Sunday, February 17, 2008
Woke up to icy rain, so we decided to delay our drive home (from Ann Arbor) until later hours when the ice pellets would become rain — after 10:00, said the weather report. Until just moments ago, then, the sound of C’s fingers on his keys: a few solid hours of work for him on [...]
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your [...]
It must be coming. Because that’s always the way it works, the odd word showing up again and again and again.
Roué.
First, The Long Embrace, Judith Freeman:
12/11/48 TO CHARLES MORTON, EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: [from Raymond Chandler]
I am a very happy man. I haven’t a brain in my head, an idea on my mind, or [...]
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Tagged books, Ianthe Brautigan, Judith Freeman, Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive, Raymond Chandler, reading, roue, The Long Embrace, threes, words, You Can't Catch Death
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
This morning, Wallace Stevens’ Of Mere Being, this part:
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Gertrude Stein sat for Picasso, in 1905-6, and he painted her portrait. Every afternoon for three months, she and her little dog trotted over to the painter’s cramped quarters, where she posed in a large broken armchair. After ninety sittings, Picasso told her not to return. He scraped away everything he had done on her [...]
Over the past few days, the rest of me has begun to follow the foot I stepped quietly over the line into the new year. I’ve been frustrated by my favorite hat I brought back from Big Sur for the cold, for walking, having gone missing sometime in the past couple weeks. I remember clearly [...]
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Great white thick flakes of snow, some looking to be half the size of my hand, are piling up outside, the other side of the French doors; this world does not care whether we live or die but it sure is pretty. I have sewing projects and a tree that’s been waiting to be [...]
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Q: Why didn’t the skeleton go to the party?
A: He didn’t have the guts.
Or she. Me. I don’t think I have the guts for all the stuff that’s cranking up for the “holiday” season.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
November has been so far the month of travel, first Austen, then Auburn, Alabama. (So A = travel?) Few, I imagine, go to Auburn, Alabama, if not for some sort of business or other, and in this case C and I fall into the majority (imagine that), and it was business for C that took [...]
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Tagged Alabama, art gallery, Auburn, books, Cincinnati, collage, Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son, Loachapoka, Nathaniel Hawthorne, National Book Award, Richard Powers, The Atlantic Monthly, The Echo Maker, Tree of Smoke
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
To continue the pumpkin theme from last post, serendipitiously. I have in my hands, my wandering eye having caught the book’s spine over there across the room a moment ago while in the middle of a rather lengthy call taking a bit too long to end, Hockney’s Alphabet. Mine is not the $500 signed first-edition [...]
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