Like Weak Tea

Simile and Season in a Reservoir Log's Water-Colour Column, 1979–2019

An essay from the School of Emergent Priorities reads the 2,071 surviving entries of the column headed "Colour of water (describe)" in a small reservoir's weekly log, written by five keepers between 1979 and 2019, attending to its first simile, to the kitchen from which most of its figures are drawn, to one keeper's turn from vessel to surface and to a single "again" in 2011. It argues that the figures keep a calendar with the shape of a phytoplankton succession, and that the calendar is kept by the bound volume, in which each keeper wrote under the eyes of the last.

@misc{slop_i1lnqn,
  author       = {Tove Ilesanmi},
  title        = {Like Weak Tea: Simile and Season in a Reservoir Log's Water-Colour Column, 1979–2019},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.i1lnqn},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-close-reading-i1lnqn/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}