28 January 2011
27 January 2011
Butterfly woman
Papa Leonard and Nana HannahI'm working on a new piece, cast from a brooch that belonged to my grandmother. Looking through photographs of those gone and those here, when they were young, and oh! the things I don't know, and oh! the questions I must ask. We lay in the bed the other night, and he told me about his great-grandparents, killed in a forest, and how he thinks of his grandmother and her gentle chiding every morning. Ask your questions, know your past. Tomorrow is a gift, not a given.
26 January 2011
In the dark
Cruelty, thy name is woman. A beautiful film about a terrible kitten called Charlotte, Une Femme Mariée is a lesson in how not to be free.
25 January 2011
In a bedroom with hyacinths or a fluorescent hallway/we should all be
The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all. -Just Kids, Patti Smith
24 January 2011
My castle, my books.
postcard from Patti Smith, in Paris to Robert Mapplethorpe, in New YorkI waited and I waited, for no reason I could know, but it turned out just right. Just Kids kept me company this weekend, a magical otherworld that is real, and true, built on love and then mourning, a rabbit hole while my mother is in the hospital.
21 January 2011
Artful Dodger
What's underneath? Where is the true heart of the matter? You can always tell the truth, without exposing the truth.
20 January 2011
Straightening out
I meant what I said,
and I said what I meant
An elephant's faithful,
One hundred percent.
-HORTON
Plain-speaking: welcome back.
19 January 2011
For all my girl cousins
At the end of his so remote, so near, 1884 summer Van, before leaving Ardis, was to make a visit of adieu to Ada's larvarium...
"But, afterwards, when all these beasties have hatched," asked Van, "what do you do with them?"
"Oh," she said, "I take them to Dr. Krolik's assistant who sets them and labels them in glassed trays in a clean oak cabinet, which will be mine when I marry. I shall then have a big collection, and continue to breed all kinds of leps--my dream is to have a special Institute of Fritillary larvae and violets--all the specials violets they breed on. I would have eggs or larvae rushed to me here by plane from all over North America, with their foodplants--Redwood Violets from the West Coast, and a Pale Violet from Montana, and the Prairie Violet, and Egglestone's Violet from Kentucky...Of course, when the things emerge, they are quite easy to mate by hand--you hold them--for quite a while, sometimes--like this, in folded wing profile...male in your left hand, female in your right, or vice versa, with the tups of their abdomens touching, but they must be quite fresh and soaked in their favorite violet's reek." -Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Vladimir Nabokov
18 January 2011
I am Here/Listen and you will find my Voice
He said, when I create art its like holding hands with G-d…that was one of the first things that Robert said to me when we were quite young, and that was, to me, it expresses so much of who he was, the depth...it has nothing to do really, with religion although he was brought up Catholic. When he was using the term G-d, he just means, the highest aspect of things. -Patti Smith on Charlie Rose, Jan 13 2011
before
and before that
17 January 2011
My castle, my books.
Reading Persepolis, the latest from the R. Vardi lending library. All those people were right. It really is that good.
14 January 2011
13 January 2011
12 January 2011
Literally so
We fly to Paris in April. Please, dear ones, tell me what we must do, everything from the very obvious to the most strange, secret place you love disproportionately.
11 January 2011
The Beauty of Woman
Harpers Bazaar UK via Identical Eye (been out a month, PGT!)The sum of the parts, the individual parts. Be bold. This only happens once.
10 January 2011
3!
The clock struck midnight, and we sang Happy Birthday to The Shrimp. Teepee will get and give one million kisses on her special day, making her special day exactly like every other special day.
07 January 2011
One thing for a fantasy
late 19th century American sled, wrought iron swan necks and heads, $1400It's an easy business to begin, but you must protect it, not expose it to real life. Begin with a plan for painted nails, or the tilt of Anna Mouglalis's mouth, or the smell of morning coffee as snow begins to fall. Imagine a vestibule, marble console, long mirror. Think of Virginia Woolf, April in Paris, spring in Mexico. Draw connections. Be a spider, pull, pull, pull. Paint the picture in parts. You are whole, it will be whole.
06 January 2011
Straight Shot
For a time I lay like her, with my eyes closed.
Then she said, 'I'm Queen of the May.'
She was sitting up, turned to me, propped on one arm. She had woven a rough crown out of the oxeyes and wild pinks that grew in the grass around us. It sat lopsidedly on her uncombed hair; and she wore a smile of touching innocence. She did not know it, but it was at first for me an intensely literary moment. I could place it exactly: England's Helicon. I had forgotten that there are metaphors and metaphors, and that the greatest lyrics are very rarely anything but direct and unmetaphysical. -The Magus, John Fowles
05 January 2011
Slip of an easy thing
borrowed from {this is glamorous}, borrowed from ?It's winter, not deep, post crackle and sparkle, and the ferocious want for bitter greens and fresh flowers blooms.
04 January 2011
03 January 2011
In the event you are a billionaire's baby, born in January
I've picked out some jewels for you from 1st Dibs, featuring your birthstone, the garnet. Let me know which one you get.
01 January 2011
The horn did trumpet, heed it's call!
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