lettered

 

Untitled, oil and wax crayon on paper, 1969, Cy Twombly.

Dear Blue Letters,

Today I have for you two lovely thoughts on letters, from two lovely books.  

The first is this quote from By Cecile, written by Tereska Torres: 

But this afternoon Myette holds nothing in her hand but the sheet of white paper, on which there runs a writing so miniscule that one might think that there are only light, delicate lines traced across the page, lines that do not form letters, only a series of sea-blue threads marking undulating wavelets on a deserted beach.

These lovely blue lines lead me to your song of the day, and to the Cy Twombly drawing above.  The tangle of unletters in the drawing bring me to the letters beyond z which you can read about in Things in Nature Merely Grow (by Yiyun Li).*  The notion of letters that are beyond z opens a door to fabulous visual and mental experiments: what do they look like?  What can we spell with these letters?  What sentences should be written with these letters that are beyond?

Which reminds me of visiting the page-scented used bookshop with a friend and a conversation we had after:  I was saying that reading was keeping me sane, and we talked about whether all reading could keep you sane, or if it needed to be un-fluffy reading.  Now, we could spend a lot of time discussing what fluffy reading is, that's sure.  Maybe fluffy is the stuff than confers what you know already?  Bias confirming?  Or is it the stuff that entertains?  The books that mesmerize and enchant you into staying up late to see what happens?  I think, though, even so: any port in a storm; any reading will keep you saner than no reading.

*  Yes; that actually makes a total of three lovely books.  Enjoy a further tangling.  And another.

making it

 

Girl, Interrupted at Her Music, Jan Vermeer, 1658-1659.

 

Dear Y'all,

Again, I have read a book that has me asking why haven't I read this already? Where have you been all my life, Girl, Interrupted?  I could really have used this book... but, that isn't to say I am not happy I found it, finally.  As I was telling a pal, this book made me feel seen as they say; it was strumming my pain with its words.  And, you, lucky you, can read it right now!  In fact, take a chair by the light; I'll wait while you read it!  

I especially love to read about women and their brushes with, or even full assimilation of, madness.  Madness, as you know, is just a kiss away.  But, let me cut to the nub of the matter:  there are two types of books about women trying to get what they want.  In the first type, the women are killed for trying to get what they want, or even for daring to ask.  In the second type of book, the women survive.  Girl, Interrupted, is of the second type.

I have lots of evidence of the literary death penalty for women who want.  Here are just a few protagonists that are punished by death: Lily Bart, Daisy Miller, Marguerite Gautier, Catherine Earnshaw, Lilia Herriton, Edna Pontellier. I still haven't finished it, but I think Anna Karenina gets the big sleep, too.  

Take heart, though, reader, because I have just read three other books where the woman is not put to death for asking for something.  Now, Voyager, Butter, and Famesick.  Happily, Charlotte, Rika, and Lena all 'make it' to the ends of their books, against all the odds, and Famesick isn't even fiction!

PS

Another kiss away.  Does the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper make it?  Offred?  The woman in What Kingdom?  Marie Cardinal makes it, in The Words to Say It.  So does Leonora Carrington in Down Below, Therese and Carol in The Price of Salt.

Well, will ya look at that!?

 

Debbie Harry

Dear Whom it May Concern,

Every once in a little while, upon a time, so to speak, I get so ebullient, so touched by something I read that I cannot bear not to share it; and so I get a little pile of the book* to give to friends, or I email everyone with the essay.  Well, once upon one of these times, I was filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  Well, no, that isn't quite right, because I am still filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  I think she is a great, great mind.  I feel my cells changing when I read her books.  I adore her, and when I went to share a thing she'd wrote, on cloud nine with my affection, I said that it wasn't just that I loved her, it was that I wanted to inhabit her, to be her.  One of my friends said:  You cannot be her; she has blonde hair and she smokes!  A pause while we consider.

