a great joy

Clyfford Still via Either The Drapes Go Or I Do

ofelia

"...in a dark Spanish forest in a very dark time..."

Pan's Labyrinth review in NYT

lost at sea

Georgian mourning ring.

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.

Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better Looking:
With a Selection from the Left Bank

Photo: people of Pankow from Berlin guide

striped butte

In Death Valley National Park, where D. and I spent election night 2008.

Photo by Lynn Radeka

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.

like a bird on a wire

I almost missed Maya Lin's Systemic Landscapes. Closing today at the de Young.

amazing grace

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

this morning fog

knows how to party.

one story

One Story is perfect. It's exactly perfect. One story and nothing else.

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

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.

Read the rest here.

yohji

Y-3 Autumn 2007.

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

first we believe

“The only sin is mediocrity.” Martha Graham

it feels like a new year

And we can all wear these. Or if you must get married, this.

Photo from LIFE via A Continuous Lean.

watching

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

a particular kind of heaven

The years, she saw, fell heavily as books...

From "Darkest of All" by Christine Schutt

A Particular Kind of Heaven, Ed Ruscha, 1983 (now a triptych at the de Young)

sturdy little volumes

Pocket books.

if you were with me

Mom and I went to Heath Ceramics, Afghanistan, and saw the Soul Children of Chicago. There were temari balls and cookies with D's mom. And chapino with Jeff and Silke, Christmas dinner with Kathleen, Slumdog Millionaire with Clara, elephant seals with Ally and Masin...

Edith Heath from Heath Ceramics: The Complexity of Simplicity

cerillos

Vintage rings.

on holiday

I haven't been here too much lately, I know. When I have a moment, I've been daydreaming over at Scout Holiday. I love her Little Gift Guide and her Holiday Wish List.

Live to Ride (E.P), Elizabeth Peyton

the lives of others

My beau and I finally rented this last night after THIS MORNING FOG's post. I cannot shake the mood of it.

women who write

“Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so.” Marguerite Duras

Bra by DOSA via petit garden

raising arizona

fifth floor

SFMOMA offers a spellbinding retrospective of Martin Puryear. Through January 25.

Photograph by Richard Barnes. ©2007 at MoMA

a fragile eyeful

"...But Miss Golightly a fragile eyeful even though attired like a tomboy in slacks and leather jacket appeared relatively unconcerned..." Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote

Photo, Jon von Pamer

if I in my north room

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

"Danse Russe" William Carlos Williams
Interior from Nightwood

first they're good

“People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.”

Dave Eggers, founder of 826 Valencia

826 Valencia Pirate Posters

inexhaustible engagement

She seemed to be at least twice as alive as most of us—to know everything, to do everything, to be inexhaustibly engaged. Her arresting appearance was familiar even to many nonreaders from the photographs that recorded it over several decades and registered the glamour and magnetism—the sheer size—of her personality, and her celebrity was all the more potent and irreversible because the place she occupied was so far outside the usual radius of the spotlight.

Deborah Eisenberg on Susan Sontag, NYRB
Photo of Susan Sontag and son David Rieff by Diane Arbus
via If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger

for you for me

Headband from PIP-SQUEAK-CHAPEAU for my friend Ally, shoes for me.

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