Saturday, January 31, 2009

cover to cover

Cover to cover this Saturday morning: Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg. Oh yes, the same Konigsburg who wrote From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Print from the wonderful Dallas Shaw on The Shiny Squirrel

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

the estrangement

Three years before my mother died, I decided not to speak to her again. And why? During a conversation over the telephone, she had once again let me know that my accomplishments—becoming a responsible and independent woman—did not amount to very much, that the life I lived was nothing more than a silly show, that she truly wished me dead. I didn’t disagree. I didn’t tell her that it would be just about the best thing in the world not to hear this from her.
The Estrangement by Jamaica Kincaid
via Maud Newton
Photo from here

a great joy

Clyfford Still via Either The Drapes Go Or I Do

Thursday, January 22, 2009

what is not there

And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

striped butte

In Death Valley National Park, where D. and I spent election night 2008.
Photo by Lynn Radeka

Monday, January 19, 2009

rag & bone

There's plenty to wear in my imaginary closet. Of course, if I really was buying clothes, La Garconne has far and away the best customer service.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

amazing grace

"The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin's." Marianne Faithfull

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

wait, wait, don't tell me

minirobot was tagged and I love her post. Made me rethink this tagging thing.
  1. My first car was a 1966, pink Plymouth Valiant. Three on the tree.
  2. I have terribly outmoded taste in music. I like some punk and am a sucker for a mournful female vocalist, but if lost on a desert island, I would most miss Simon & Garfunkel
  3. I don't see anything wrong with taking two baths in one day.
  4. The best thing to come from this blog is a friendship with The Ugly Earring.
  5. I've never owned a Royal Quiet Deluxe. My first typewriter was a humble Smith Corona.
  6. I really do want Carl Kassel's voice on my home answering machine.
If they were inclined, I would want to know more about Now Voyager and Water and Wool.
Photo of the gorgeous goddaughter

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

you

From Maud Newton

Now, thirty years later, [Jonathan] Baumbach’s most recent publisher, like his last, has gone under, and in this case the enterprise went belly-up just months after his latest book, You, appeared. My friend Lauren Cerand was so passionate about You, she took Baumbach on as a publicity client despite the difficulties of reviving a book after the initial media window has closed. She and the author have started a site dedicated to the project.

Below Baumbach remembers the circumstances that led him and other writers to create Fiction Collective, and he compares the climate of 1974 with the dire situation publishing finds itself in today.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

in return

I left for Japan on October 25, 1984, unsuspecting that this date would mark the beginning of a 92 day countdown to the end of a love affair. Nothing extraordinary -- but to me, at the the time, the unhappiest moment of my life, and one for which I blamed that trip itself. I got back to France on January 28, 1985. From that moment, whenever people asked me how it went, I chose to skip the Far East bit and tell them about my suffering instead. In return I started asking both friend and chance encounters: "When did you suffer most?" -- I decided to continue such exchanges until I had got over my pain by comparing it with other people's, or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.

Exquisite Pain, Sophie Calle
Someday very soon I will have to return this to the SF library

Saturday, January 3, 2009

watching

Friends with Money (above), Lovely & Amazing, and Walking and Talking. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener.

Friday, January 2, 2009

a particular kind of heaven

The years, she saw, fell heavily as books...
A Particular Kind of Heaven, Ed Ruscha, 1983 (now a triptych at the de Young)