The thick luxury of country

where the Puccis live

Three more days with Lala and then, farewell! Dave Digs Disney: the apotheosis of discovery.

"Future Chatelaines"

Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West's home after Knole, photo by Beth Dow

I have a memory of a sunken garden with a crumbling fountain, tiny and misplaced. Vita Sackville-West had an atavistic passion for a great house with 365 rooms, 52 staircases, and seven courtyards. Our fodder finds us, not the other way round.

Please, and let is be so

my kitchen, photo by Alice Engel

These late spring days, I'd like to dine on strawberry dumplings, lavender and fig crostata, and baguettes laden with artichoke paste, to the soundtrack of Sandro Perri and a resurrected acoustic guitar.

Custom, uncustomary

My latest tee shirt for Earl Greyhound is now available.

69

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan. You are loved, almost the world over. On your birthday, a time machine awaits. Climb in, fly away! Once more, it is January 26, 1966.

In a turreted manor house with an American blonde

Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows

Alamo Bay was added to my string of Louis Malle pearls last night. Strand of pearls includes: Pretty Baby, Damage, The Lovers, Elevator to the Gallows, Bay of Angels, Murmur of the Heart, Au Revoir Les Enfants, and is missing My Dinner with Andre, Lacombe Lucien, Le Monde du Silence, The Fire Within, The World of Silence, Zazie in the Metro and his India films.

Again and again, and again and again, for this is perfect and it makes my heart sing

Pillar Garden, The Courts by Beth Dow, who also photographed Sissinghurst

It is bound to be imperfect. But I think it possible that I have got my statues against the sky. -Virginia Woolf, from her diaries

Char-lee Parker

Charming is not usually a quality that bewitches me, though here I am, the past 2 nights utterly under the spell of Honor Dunn's Goodnight Studio and Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart.

Not pretty, not wise: on just getting by

"Pen and Ink Violas," the sketch version of the real deal that my mother has in her home, and the other Technicolor trio locked up, lost, in Oyster Bay.

in love with you

photo frm willow ships

WHITE
Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer- he bides time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along. I have no warm-up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink. I am apt to let something simmer for a while in my mind before trying to put it into words. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor-as though not until everything in the world was lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonably expect me to set a word down on paper.

Lost in The Paris Review interview archives.

Tuesday May 4

Dear ones, I'm tired. Is it all right if I am quiet for a bit?

One for the road

our house, photo & styling by Alice Engel

Forgive me if I slip in, say hello, and am off. I've got to rat tap tap today.