I still wonder at what that means, that rebuttal.  There is, I think, an irony, in that being blonde and smoking is actually available to anyone with, hmm, say 20 bucks and a few hours?  So, those are not the things preventing me from being Helen DeWitt.  The obvious reason, is that someone is already being Helen DeW.  Namely, Helen DeW.  And all of this is crazy self-evident, so what am I saying to you today, exactly?  I am saying:  what are we doing if we are not trying to be like the humans we admire?  Where else can you go for the teachings?  (And yeah, I will give you cats as role models, as mentors, as idols, and in fact you can take the whole of the fauna, and the flora too, and take geo physical while you are at it, but it seems to me to make a lot of sense to emulate those we admire, in any and every way.  And you know, sure, you can model yourself on the cosmos, too; it seems a good design).

You might wonder, though, what has become of my topic: the impulse to share things I love.  Well, it takes an occasional beating from clumsy responders, but even now, I have three very fine poetry books stacked up and ready to give to what I hope will be a receptive and open heart, and I am so excited about it!  And, if they land poorly, that is fine too, because a book lives a long life** and many other readers will come upon these three specific copies and maybe one of those readers will want to be Sandra Cisneros, Ada Limón, Olivia Gatwood.  They won't even need bleach.

* e.g:  Faux Pas, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Hare with the Amber Eyes, Cold Comfort Farm, Cary Grant's Suit. 

** the used copy of Wuthering Heights I read was 76 years old.  I read a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the library that was 100 years old!  It worked just as good as new.

Good Luck in the New Year

 

Dear Friend,

Are you lucky too?  I sure am!  What I have, right now, is three (count 'em!) new books by three of my favorite authors!  I really don't know where to start!  One thing I have decided, is to start in the new year; to save them gleefully for another few weeks.  It gives me something to look forward to in 2026.  Which yeah, if it is like 2025 at all, well, it's going to be another fascist hellscape of a year with only the shocks and stings of new awfulnesses to mark the days by.  So, Happy New Year anyway, and I hope, I really hope you have set aside a little thing to make 2026 a year for you to look forward to, even if it is only what's left of the chocolate from the holidays.

message from a friend

 

Sigrid Nunez

Dear Readers,

I know, you already have a stack of books, and you don't want it to get so tall it endangers you.  Still.  And yet.  

Let's say this, you have a stack, but you want a good book, a book for right now, a book to help you imagine yourself expanding enough to survive even this tragedy we are living.  Or, well, maybe I am claiming too much; how can I be sure you will find this book helpful?  Let me try again:

This year I have read over 70 books- I didn't expect to love this one; I thought, I might like it, I thought it might entertain.  I had never heard of the author (which is pretty much how it goes for me- no matter how many books I read, I still haven't heard of this book, or that book, or the book you just read!), but I looked at her picture on the internet, and I knew, I knew in an instant that I wanted to read a thing this person had written.  Even if it was about a big dog; and well, you know, me and dogs, we have a kind of complicated relationship ever since one knocked me down when I was 4 or 5 and broke my tooth on the sidewalk.  

Let me set the record straight, it isn't just about a big dog.  (Also, and if you have read any dog lit, you may be worrying, the dog does not die.)  It is also about Big Life.  I am looking for instructions for how to live Big Life, and this book, The Friend, is a good guide.  I think you will enjoy it, should you add it to your stack!  

I have to run now, because I need to go and get all the other Sigrid Nunez books!

my year with the women

We Are All Alike, Eleanor Lowden.

Dear Books,

It's been about a year now, that I have been keeping track of the books I have read; in conjunction with a commitment to reading women authors.  I also include non-white writers (any gender), and trans or non-binary authors, but my favorites are from women like me*, writing about what it feels like to inhabit their bodies.

It isn't a total ban, either, I read some white men now and then; and, as I go along filling my head with predominately women's voices, or perhaps I should say: non male writers? I notice, I notice it hard, when I read one of these menwrit books that is trying to build a great castle, an empire, with words- all about their sex organs and oozing what have yous.  I know you think I am exaggerating, but try it- try 5 books in a row by women, and then pick up one of these men and see if you ken what I am getting at.

It's not that all the women (plus) are the same style/type of writing, and it isn't that I could pick them out in a blind taste test, it's something kind of small and ineffable.  Many women write in ways that have a very Male Voice, and some men write in a genderless way, too.  If I had to distill it all to one single difference, it might be a question mark.  The lack of definiteness, not authority or confidence, but a kind of inherent acknowledgement that the view is multiple, and this line, this sentence, can only be a snapshot.  Or, maybe the question mark is the sense of searching.  One thing, though, even if I cannot define it, it is there.

