no. 46

(Black, Ochre, Red over Red) 1957

spending my time

At other pretty things and duskin; dreaming about this dress and listening to This Mortal Coil.

Dress, Duskin Spring 2009

it must suggest something about me has changed

My Love,
I went to Yamamoto to choose my trousseau. For our reunion. I spent hours trying things on. In the end I chose black silk trousers and two shirts to be worn together, a gray one and a blue one. I want everything to be perfect. My outfit must travel well in the plane and suit the circumstances: a reunion in India. It must be elegant but without affectation, chic but understated, and flattering. It must suggest that something about me has changed, a subtle metamorphisis, show you how I've missed you, but that you're not totally indispensable to me and even that I have grown more beautiful, more mature, away from you...

From Exquisite Pain, by Sophie Calle (Thanks SF Library)

who shall say

The Lover, by Marguerite Duras is less than 30,000 words. The Postman Always Rings Twice, by Richard Cain, about 35,000. Fahrenheit 451 about 45,000; and The Great Gatsby, maybe, 50,000.

Photo: Denise Grünstein

maiden & moonflower

"One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that’s really beautiful too. It just isn’t beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before" Kiki Smith.

Kiki Smith Wallpaper at Studio Printworks
Per Paul Pincus' hallway

interpretation

"I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams." Susan Sontag.

Broad Shirt, Le Bouton

change sounds like this

Saw a Youth Speaks performance tonight. Mind blowing.

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

blue valentine

My favorite imaginary couple.

Short Cuts.

from the haircut file

Facehunter and Toast

me llamen calle

I don't think Manu Chao's Radiolina or the video for Me Llamen Calle won in last night Latin Grammy's, but they should have. Me Llamen Calle, Manu Chao's tribute to s-x workers, is well worth a listen.

I never can quite say

I never can quite say as much as I know. I look at other parrots and I wonder if it's the same for them, if somebody is trapped in each of them paying some kind of price for living their life in a certain way. For instance, "Hello," I say, and I'm sitting on a perch in a pet store in Houston and what I'm really thinking is Holy shit. It's you. And what's happened is I'm looking at my wife.

"Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot" by Robert Olen Butler
Photo from Either The Drapes Go Or I Do

truant

Jessica is sorta wonderful. She has a delicious blog; an inspiring shop; and now, with Erin, a completely cool online travel magazine, Truant. It might be the best thing I ever got for $2.

"I am a Bird" by Mareike Auer available at The Shiny Squirrel

you were saying

"You were saying something nice about me, I can feel it." Samuel Beckett, Eleuthéria

1820s Georgian Coral Ring, Erie Basin

minor obsessions

These honeycomb necklaces from Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons, thin black t-shirts from Acne and American Vintage, anything written by J.M. Coetzee, Kill City jeans, David Byrne, Kern River Valley, Sister Mary Corita, public radio, and Kiki Smith.

Photo The Selby via Jen

so long

I've gone camping and will be back on 11/10. Try: What Possessed Me and DRINK THE NEW WINE (via Hoping for Happy Accidents). And definitely Hollister Hovey. See you soon.

Photo: Cypress Kayaks via Hollister Hovey

FJ40

D. and his Land Cruiser.

maria cornejo

zero + maria cornejo

Photos by Christopher Anderson in NYMag

palm springs

I'm in Palm Springs for the week, a place I don't know all that well. Reading Th1rteen R3asons Why, Story of A Girl, and Living Dead Girl (all YA). Lots of buzz about Living Dead Girl (especially among young adult librarians), most of it positive. Also reading the W with Angelina Jolie on the cover and an amazing spread by Roni Horn inside, Paul Pincus's blog, and the SFMOMA's Nov/Dec newsletter.

Photo: Roni Horn, PBS

a slug of good whiskey

Bloggers have recipes. My friend Jenny has a recipe she promises will make kale taste good. Maybe. I have a recipe too. I got it from a blog (Maud, of course). It's writer Kate Christensen's cure for the common cold. But I find that it'll cure almost anything. The following is excerpted from Maud:

Day two home from work with a killer cold, and my only consolation is novelist Kate Christensen’s hot toddy. Since she passed it along last fall, the drink has eclipsed spicy tomato soup as the Maud household’s preferred remedy. It proves — as we always knew deep in our hearts — that Bourbon cures everything.

Add boiling water to (in the biggest cup in the house; this is no time to fuck around with anything dainty) the juice of 1 lemon, a big wad of honey, a slug of good whiskey [Ed. Note: I’ve been using Maker’s Mark], and as much cayenne pepper as you can tolerate. If it’s morning, add a tea bag.

Photo Nigel Shafran via Horse Hunting

speaking of stella

This Stella McCartney bodysuit via the lovely loveology. My goddaughter has a whole wardrobe of bodysuits she layers under everything. So cool.

watching

Bishop Desmond Tutu and Richard Branson on Iconoclasts. Stella McCartney and Edward Ruscha up next. And this NOVA on Hugh Everett (thanks Kathleen).

hanging out

Reading posts at the ugly earring and listening to Nina Simone at water and wool.

flashback

APC via CITIZEN:Citizen.

would it stand on the wall?

