roses to deaden the clods as they fall

 

Dear All,

I have seen some things these first few weeks of the new year;  it starts to form an image, a collage, a map?  Well, how we use it is maybe not all that important.  

Last year was the year of Take it All Away; and yes, there is still plenty to haul off, but it was a start, ending with speaking aloud the ugly shadow side of caring deeply, passionately for objects: beings often come second.  It happens slowly, I think.  The objects are so patient, so good, so reflective of our wishes, our selves.  They would never misbehave, they would never talk too much, or say the wrong thing, they are never too loud, their innocence is pure, their value is limitless, as long as we keep beings from damaging them, questioning them, toppling them.  Having them adds to our greatness, increasing our mass.

But back to this very tiny, very small, nearly formless object, that you can keep in your back pocket or say unto the winds, this collage of the present:

A beautiful copy of The Rings of Saturn on the table in the sunlight at a woman's home.  A blue filled with grey tree branches that climb the sky.  A greening under the old washed, worn stubble.  An ice sheet on the birdbath.  Pages that describe Sido, and the daughter, Colette.  Near perfect shortbread fingers.  Ruby Tandoh on Cadbury eggs.  Chicken leg confit, because duck is so dear.  Waves, both blue and brown.  A pelisse, whatever it might be, because I have forgotten it already.  Like the phrase for this year:  A concourse of events?  No; an accordance of occasions?  A surcease of importance?  A confluence of  concerns?  I look it up, again and again:

The year of the "acausal connecting principle."  Something Carl Jung wrote, and I read somewhere in the recent flurries of pages; maybe the book on Los Angeles architecture?  Inciting Joy?  Not the book about the Shaker boy and his pig, not Carrie Fisher... well, that connection is gone too, but connections are like that; here today, gone the next.  I still want them, if only to deaden the clods as they fall.

It's the all of a piece, you know?  The reading, the writing, the voices, the thinking, the seeing, the making, the wondering, the glimpsing, the listening, the stitching, the drawing, the remembering.  They all go together, joined for a time by the temporary glue of the acausal connecting principle.

two

 

Memory Den

Dear Radio Dodo Fans,

Get up and change the station if you don't want these two great songs:  One, two.  

PS  Another place you can go, while the two songs play.

by the sea

 

pure pop for now people

 

confetti pop instructions

a place to buy them readymade

Dear Today,

Listen to these, today, an eight song set of Nick Lowe:

Refrigerator White.

Breakaway.

Without Love.

Ba Doom.

The Rose of England.

Wish You Were Here.

Big Big Love.

(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass.

Radio Dodo

 

Maybe you'll hear these songs being broadcast from this 1 mw Supertower.

Dear Motorheads,

I have your song for the day!  I think you are really going to love it; my DJ played it for me, and I had never heard it before, which is always like finding coins in the couch cushions or a $20 in a coat pocket.  You will recall the last hidden treasure we had here, the Pointer Sisters doing Steely Dan.  Oh, and you know, there is another, gorgeous, take flight with me now, cover of a Steely Dan song:  spread your wings!

Old Year's Day.

 

 Selene Santucci.

Dear Time,

What a drag you can be, with your damn thresholds between the day and the night, the month, the year.  I am tired of you, even as I try to mark and honor you.  Well, what have you done for me, eh?  Yes, let's not and say we did, this New Year's.  There's not enough champagne in the world to make it a party anyway.

I think, what I will say, in truth, and with a minimum of resentment, is so long, it's been good to know you.

I learned everything I know about saying The Long Goodbye from singers and songwriters.  You can learn it too, in easy, online lessons.  Here are your course materials for Goodbye 101.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

think about direction

 

Dear World,

It's time, I think, the time that I said would come, when the string of pearls first broke.  The time I said would be looked back on, would be seen from a far distance forwards, but looking back.  (Stand in the place where you are).  

What is here, now?  I feel it, the presence of the huge impact of the Pandemic, but, I look around, standing in the place where I live, and I see that we don't talk about it.  (We have turned away?)  The emptiness, the slowness, the worry and the fear, the honesty.  I don't think they have exactly gone away.  I think they may be there, here, like huge thundercloud ghosts, ready, (raw, open, bleeding) to break open on some little party, some small hope.

I proceed now, cautiously.  Not only because of fear, that's the thing I wanted to tell you:  It's also because I liked the pure sharp edges of those days.  The rarefied air of loss and longing was like the thin atmosphere of a high peak- like, a smallness within a bigness, like an exposure to the elements and suffering and hope, too, that was so immediate.  It was just so much 'less' of everything.  

I believe that is why I have wanted to empty my living spaces; cupboards, drawers, closets, boxes, chests.  I want some empty space made for that high-pitched purity of purpose.  Very little of "You Should" crossed my mind then.  It was a vacation away from You Should, I think, because You Couldn't and maybe that is what I miss.