It's also not that I don't love, love a word castle, built out of strange and wonderous similes and inhabited by lonely princes of darkness and light.  No, I love that kind of thing, I really do.  I think what I am trying to tell you, is that I was surprised to find a such a definite feeling of difference.  

For the counters and statisticians, it has been 64 books by female and female-identifying writers, and 14 by men in 49 weeks- and that makes 88, and well, if I had counted sooner I'd have seen what a silly thing it was to start this calendar year off with a plan to try to read 50 books!  Oh, and I am not done with the women, not at all!  Check out this list of writers on my shelf still to be read:

Clarice Lispector

Han King

Lillian Hellman

Jenny Ditski

Dianna Athill

Maeve Brennan

Alice Munro

Lillian Faderman

Sara Ahmed

Eudora Welty

Donna Haraway

Eileen Chang

Jen Hatmaker

Samantha Harvey

Kathleen Hanna

Kate Zambreno

Ágota Kristóf

Saidiya Hartman

Tove Ditlevsen

Lydia Lunch

Kate Manne  

Barbara Comyns

Cristina Campo

Willa Cather

Janet Frame

Isabel Allende

Fleur Jaeggy

Inger Christensen

Esther Kinsky

Ellen Meloy

Eileen Chang

Agnes Smedley

Cookie Mueller

Claire Messud

Susana Kayson

Shirley Jackson

Margaret Drabble

Jean Rhys

Angela Carter

Anaïs Nin

If you are still wondering why anyone would read like this, well, let me put it this way:  These are my sisters, and they have millions of pages of wisdom to give me!  Who the hell am I to refuse such a gift?  

*  Like me, in this case, means a woman who writes.  It's also extra dear to my heart and enlivening when the women authors are within ten years or so of my age.

PS  If you want to hear a few favorites, well; The Price of Salt, The Quest for Christa T., What Kingdom, Astragal, To Throw Away Unopened, The Last Samurai, The Lady with the Little Fox Fur, The Old Child, All Passion Spent, Checkout 19, The Lover, Small Things Like These, and here is one old dead white guy for you:  A Room with a View.

Mr. Fox

 

Dear Reader,

I know you have heard enough from me on the topic of What to Read; especially right now, at the onset of whatever it is that 'Summer Reading" season is.  (Lot of is, in that sentence....)  And for me, it just happened to fall here, this great book.  It happened to fall because I was at my online used book place and the Robot Overlords that run it suggested this book- now, let me clear: they suggest books to me every time I go there.  Mr. Fox is the very first time I have taken their advice:  why?  Two things: the author was not an Old White Man, and the cover was just exactly what I want in a cover.  In other words, I judged this book by its cover and I found it very good!

The cover is a treat, and I send along an image of it, so you can appreciate it, even if you end up with a different edition.  Look at the pale celadon!  The paper-doll type figures!  What could be nicer than that?  But, but, I don't want you to read it because of its cover, and I want you to read it because it is so good, so imaginative, so multivalent.  And no, I don't want to tell you anything about it, because, isn't that why we open a book?  To find a surprise?

However, I am willing to go out on a limb: anyone with a summer reading quota would be delighted with this book:  Give it to all your friends & lovers, your book club pals & your sisters and your cousins and your aunts.

As for me, well, I am going to make a start on the books I hadn't read that are mentioned in Mr. Fox, in my usual non-robotic meta method for finding new titles:

Transformations

From the Beast to the Blonde

The Woman in White

Tess of the d'Ubervilles

Thérèse Raquin

Madame Bovary

In addition to that weighty and academic list, I think I will add Bluebeard's Egg, and White is for Witching, but don't expect a review too soon; I expect to take my sweet time reading all of that.

delayed gratification

 

Tove Jansson*

Dear Y'all,

I have two things, from beloved author Tove Jansson for you.  I will send you the next one soon.  I want to spread out the loveliness, to make it last.

