You Wake Up in the Morning
You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the magic tissue of the universe of your life. No one can take it from you. No one receives either more or less than you receive. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt. You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you.
-Arnold Bennett
Luc Lavenseau. Rêve de voyage
What My Mother Says
My mother says kissing a man without a mustache is like eating eggs without salt.
Which is a better way of saying — take the scenic route. Say I love you when it’s true. Drive 12 hours just to touch. Buy kumquats because they’re called kumquats. Call someone you love a little kumquat. Write letters. Recite poems. Be verklempt. Rise early to hunt the moon. Eat pastries whose names you can’t pronounce. Astonish everyone. Haunt everything. Sing, even if poorly. Press the peel for zest. We’re nothing but brief bodies. Hearts, fragile as parakeets. Spit, lips, and longing. All we’ve got is this skin. This necessary salt.
- Joy Sullivan
Why I Am Magic by Nikita Gill
There are days
I have been the thirst
and days
when I have been the water
but the days
I love myself most
are the days I am both.
A Day at The Met
1 - The Eternally Obvious, René Margritte
2 - Family admiring Jackson Pollock, taken by Sophia Mucha
3 - The Guiding Light, Harold Ancart
4 - Reflecting pool, Temple of Dendur
5 - The Roof Garden, Petrit Halilaj
Letter to N.Y.
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
- Elizabeth Bishop
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Fun for the sake of fun.
Carol Burnett photographed by YELENA YEMCHUK
“So much of comedy today is about making the audience cringe. Carol Burnett still believes it should make you feel good.” This is such a great article about a living legend!
Which sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole. Remember this episode?
Joan Didion Won a Free Trip to Paris
circa 1956. Her essay was on San Francisco architect William Wurster.
5 fun things
Iris A[fel, 1921 - 2024
A lovely tribute to Iris Apfel, the 102-year old style icon.
This is so beautiful: A Love Letter to all the mothers in the Children’s Hospital ER.
I loved this podcast: How to develop your own taste.
The inspirational moodboard for my upcoming headshot photoshoot.
Keanu Reeves in Paris. You’re welcome.
"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."
Betye Saar, Amid Hallucinatory Moons1962
Lately I’ve been thinking about personal taste - knowing it, changing it and the extent to which we care about how others view it. In her 1966 essay Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag advocates for a more sensual and immediate appreciation of art rather than an overly analytical and interpretive approach. She argues that the intellectualization of art acts as a sort of violence against the artwork’s intrinsic qualities.
I agree, but what of appreciating, but disliking? Or not appreciating but wanting to?
July Waterfall, Pat Steir 1991
A weekend in Devon
I’m getting to the age where I’m starting to think that someday I might be interested in learning to identify types of trees, flowers and birds.
Not yet though. Mostly I just tried not to step in poop as we walked through the countryside where rolling hills and small farms went on and on for as far as the eye can see… It was truly a gorgeous walk - but the American in me will never get used to wandering through fields and farms without worrying about getting shot.
The Right to Roam is an ancient custom that allows anyone to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned.
Americans, can you even imagine???
We also took a long walk along the beach where we collected seashells and traded stories…
And now for a taste of Paris: Augusta Sagnelli
Photograph by Augusta Sagnelli, via Samuel Lopez-Barrantes on Substack
Self Portraits: Augusta Sagnelli
Augusta Sagnelli via Baby Blue, Substack
Augusta Sagnelli via Baby Blue, Substack
Find her here: Augusta Sagnelli
And her partner/writer, Samuel Lopez-Barrantes
To the woman I met, whose child is in crisis
You are not alone.
https://www.craftliterary.com/2024/02/14/novel-map-hannah-grieco/
Hinke Schreuders
On Voice
via The Josh Shop on Etsy
“Phoebe Ephron once told her daughter to write as if she were mailing a letter, ‘then, tear off the salutation’; this advice, combined with Ephron’s observational prowess, forged her signature voice.”
—The New Yorker, “The Nora Ephron We Forget”
At Breakfast
"At Breakfast" was created in 1898 by the Danish painter Laurits Andersen Ring. The painting is subtly groundbreaking, as it portrays his wife deeply engrossed in the traditionally male domain of reading about politics in the newspaper.
Stuart Little and The Littles
Herewith an unfinished MS of a book called Stuart Little. It would seem to be for children, but I’m not fussy who reads it. You said you wanted to look at this, so I am presenting it thus in its incomplete state. There are about ten or twelve thousand words so far, roughly.
You will be shocked and grieved to discover that the principal character in the story has somewhat the attributes and appearance of a mouse. This does not mean that I am either challenging or denying Mr. Disney’s genius. At the risk of seeming a very whimsical fellow indeed, I will have to break down and confess to you that Stuart Little appeared to me in dream, all complete, with his hat, his cane, and his brisk manner. Since he was the only fictional figure ever to honor and disturb my sleep, I was deeply touched, and felt that I was not free to change him into a grasshopper or a wallaby. Luckily he bears no resemblance, either physically or temperamentally, to Mickey. I guess that’s a break for all of us.
E. B. White
Letter to his editor, Eugene Saxton
1st March 1939
Curator credit: Letters of Note by Shaun Usher
I loved this book - but it’s not to be confused with The Littles TV show… do you remember? Now I can’t get this song out of my head.
