Twirl, Roll

Spotted at the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh, phenakistascope disks, which started the aforementioned obsession with moving pictures and scopes and tropes of all sorts. Also, a bag of clay marbles. I would like to have one of these to roll between my fingers while I think. (Cat-eye marbles give me the creeps.)

Thaumatrope, Valenthyme

One last swap post, and then I promise to be through.



From marvelous Lily, I received sweet-smelling, fresh valenthyme and valenrosemary from her very own garden (!) along with a heady bar of lemon geranium valensoap from Saipua. These were packaged alongside the most perfecty card of all time (one for me to pass on, no less!), stamped and wondering: "Will Ewe Be Mine?" All told, an herbaceous, sweet-smelling valentine, one that allowed me to glimpse warmer weather, to sit at my desk in cold New York and stand in a desert garden, running my fingers through bundles of herbs. Many thanks, Lily.



To Amanda at Bird for Bread, I packed up a set of thaumatrope cards. I've been a little obsessed with these toys since visiting the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh, and it seemed about time to track some down and spread them about. In the vein of magical toys, a tiny fortune-telling fish headed Amanda's way as well, along with a big batch of hand-cut felt hearts ("Take heart, Valentine"). You can see more at Bird for Bread.



Thanks again, all. xoxo

Flight Map, With Fowl

Jamie is one of my favorite blog girls. She cuts paper and thinks in maps and lives in a desert scape of branches and motorcycles and furry friends and nowls. Her designs are unique and her photos beautiful. And when she wrote last week during the swap, saying "You know flight path diagrams?!" and explained how she pictured "all those little packages like a flight diagram," and said that she would MAKE ONE for FIRST MILK, for the SWAP, I had to grab something heavy so as not to float away.

You can see the results of her lovely, detail-oriented designer's heart above. Valentine-carrying fowl, delivering love from one blogger to another to another to another all week. (Click to make it big and fabulous.)

Over and over again, I am amazed by the far reach of the Internet. I am amazed that something tiny like my wanting to live in a world where Valentine's Day doesn't suck results in so many pairs of hands packing up a bit of tangible love to send across the distance, nurturing community by post. In Jamie making a collective diagram of our tenuous, strong web. Thanks to each of you for helping me live in a world where Valentine's Day doesn't suck. And thanks to Jamie for having the sorts of eyes that see it so perfectly, render it in such clear terms.

Around the Internets, a few posts from swap participants, if you're interested in such things. I'll add to the list as time allows and as swap posts appear this week. For peeking, Peonies and Polaroids (sent, received); Life According to Celia (sent, received); A Desert Fete; Heart of Light; Privilege; The Avid Reader's Musings; kidchamp.net (sent, received); BigBANG Studio; Heart of Light; Dog-Eared; Bird for Bread (sent, received); A Girl's World; With Honey, Please; Hat and Feathers; Spirographs and Flying Fish; The Bee and the Bobbin; The Domestic Empress; Doux; That Cardboard Box (sent, received); Poppycock and Sunshine; bigger, better, best; first milk.

Feathers, Hearts

Many thanks to each of you for your kind birfday comments this week. It ended up being a lovely one, all told. One full of very large marshmallows and a snowstorm and a narwhal and an accordion and red balloons for days.

Swap valentines are winging their way across the world. I can hear them fluttering, like heart-eyed nowls. I'm already hearing reports of some received and torn into and delighted in. This is good news. For those of you who participated, many thanks for doing so. I'll post a swappy round-up next week.