Making it last is why- when I first started reading her books, the three volume edition of Moomin comics that the library acquired 15 years ago or so, and then the wonderful Moomin books, and then, then the amazing books for whatever an "adult" is-  I did not rush to finish all her books in 1 or 2 years.  I was very sad to have read the last (as in, the only one I hadn't read yet) Moomintroll book, so I have to take care not to read what is left too quickly!  

I am not sure exactly how many are left to me now; I have for certain, two on my shelf, and one that I know of but do not have.  I guess, if there are say 5 more, and I live another 25 years I should read one every five years?  Ah, but even as I write that to you, I see the flaw: what about the unexpected early death!??  What about missing out entirely on the few that are left??  Well, this is the rush and roar of our gambling, gamboling lives, isn't it?  Here today and 5 books unread tomorrow!  Still, I don't want to be one of these manic over achievers, so, maybe I will read just the two books I have before the end of the year.

But, I digress:  Here is Tove Jansson from Sun City, & yes, you should run (but be careful of that bus when you cross the street!) to your library or bookshop so you can read the whole delicious thing.

There has to be time to think, thought Mrs. Morris, an opportunity to reflect.  The time that writing requires, a mute communication, would leave space for deliberation.  Almost everything we say is marked by haste and thoughtlessness, habit, fear, and the need to impress one another.  So much needless triviality, exaggeration, and repetition, so many terrible misunderstandings.

PS  

Do you suppose that I am only pacing myself like this because I want to feel superior in my emotionally intelligent plan for delayed gratification?  C'est possible.

*  I don't need to tell you that you want (desire deeply) to read a book by a woman that looks like this!

Lynx Boa (Self Portrait), 1974, Tove Jansson.

(See also, related:  Dodo: 4/28/2025)

 

Chapter headings, French, late 1800's.

Dear Books,

I am thinking on chapters today.  Why & where the break?  How does a writer choose when to suggest, fairly strongly, that the reader stop there, for a half page of empty or a month of dust gathering?  

I know the rule for the paragraph; put is where you change topic.  But that, that is a matter for debate:  if I fret over it too long, I don't string sentences at all.  I start mulling and stop writing.  But, again, those are the same, or at least, writing and mulling don't call for a paragraph change.

Mostly, as I was educated on the feral side of civilization (yes! a true cave, with an actual dingo for a dad and wolf for a mother- should this go in a different paragraph?), mostly I try to keep the stripes of text and space looking nice- oh, and to have three of course is nice- having three, or five, makes my writing seem learned, proper.  One definitely wants something to seem proper, especially when it isn't, or there is doubt about it.

And so the chapter continues to mystify.  Maybe there is a class or course I never got to; a class beyond the paragraph rules, a course that defines the preferred form for chapter breaks?

PS  

Well, yes, I know, this PS could make the fifth, and I could look it up, and you know, I tried to; very feebly, in the way that a mountainous surfeit of a thing (information) makes a person not really want it.  I clicked on a link to an essay on the history of the chapter and it had a paywall, and well, there we go then, choosing to frugally stay in ignorance, but more than just that, also to in this case stay in wonder, to stay in further contemplation of the chapter instead of seek a Definitive Answer.  As Violette LeDuc's Lady and the Little Fox Fur says "...after all, ignorance was also a perpetual promise."  

May I say who's calling?

 

Detail of Anne Siems painting, Life Turn.  

Dear Calling,

The cat calls pretty often, maybe the most often- both the One and the Two cat are vocal, needy- but these are human words for humans.  Who knows what the cat is hoping to get from me?  At least I know it is a cat.

The other calls, well, they are pretty unknown.  I got a letter a few days ago, and the Caller said just leave it a few days and open it later.  I opened it now, and it came in the center of the mind I was reading about in a book.  I have been hearing another call for about 70 pages: start reading The First Bad Man too, it might belong with Surrender the Pink.  

(I started, it does.)

I guess a beckon is more it, anyway, not precisely a call.  The breeze I can see through the window beckons, the to-do list beckons.  But those are the easy ones; the Caller you can identify. 

I was looking on my jam-packed looking device and there were these beautiful diary quilts that a woman had made, was making.  That called too- run out and grab some fabric and start piecing!  That word, that wonderful word, piece, piecing.  It is full of the potential for making a whole.  What could be nicer than that?