From Tokion, a fantastic interview with Sophie Calle by artist Jill Magid:

Most recently, she [Calle] was behind the most talked about exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Take care of yourself. Calle analyzed an ex-boyfriend’s break-up email by asking 107 women to interpret his words...

Jill Magid: You incorporate a few different methodologies in your work. One of them seems like this natural catalyst—something happens in your life, and then you set [up for] yourself what you call a ‘game.’ So, Take care of yourself was something that happened—a break-up—and then you set up a game—

Sophie Calle: And they have a therapeutic motor aspect, just as a start: ‘What can I do not to suffer?’

Jill Magid: You don’t think you start this process as a work?

Sophie Calle: No, there are different categories, as you say. The category in which it is my life, many times starts as a reaction to something. Like, I received that love letter, what can I do [to] counter it, not just to be a victim of it. Maybe the first step is therapeutic, but if it’s only therapeutic, I may as well go buy a dress at the corner of the street. So, immediately [I think], ‘Would [it] stand on the wall?’ If I think yes, I go on.

Photo: Sophie Calle: Did You See Me?

color of the wind

Face Hunter.

the misfits

The photographers of Magnum Photos were given exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the filming of The Misfits. Led by Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photographers arrived on the set in pairs and alternated every two weeks. Nearly 100 photos available on PBS.

one bad sofa

"I always say - a prejudice on my part, I'm sure - you can tell a lot about a person's character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves. This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. It's like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That's how it goes." Haruki Murakami. Appearing at UC Berkely this week.

Manuscript page from The Paris Review

muxtape remembers

A Continuous Lean offers up a link for your almost forgotten playlists. My favorite for dancing around the house? This, from someone named Kalpana:

1. The Virgins — Rich Girls
2. Cat Power — New York
3. Nellie McKay — Identity Theft
4. Delta Spirit — Gimme Some Motivation
5. Elizabeth & The Catapult — Waiting for the Kill
6. Mechanical Bride — Umbrella
7. Ray LaMontagne — Three More Days
8. Joe Cocker — The Letter
9. Mark Ronson Ft. Lily Allen — Oh My God
10. Ixley — Luchini (Wounded Mix) - Camp Lo
11. Hellogoodbye — Oh It Is Love
12. Vampire Weekend — A-Punk

VPL Sweater from Creature Comforts

board

General Store via Reference Library.

because boyfriend jeans

Look good on the boyfriend too. Street Walker via STNF.

the old typewriter

"I get up in the morning, that's one of the hard parts, drag myself over to the old typewriter and sit down—that ’s even harder— and then I tell the Lord, 'I ain't greedy, Lord, just give me the next 500 words.'" Harry Crews. (Car, 1st Edition)

and that's the he and the she of it

Somehow I missed Rick Moody's choices on Ubuweb last month. Worth a listen, especially William Carlos William's reading Danse Russe ("I am lonely, lonely/I was born to be lonely/I am best so!").

Dancing Legs Calipers from Erie Basin

original gesture

Lindsey Thornburg cloak via Jen at Sleep Deprivation and Stories of my Bullshit Youth.

what carrie found

Double-waisted, drop-crotch, vintage Vivienne Westwood pants.

to write

"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write." Gertrude Stein.

Photo by Man Ray.

nope

artis3letters.

fishtail parka

Totokaelo.

where I went

LOLITA.

Photo from hello bum.

5 things

I like about Cali Dewitt: He and Jenna in their bathrobes; how they always look like they're having fun and how their friends all have the best terrible haircuts; this t-shirt; how I kinda want, but am strangely reticent, to buy the blind bargain bag.

the skins are naked

Some glasses for the ugly earring. And a quote from un fille comme moi via Google Translate, "Funny this gradual disappearance of makeup. The skins are naked, eyes less responsible..."

Photo from CaféMode.

waiting for home

Home, by Marilynne Robinson. Excerpts from an interview with The Paris Review:

On character: In the development of every character there’s a kind of emotional entanglement that occurs. The characters that interest me are the ones that seem to pose questions in my own thinking. The minute that you start thinking about someone in the whole circumstance of his life to the extent that you can, he becomes mysterious, immediately.

On teaching: I try to make writers actually see what they have written, where the strength is. Usually in fiction there’s something that leaps out—an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story. If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new. I don’t try to teach technique, because frankly most technical problems go away when a writer realizes where the life of a story lies. I don’t see any reason in fine-tuning something that’s essentially not going anywhere anyway. What they have to do first is interact in a serious way with what they’re putting on a page. When people are fully engaged with what they’re writing, a striking change occurs, a discipline of language and imagination.

On writing essays: To change my own mind. I try to create a new vocabulary or terrain for myself, so that I open out—I always think of the Dutch claiming land from the sea—or open up something that would have been closed to me before. That’s the point and the pleasure of it. I continuously scrutinize my own thinking. I write something and think, How do I know that that’s true? If I wrote what I thought I knew from the outset, then I wouldn’t be learning anything new.

uncommon day

Photo by Gareth McConnell for Lyell

last day of summer

Porter Hovey Polaroid Project.

making pictures

Trudy White, who did the illustrations in The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, runs writing and visual art workshops for children and adults.

feeding merlin

Bona Drag is celebrating it's first year. If a boutique was a cool childhood friend, it would be Bona Drag. Photo.

a gathering

Kiki Smith at Walker Art Center.