Finally. I cut out a lot of felt hearts around Valentine's Day. It's just something I do. Here are some for you, dear reader. Pretend they're in a little envelope slid beneath your door. xo

In Which Snowmen Gather

I left my desk several times today, donning layers of grey and stepping into slush past my ankles en route to one park or another. By dusk, snow creatures stood every five, every twenty, every four feet, snow arms in snow pockets, grand, swooping hats pieced from discarded saucer sleds and broken branches. Once the hands that might theoretically have formed them had been dragged home, been scolded for going mittenless, it was as though each snowman had simply gathered his bearings and risen up from the snow sometime around two-thirty, brushing himself off, as snowmen do, and findng a satisfying vantage point for himself not too near the others. Perhaps where to wait and wonder after his pipe. No one much was around but the village of silent snowmen and a few overtired, pelted littles. And chatty, annoying lovers with too-bright camera flashes blinding self-made snowmen's button eyes.

Birfdays, Tea

Today is my birfday.
I'm going to wear a dab of perfume and have a tea party just with me.
Maybe I will buy some pink lilies.
Maybe someone will bring me a balloon.

A big red one.

On Staying

Snow being dense and thick and covering of the place I was to go this weekend, I did not go. Sometimes it is worrisome to go, dear reader, even when one's bag is already packed. Particularly over many bridges on a bus in thick, silent snow. Nobody wants to die on a bus is what I am saying. Sometimes it is important to stay.

When staying, it is sometimes important to wear one's pajamas the whole weekend through. (Long coats and tall boots cover pajamas. Hats cloak oily curls.) When everyone already thinks one is out of town, one can do as one pleases. Taking to one's bed with scissors and glue and red felt, for example. Taking to bed with good coffee and Cary Grant and a good, thick book. Searching drugstores for brown polish and holding three polishes in one's hand like jewels, deliberating. In painting one's toenails a downy, minky brown--the brown lavender would be if lavender had thought to be brown. In standing on a pier until the cold winter wind blows tears out your eyes. Sometimes it is important to stay, to hide. To consider What Is to Come.

And when the people call and the people say "WhereareyouWhatareyoudoingWhenwillyoubedone," sometimes it is important to say, "I'm not telling. I'm not telling you or anybody." And then to go back to bed.

Hoard, Keep: Laundry Pegs

For holding things up or together, for wrapping twine around, a bouquet of wooden laundry pegs, received from a friend last week. Sometimes friends just know these things.

Swappers, please postmark by tomorrow.

Happy weekend, all.

Wednesday Words: Cardboard, Window

Dialogue from Away We Go. Because some things take time. Some things take even more time than we think maybe they should take.

V: Burt, are we fuck-ups?
B: No. What do you mean?
V: I mean we’re 34,
B: I’m 33.
V: And we don’t even have this basic stuff figured out.
B: Basic like how?
V: Basic. Like how to live.
B: We’re not fuck-ups.
V: We have a cardboard window.
B: We’re not fuck-ups.
V: (Whispered) I think we might be fuck-ups.
B: (Whispered) We’re not fuck-ups.

Poet, Pus

Granted, I’m off today. I keep a good neurotic’s calendar, and it’s three years, to the day, since Seymour killed himself. Did I ever tell you what happened when I went down to Florida to bring back the body? I wept like a slob on the plane for five solid hours. Carefully adjusting my veil from time to time so that no one across the aisle could see me—I had a seat to myself, thank God. About five minutes before the plane landed, I became aware of people talking in the seat behind me. A woman was saying, with all of Back Bay Boston and most of Harvard Square in her voice, "...and the next morning, mind you, they took a pint of pus out of that lovely young body of hers." That’s all I remember hearing, but when I got off the plane a few minutes later and the Bereaved Widow came toward me all in Bergdorf Goodman black, I had the Wrong Expression on my face. I was grinning. Which is exactly the way I feel today, for no really good reason. Against my better judgment, I feel certain that somewhere very near here--the first house down the road, maybe--there’s a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody’s having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can’t be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.

J.D. Salinger, Zooey

Swap, Cont'd

Swappers should have received a swaplet this weekend. If you haven't received one, please shoot me an e-mail straightaway. I've received many kind e-mails from folks putting their packages together, and I'm glad you're all so excited. Happy hearting to you, to you.