Anyway, you can see that a call to make a quilt in the center of reading about a mind and whatever the hell is on the to-do list is making for a pretty busy day, and what I really was called to do was to contemplate the nature of whom the Caller is.  So much sifting to do, keep this, get back to that, existence is ludicrously dense, and then, in small instants, completely spacious and empty.

Oh, and don't forget, your song for today: Der Telefon Anruf.

The bookshelf.

 

Dear Reader,

It's time for me to try to tell you about a book I have been reading.  I am reading it slow, languorously even.  I think, as I often do, that it is a book for everyone, but don't I think that about most of the books I am reading?  

Let us think on that while we listen to this, your song for today.  

It has to do with the problem of audience- audience of one, or less than a million, or less than a hundred; the audience is like ants, you know, one only matters to oneself.  One ant is nothing to even mention.  Of course, in writing you here, I do think of audience, I think of reader, listener, viewer.  It's thorny.  Do I do a thing for just one person?  Or, even for the hope of just one person?  

Here is a page from The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden:

CULTURE = LIFE CONTENT

If you have ever found yourself on the periphery, outside of dominant narratives and nuclear-ish families, you will have passed through a period of emptiness wherein the material of  your life was not 'suitable' for any of the things around you.  Meaning: no outlet or form of communication existed to convey your experience, and so the experience remained caught inside you, seething.  Without external channels to link to there's no way to transmit your information, so the internal landscape deactivates.  It shuts down and remains inaccessible, since no actions or language can scrape away at it.  Since you are, in fact, on your own.

The only recourse then is culture.  Instead of one's experience, songs, podcasts, and TikToks are transformed into a shorthand for particular emotions or situations.  At certain points in my life, if you asked me how I was I would have only been able to respond with data.  I could summarize the latest Game of Thrones episode, or recite the anecdote about Esther's dollar bill from This American Life.  I could tell you about the New Yorker story of red honeybees and the 'maraschino mogul,' but I would not be able to answer even the simplest question about myself because I had nothing inside.  I felt like a ghost and quite often when I entered a room I felt people pull away from me as if suddenly encountering a cold front.  Maybe this fetishizes or romanticizes the situation, puts a metaphor on a state of being that quite possibly doesn't deserve one, but how do we talk about pain in a world full of pain?  We can't.  We don't even try.  We talk about culture instead.  That's why it spreads.

  

Let's hope this message finds its audience.

PS

I might have given you this one, instead:

OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK

If life has ever scraped you out and left you with no prospects, you can use art as a coping mechanism.  You can apply it to your day-to-day.  Take its content or its forms and use them to patch in what's missing.  Take a fictional premise, maybe even a genre, and adapt it to your situation.  See what happens.

 

My Black Sedan

 

Notebook Page: Addendum- a thing added or to be added, ca. 1968.  Eva Hesse.

Dear People,

If you are 'my people' you will know exactly what I mean, and maybe you don't even need to read this letter, but, if you are anyone else, you will want to hop into my Black Sedan, and let me tell you about the things I have been reading.  It is all memoir and auto fiction for me at this location in the mapping of my present via a fitful and clumsy reviewing of my past (revisionist history?).  Okay, you can call it the same old existential crisis, but I think maybe it is just living.  In any case, I am waiting for the leaves to fall, like I do, and I am reading all these great women writing their experience of living.  The thing that is so wonderful is that it feels like home; like a mirror; like this mirror.  

Maybe all we can ever have is reflections, but these images feel close to what I think could be true.  Jenny Erpenbeck says "...we want to write because we find it hard to make ourselves understood.  Because we find that things fall by the wayside when we speak."  Sing it, sister!  My wayside is littered with the things I meant to say and the questions I wanted to ask.  Like this one:  What, then, do I do instead of trying to get people to like me?  Or this one;  Why did you keep on giving me all that false hope? 

