil, occultism, murder -- it felt like a light read.

Last night in a dream, I was debating a quote with someone. I was sure that it was from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', and they said something else that I didn't recognise and can't remember. Now awake, I can't remember the last time I read Prufrock either, and certainly can't quote it...

Wow... This was both devastating and tender in its stripped back simplicity, the simple possibility of a life. It is also perhaps one of the best contemplations of the place of meaning and meaningless in the world, the relation of human and non-human, and the reality is the event that I have read.

In 1989, at school camp, we attempted to have a séance where, at my friend Maki's suggestion, we tried call up a professional wrestler named King Kong Bundy, who Maki said died by choking on an ice cream scoop. I'm only getting round to fact checking this now...

It is my birthday today and even though I have now lived in the northern hemisphere for 18 years, it still does not feel like my birthday when it is winter... even if I do love the winner...

When I woke up early this morning, I attempted to trick myself back to sleep by visualising the layouts of the houses of my childhood friends. It seems so sad, all those moments, all those things, they are gone, they led to nothing.

The strange patterns of pines outlined by fresh snow when seen from below.

Snowy textures...

An afternoon walk through the village...

An afternoon walk through the village...

There is more sun in this video then we saw in all of the first 2/3rds of December. More snow too...

Minus fifteen last night... Jack Frost, or Kung Bore as he is known here in Sweden, left these feathers of ice on our windows.

It really is just incredible filmmaking. RIP Béla Tarr. youtu.be/_d5X2t_s9g8?...

After a bit of work we will finally be able to escape the house...

I might skip my run this afternoon...

On page 365 of Schattenfroh, I came across the following: 'the question as to which of the three chairs is more real and true occupies me'. It made me think of the artwork 'One and three chairs' (1965) by Joseph Kosuth, and how it shows the question of ekphrasis that is central to the book.

Glacial erratics: Stones carried by the ice and left behind when it melted about 12,000 years ago. Once thought to have been thrown by trolls or the devil, now they rest like altars amongst the Gothic columns of the forest.

The clear pastel pinks and blues that mean it is a cold night coming...

This year I also printed up and drew a line under the manuscript that I have been working on and sending to agents/publishers for some time. There are a few hours of it still available, if you would like one please DM me. And many thanks to all those who have taken the time and interest to read.

Another highlight was launching this fantastic series of Manuals on artistic materials, forms, creation, and pedagogy for the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm back in January. I wrote introductions and co-edited them with the wonderful Johanna Gustafsson Fürst and Assist Mendizadal.

Some highlights from my reading of 2025 (leaving out all the reading I did for work). This year was mostly about Proust, even if my project of writing notes here ran up against the character limit. Schattenfroh is still in progress. A lot of Strindberg research is also absent here...

Sourdough vörtbröd, a traditional Swedish Christmas bread made with dark ale, spices, syrup and sultanas.

I really really want to see this film, it looks and sounds amazing, but I have no idea where or how it is available... www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKT...

About twenty years ago, somewhere in Australia, I bought a second-hand copy of Radon Daughters by Iain Sinclair only to find that Rowland S Howard had written his name inside...

I have been noticing recently that a lot of books from big reputable publishers are full of widows and orphans and other such typographical issues, hyphenating over page breaks, etc. is this an issue that people simply no longer care about?

More books arrive... I'm not sure what will be the next read...

Finally joining in on this one... Although I noted that if I read it in Swedish I could already be up to volume VI.

I took this photograph of chalk cliffs many years ago. But I thought of it again recently after reading a lot about the paintings of August Strindberg. I am also reading his 1890 novel 'By the Open Sea', with particular attention to his construction of nature.

Some recent book acquisitions... Weighing up when to drive into Schattenfroh. I have a feeling that the print on demand binding won't survive the reading... But what book does survive being read?

This weather and these landscapes are back. Ironically, I find myself writing about summer landscapes instead... I have not photographed anything in a long time, I somehow lost that drive.

Not bad for a morning walk...

Another picture from some time ago. This was in London, and if feels like it should be autumn, but may have been deep into winter, the seasons feel different now. Time is in motion, the earth has moved and I have moved.

Stockholm textures

Grey rags hanging from some sort of stone sifter found on a construction site on a rainy day in the outer suburbs of Stockholm many years ago...

First frost this morning...

Some of my German neighbours have recently brought an old horse up here. Now it stands in their garden looking rather melancholy. I live in the countryside, but this is not a field, only a small village block.

Today I cut the plants in the garden that had finished flowering and fruiting. I laid the cut stalks on the pile at the front of the garden and covered them in compost. I want to build a high wall of earth there. A fence requires planning permission, but the earth can rise of its own accord.

An image from a past autumn, many years ago, when I lived on the very outskirts of London, far to the east, beyond the Thames Barrier, beside this marshland that was once, maybe still is or will be again, the floodplain of the river.

Looking forward to reading -- thank you! @liamsprod.bsky.social

Today I went down into the cellar and swept all of the ash out from the boiler. It burns small wooden pellets that produce very fine, light grey ash. When I pour out the bucket of ash taken from the boiler, a cloud rises from the pile and spreads over the garden. I do this every few weeks.

Dreaming of this weather...

If the heat is getting to people, I have copies of my book available... A novel set in the deep winter, full of thoughts on the ice age, the trash heap of the world, the emptiness of God, the possibility of the universal solvent, and the deep textures of the forest and the stones beneath it...

Notes on Proust 9. I love the seeming triviality of this example of the duchess Guermantes changing her shoes, and how for Horkheimer this becomes important... How all experiences in Proust vibrate vividly after reading this...

Prästens Badkar [The Priest's Bathtub]. A 500-million-year-old sand volcano. Vik, Baltic coast.

Notes on Proust 8. In his eighteenth lecture on metaphysics (29 July 1968), Adorno notes argues that religious experience as handed down by figures such as Saint John of the Cross is no longer accessible. Instead, he speaks of metaphysical experience and argues that:

I decided to do a test print of a strange manuscript I have been working on for a long time. It is a novel that is very inspired by the landscape here in Småland, but at the same time it is also a meditation on collapse, decay and release. If anyone would like a copy please get in touch. Blurb below

When I was a teenager, back before the internet when living in Tasmania really felt like the edge of the world, my mother went on a trip to Europe and I gave her a list of records to search out for me, things like Diamanda Galas and Einstürzende Neubauten, names I had only ever heard...

Detail from the sinopia (under drawing) of the fresco Cosmography Theological by Piero di Puccio for the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa. Such beautiful textures...

Notes on Proust 7 (a picture and a quote). 'And when I thought of Florence it was of a town miraculously scented and flower-like, since it was called the City of the Lilies, and its cathedral, Our Lady of the Flowers.'