people will sometimes say

“. . . people will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women is politics" Grace Paley

Photo: Mociun

why am I treated so bad

I don't care if it's sunny outside, the only thing to do right now is listen to Mavis Staples on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. It may be the best 17 minutes and 27 seconds I ever spent.

Photo from mavistaples.com

men in hats

Leonard Cohen in concert tomorrow and our own Conspiracy of Beards playing a pre-show show at the Paramount. More info here.

happy is the novelist

Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.

Vladimir Nabakov
There are awesome Lolita posts on Now Voyager and Lolita

the only rule is work

For Clara and Glenn. Sister Mary Corita's rules can never be posted enough.

meet me at the center of the earth

Nick Cave's astounding exhibit at Yerba Buena reminded me of Phyllis Galembo's West African photographs. I saw them at Skidmore's Tang a few years ago. More of her work here.

harry smith figures

From the Harry Smith Archives

big love

From today's NYT: "But where the typical...American family seems unified but is secretly divided, the group on “Big Love” seems divided but is secretly joined." And "The book [Under the Banner of Heaven] includes a quotation from DeLoy Bateman, who gave up ­polygamy and then surrendered religious faith entirely. He told Krakauer he doesn’t regret abandoning it. “Some things in life are more important than being happy,” he says, expressing the unmistakable tension at the heart of “Big Love.” "Like being free to think for yourself.""

Photo from chloësevigny.com

unauthorized

JR Art in India. Also, The Hills Have Eyes in Rio de Janiero. JR in Cambodia here.

perfect

Garance doré. It's all in how you stand.

meet me at the center of the earth

Another must see: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents a large scale exhibit of Nick Cave's soundsuits. Through July. Tremendous.

Photo by James Prinz

in the memory of the forest

[ODC/Dance's] Artistic Director Brenda Way’s new work is inspired by the experience of her late mother-in-law, Iza Erlich, who, as a teenager in 1941, walked away from Warsaw. With a girlfriend, she set out across Poland, Germany and Russia to find her future husband who had departed months earlier. Iza recorded her memories on a set of four audiotapes and always imagined that her story might be material for a dance. “Iza, a social worker by trade, believed in the power of art to communicate emotional experience,” said Ms. Way.

In the Memory of the Forest, performances all month by ODC

some days you must

"I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything."

E.L. Konigsburg
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler
Photo by Jody Rogac via Simple Lovely

the kiss

"The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again."

Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig
Photo Hedi Slimane

style and identity

Minirobot lets go of her Vivienne Westwood boots.

Photo: Garance doré

borrowed bikes

My grandfather on his borrowed bike and me on mine.

what follows

"Writing only leads to more writing." Colette

Photo: Totokaelo

while I slept

Emily and Jennifer went to The Living Desert (their photo).

only too damned well

I only came in here to inquire the way to the nearest cinema. I am a respectable woman, une femme convenable, on her way to the nearest cinema. Faites comme les autres -- that's been my motto all my life. Faites comme les autres, damn you.

And a lot he cares -- I could have spared myself the trouble. But this is my attitude to life. Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you. I know I don't succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, and chained? And, mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. . . But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think -- and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

Now the waiter has finished telling me how to get to the nearest cinema.

'Another Pernod,' I say.

Good Morning Midnight, Jean Rhys
Photo: August Shop Blog via Dank En

carson hot springs

From Either the Drapes Go or I Do:

You walk in here and tell them you're here and they tell you there are ghosts and if there's a wait you take a walk through the woods where there are mushrooms and violets and fallen trees. To get here you drive along the Columbia river and pass the waterfalls and go over the Bridge of Gods and stop at an antique store where you buy a gold ring for $1 and pick up old pens and glasses. When they say they have tubs available you walk into the water room and get naked in the sulphuric steam and choose a tub length and if you're small like me you choose a short tub. Before you step in they tell you to test the water as it's only hot water and you tentatively ease yourself into the porcelain basin and when you are finally all in you start to cook exquisite with your hair spreading on top like an anemone and you try to sleep but you can't because you are too warm so you look over at Elanor whose body is like an English stem and it feels like being in a salon bath house in the Wild West during Manifest Destiny and every few minutes you take cold swigs of water and pour them over your face. When you stand up on unsure feet they take you to a cot and wrap you tightly in sheets and wool blankets and the only exposed part is your nose and mouth so the only thing to do is breath while cocooned, sweating and sweating, a wet and dark chrysalis. There really isn't anything to think about. There really isn't anything to do but sweat and sleep. When you emerge it is like a peony, unraveling slowly and utterly pink and you need to drink water, a lot of water, and you need to eat fruit, a lot of fruit, but we ate macaroons and drank espresso instead.

read the air

Here.

Bjork and Bernhard Willhelm, Dazed & Confused (2007)

olivetti valentine

Via Pink Ponk's amazing photostream. And this one on ebay.

another pernod

"Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home."

Good Morning Midnight, Jean Rhys
Jil Sander flats on ebay

dodes'ka-den

Japanese writer Yoko Tawada read in San Francisco this week, presented by the Center for the Art of Translation. Something in her reading reminded me of the sunset at the end of Dodes'ka-den (1970), Kurasawa's first color film.

this week

Some small intimacies: ici, Discotheque Confusion, emmas designblogg, Now Voyager, the ugly earring, Simple Lovely, blueberry pancakes and fresh orange juice at ungtblod, Jessica's reading list, and the beautiful place where hoping for happy accidents spends her days.

Photo: le vestiaire de clé

when one is not yet old

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.

Watt, Samuel Beckett
Electric moto from Quantya

sunday morning and it's raining

Watching Golden Door (Nuovomundo, 2006). My papa and Lidia would like this film.

Burroughs at 95

Tonight, a birthday party combining two of my favorite things: RE/Search Publications and William Burroughs.

Photo from RE/Search

double negative

There's nothing here I don't want.

Sabrina Dehoff at Creatures of Comfort

poets who write prose

I've been reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn and this remembrance of John Updike by Lucy Corin on The Rumpus, which pointed me to this For This I Believe by John Updike. Oh, and this is wonderful: "I made tea," by Joe Davis (via this is sippey.typepad.com).

overheard

The upside of the downturn.

Photo: Jim Wilson, NYT

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

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

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