Claire Dederer writes that you find yourself "...flying the flag of idleness and melancholy.  You find yourself not just wanting to do nothing but somehow needing to do nothing.  Maybe a woman's version of a midlife crisis involves stopping doing stuff?"  And haven't we said things that amount to this to each other nearly every time we meet?  Déjà vu!*

Which, because I am reading also Biography of X, brings me to the notion of conviction in making art.  I have often found intention to matter, to be required for making art, but I am ready to let conviction be the one that got away.  I wish someone had told me it was fine to let ambivalence be my muse, but, let's not cry over that spilled milk, let us instead assert that ambivalence is just the ticket for art making, and even for living.  My years of desperately seeking conviction should not be your story; maybe you will want to tell a story that goes like this:

One fine Spring day I set out to make my way in the world, and I met many strange and wonderful beings along the way, and I hoped they would like me, but I also knew it was okay if they didn't.  I could give them things, little trinkets I found, an acorn cap, or a stone, and it was only just that: a giving that neither made or unmade me; their acquisition was not my diminishment.  The little things they might give me, magic passwords and permissions, well I was free to use them as long as I liked, but also free to discard them if they began to feel confining.  The continuing exchange of ideas and words and deeds was the main thing, the quest was just sort of there so if any dolts should ask you what you were doing, you could answer that you were seeking the fair princess imprisoned in her turret.

  

*  Olivia Rodrigo is another of the real, non-animated Disney Princesses, like Annette Funicello, Selena Gomez, Zendaya, Demi Levato, Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, etc.  

Notes:  Erpenbeck, Jenny.  Not a Novel- A Memoir in Pieces, New Directions, New York, page 143.                    Dederer, Claire, Love and Trouble- A Midlife Reckoning, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, page 9. 

 

Kairosis: or, Another Exhortation!

 

Colette is very photogenic!

Dear Ones, 

Oh!  I want to read this to you, sitting very close; I want to be the one to show this thing of beauty, but, but it won't be intimate enough, you or I will feel clumsy, or unsure, and then it will just be another pile of words. You must read it alone; you must be awed by it and face the wonder alone.

My dearest literary love (at this moment, because I reserve the right to change my paramour parameters) is the memoir-ish sound of womens' voices.  This one, and this one, and this one, this one, this one, and oh!  Claire-Louise Bennett most of all right now.  I hadn't near enough of these kind of voices when I was younger- I had a few, to be sure, Ursula LeGuin, Madeleine L'Engle come to mind, Jeannette Winterson: but now, well, now my shelves are overflowing with good guidance and the words of my people.   

Don't leave me waxing and gushing, hyperbol-izing, and superlative-ating all over the place; please, if you have ever done a thing (which was hopefully to read Helen DeWitt!) will you now, please, also do this one thing, too???  Pond, Pond, POND!!  

PS  More wonderful women writers that might lead you to a "moment of psychological integration in time:" 

Annie Ernaux

Colette

Jenny Erpenbeck

Sheila Heti

Lauren Groff

bell hooks

Carrie Brownstein

Patti Smith

Tove Jansson

Kelly Link

Annie Dillard

Lydia Yukanvitch

Sandra Sisneros

Amy Sillman

Rumor Godden

PPS  Now, maybe, maybe you have finished it, and you want a little more about it, and in that case, but no sooner, you may want to read this.  But, do not read it before you read Pond!

PPPS  Okay, well, since you asked, I love it because I don't think that I am using my first language, either, but if I were, if I could, it would sound just exactly like Pond.  Also:  

There was a storm, an old storm, going around and around the mountain, visiting the mountain again perhaps after who knows how long, trying to get somewhere, going nowhere.

Where it would immediately alight upon the dreadful contents therein and deliver the entire catalogue to those parts of the imagination that will gladly make a lurid potion from goose fat and unrefined sea salt. 

 

Not a metaphor, nothing like that- I'd never want the monster to stand for something, that's for sure.

As if making the world smaller because of all the intact explanations that need to occur in order for one thing to become another thing. 

It's a devil to know what to take seriously.

And didn't I immediately discover that melancholia brought something out in me that felt more authentic and effortless than anything I'd previously alchemized. 

It's been watching me all along, all my life, coming and going- and I don't know what it sees as it stands there, I don't know that it is not in fact becoming a little afraid of me- and I have to be doubly careful I think, not to frighten it away, because between you and me I can't be at all sure where it is I'd be without it. 

 

 

 

jumping out

 

Dear Looking for a Good Time,

Oooh, I found another one!  A sentence that leaps off the page and smacks you down flat with utter veracity and solid groove resonance.  Here it is, from Sido, by Colette.  

Her house resembled her in its untidiness and shared with her a grace denied to orderly places and people.

 

This is a description that I feel I am already partly embodying, and I intend to strive even harder than ever for disorderly grace.  Although, something tells me maybe striving isn't the way to arrive at it?  Maybe what I mean is I will remove all impediments to slumping ever further towards such a grace.  A kind of wilting, maybe?  

And you know, if you are going to read Sido, and I hope very much that you will, you might as well also read My Mother's House.  In the copy I read, they were very comfortably together.  I can't wait til there is a new translation, so I can read them again!  Or maybe, I will try to clobber through them in French, with my long ago college language classes and a really big dictionary.

the page

 

Dear Reader,

Sometimes I think about why we read; why I read; why one would read.  The other place, yes, of course- the destination that is not here.  The other voices, the new landscapes.  So, for variety, yes, and sometimes to be validated, and a lot of reading I think might be to increase one's status.  This is eggshell territory, I know- I am suggesting, very, very faintly, that we read to show off.  Why faintly?  Because I think on balance, it is a very minor infraction, showing off our intellects to other readers who are busy showing off their intellects.  I mention it only because I think back on my days, and I want to redact some of my show off statements.  I have regrets about throwing my intellectual weight around.  Don't you worry, though, I am still telling myself I am a paragon of well readness, an empress of big words and complex ideas; I am just hoping, at this point, not to sound like one.  

And what of the less public reasons we might read?  The personal, the private reasons; the reasons we don't tell everyone.  The things we maybe don't say on our media platforms.  We read for greater understanding, which might come under validation.  We read to be comforted, I reckon, and that seems okay to me.  I suggest another category, that we might call 'joyful surprise.'  This is that great feeling where a sentence just yells out at you, flashing its poetic lights and sirens all over the page.  This is a reason to read that can make you run and tell someone else about what you read, except you aren't showing off, you are excited and you actually want to share it; like a really great watermelon, or a cake:  "Hey, you have to try this!  It is so delicious!"

Yes, I am taking the usual scenic route: this is the sentence I want to slice into cold, juicy triangles and give to you today:  "She went looking for Brandon's Memorabilia (a place one of her artist friends told her about) to load up on antique paper angels and fold-out valentines and other useless tendernesses."  Eve Babitz, in Sex and Rage, page 196- in case you want to run out to your library and read immediately for yourself, the beautiful, exquisite phrase: useless tendernesses.

When I read it, useless tendernesses, I was stopped cold.  It all came to a swirling, gyrating center: of course!  It is all useless tendernesses!  My whole purpose in life, my time here, the reason for doing anything!  Useless tendernesses; all my paintings will be titled this from now on!  I will get a tattoo:  Useless Tendernesses!  I will get two: on both arms, reading right and left, and mirror-wise, so I can see it too.  The whole book could have been just blah blah blah printed endlessly, if there was a prize like this in the box!*

You might think, here, mistakenly, that I am being sardonic, or glib, or some damned thing, but what I am meaning is, yes, useless tendernesses, but not, not, not that tenderness is useless.  The whole point is tenderness is maybe all we can try for, useless and all, useless especially.

*  Of course it is a wonderful book, and not at all endless blah blah blah.

PS  I had another photo I was choosing between to lede/lead here.  It was a photo of book spines on my shelf- some read, some to be read, including Sex and Rage, but it felt a little show-offy, in a way that the sloppy stitch work on my denim shirt did not.

a million

 

Untitled (Tools), Jim Dine, lithograph, 2008.

Dear Opposable Thumbs,

There is a large stack of books where I work; it's all detritus, really, and it doesn't belong to anyone, so even the spines don't get a glance.  The world would be a better place if some of them were never looked at, but a few of them could be useful to raise up a too low television set, or to chock up a short leg on a table.  Thinking larger now, perhaps combined into a solid stack of 'how to' art books, maybe painted, in say palest pink?  Illustrated on the outside with delicate red handwriting and gentle blossoms?  

Well, you know when someone says to me, "good idea," I always respond "I have a million of them!"  And you do too, which puts me in mind of a little spontaneous poem a fellow* sent me in an email.  You know how messages and letters can generate these kinds of things- a person says this, another replies that, all that thoughtful responding suddenly leaps, jumps beyond quotidian communication and becomes a gleaming poem:

Tools for the soul, or is it, a soul full of tools?

Always measuring, always fixing.  

*Thank you, D. Prochaska, for the poem!

sense comma common

 

Dear Friends to Whom I May Owe a Lifelong Apology,

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the library the other day; I noticed, thinking about an article I'd read on a study they'd done that proved no one had an innate 'sense' of direction, for the first time, that I was a veritable fount of trivial information.  Beyond just trivial, out-moded, even disproved knowledge.  Possibly even false-at-this-point-in-time information.

I had thought, in the years gathering this knowledge, that it was what we were supposed to do, as humans: we were to collect, learn, gather as much info about ourselves and our environs as possible (role model:  Mr. Spock?).  I also thought it might come in handy 'someday.'  This, of course, is sublimely silly, and not just because we carry pocket computers all day everyday.  The silliness is well illuminated in something I read in Stanislaw Lem's Mortal Engines:  The Pygmelliants, Hoarders of the Absolute, "...collect knowledge, but never use it"...which is how they remain unparalleledly wise.

The deployment of all this (trivial) information may not be wise, even if it could be described as learnèd.  Which simply means all the things that I know, the things I am forgetting, are just as well forgotten.  (Ah, sharp readers, yes, another circle!)  Having the sense to know when to tell it and when not to is something I should have been honing as I collected all this stuff (which, sadly, can't just be sold on Ebay).  

What I propose to do now, is to apologize for giving this information out, here and there, now and then, all along:  Opps, my bad!  No one likes a know-it-all anyway, and that's not trivial knowledge, that is a kind of truism, that we all know somehow.  Until the next gaffe, be well!

PS

Affirmative, you should read it; it makes your mind better and your writing sweeter, and it never needs winding.

at last

 

    Helen DeWitt's library.

Dear Readers,

At long last, I have found who I want to be; whom I would be, if I had a photographic memory, command of several languages, a huge library of read books, and a really big brain:  Helen DeWitt.  Oh, yes, you will want to be her, too!

I am going to be studying her hard.  What does she wear, what does she do, and, of course, I will read all her books and writings.  Because I Am a Fan.  Which reminds me of Carrie Brownstein's book, which you should read in between Helen DeWitt titles.  You should also take a minute and see what you think of Olivia Rodrigo.  (Because, if, you know, godforbid, I should fail at being Helen DeWitt, and I stumble at being Carrie Brownstein too, well, hotdamn, I still have Olivia to try for!). 

Until next time, I will be continuing to consider How to Become What I Want to Be. 

PS

Massive thanks to dear friend M, for giving me Some Trick sometime ago!

bread

 

Dear Toast,

You are the best:  with cheese, you are dinner; with jam, you are dessert!  Of course, without butter, you aren't much; but you lead a double life under olive oil that is just as wonderful.

I begin today with bread, because I decided to begin my day that way, with bread.  If consequences were cosmos, I'd eat bread every day, at all meals, and I would have a room full of flowers!* 

I am all fired up on bread and words, because I am reading a lovely little book, a memoir that ignites my passion for the messy life we lead:  Cary Grant's Suit.

Yes, I did say no more OWMW (ow-mao), but, this guy!  I tell you, he's worth the transgression.  But, I am not here today, to tell you to eat bread with all its charms, or to read old white men, with all their charms, I am here today, to say to all and sundry, that I feel very sad when I think of all the Things I Have Done in the Name of Self Loathing.  

But, yes, this is all in the past; except, it isn't it, is it?  I don't know that you could have convinced me that my actions were motivated by self-hatred.  Because, you see, people that are terrible (like me) deserve all their punishment, and they don't ever get enough, and so they give it to themselves.  Yes, this reasoning and sentence are head-ache inducing, certainly, but that is all part of the verdict, sentence, punishment.  Which means, probably that my current self-loathing is extra clever and totally invisible to me, just like the old kludgy stuff was.  Which means, that I will ask you, I will beg you not to do as I have done, but that I also understand, accept, and love you anyway, even if you can't stop doing the things you do to hate yourself.

*  Or pink martinis!

Winter scene.