first milk

Winter's Midnight, the Cold's Deepest Plunge

2011-12-27T08:10:00.000-05:00

At the winter's midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the basalm and
the hemlock for their green

At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold's
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees

to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons

we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the

mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they

were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We

stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log's smoldering eye, opening
red and closing under them

and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we

did not say so) a challenge
above the snow's
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where

small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down

the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow--Transformed!

William Carlos Williams, from "Burning the Christmas Greens," 1944

The Incomprehensible Powers of Winter

2011-12-25T12:07:00.003-05:00

They carried the fir tree out in the garden and planted it firmly in the snow. Then they started to decorate it all over with the most beautiful things they could think up.

They adorned it with the big shells from the summertime flower-beds, and with the Snork Maiden's shell necklace. They took the prisms from the drawing-room chandelier and hung them from the branches, and at the very top they pinned a red silk rose that Moominpappa had once upon a time given Moominmamma as a present.

Everybody brought the most beautiful thing he had to placate the incomprehensible powers of winter.

Tove Jansson, from Tales From Moominvalley, 1962
Translated by Thomas Warburton

The Eiderdown Was Blue

2011-11-10T09:20:00.002-05:00

The eiderdown was blue. Moominmamma had collected the down for six years and now the eiderdown lay in the guest room facing south inside its cover of crocheted lace waiting for someone to be comfortable. Mymble decided to have a hot-water bottle at her feet, she knew where they were kept in this house. She would wash her hair in rainwater every fifth day. She would take a little nap at dusk. In the evening the kitchen would be warm from the cooking.

You can lie on a bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, wade through a swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.

Tove Jansson, from Moominvalley in November, 1971
Translated by Kingsley Hart

In Which We Hide

2011-10-09T16:30:00.002-04:00

The most important part of a tent is the stars.

Peppermints, Hives

2011-09-13T10:19:00.000-04:00

"Look what I have for you," Mr. Poe said, grinning from ear to ear and holding out a small paper bag. "Peppermints!" Mr. Poe was a banker who had been placed in charge of handling the affairs of the Baudelaire orphans after their parents died. Mr. Poe was kindhearted, but it is not enough in this world to be kindhearted, particularly if you are responsible for keeping children out of danger. Mr. Poe had known the three children since they were born, and could never remember that they were allergic to peppermints.

Lemony Snicket, from The Wide Window, 2000

Pencil Boxes, Peppermint Creams

2011-09-12T08:47:00.000-04:00

Next morning Aunt Edith went off by the eight-thirty train. The children's school satchels were filled, not with books, but with buns; instead of exercise-books there were sandwiches; and in the place of inky pencil-boxes were two magnificent boxes of peppermint creams which had cost a whole shilling each, and had been recklessly bought by Aunt Edith in the agitation of the parting hour when they saw her off at the station.

E. Nesbit, from The House of Arden, 1908

Red-Streaked, Small Sweet Yellow

2011-09-09T08:57:00.000-04:00

The others waited in the shadows of a deep-banked lane, and he came back, quite soon, though long after they had begun to say what a long time he had been gone. He brought some Barcelona nuts, red-streaked apples, small sweet yellow pears, pale pasty gingerbread, a whole quarter of a pound of peppermint bullseyes, and two bottles of ginger-beer.

E. Nesbit, The Enchanted Castle, 1907

(Those Nesbit children picnic like mad.)

A Ruinous Thirst

2011-09-08T08:36:00.002-04:00

"Have you any sarsaparilla in your store?" asked Stuart. "I've got a ruinous thirst."

"Certainly," said the storekeeper. "Gallons of it. Sarsaparilla, root beer, birch beer, ginger ale, Moxie, lemon soda, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Dipsi Cola, Pipsi Cola, Popsi Cola, and raspberry cream tonic. Anything you want."

"Let me have a bottle of sarsaparilla, please," said Stuart, "and a paper cup."

E.B. White, from Stuart Little, 1945

A Small Glass of Ginger Ale

2011-09-07T08:20:00.000-04:00

Franny suddently put out her cigarette in the tiny ashtray--with some awkwardness, not having her second hand free to brace the ashtray. "You know what else he said to me?" she said. "You know what he swore up and down to me? He told me last night he once had a glass of ginger ale with Jesus in the kitchen when he was eight years old. Are you listening?"

"I'm listening, I'm listening...sweetheart."

"He said he was--this is exactly what he said--he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading "Dombey and Son," and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you--that's exactly what he said."

J.D. Salinger, from Zooey, 1957

The Little Thick Glass

2011-09-06T09:34:00.004-04:00

And then in a stricken silence they all remembered that the basket with the dinner had been left at the entrance of the cave. Their thoughts dwelt fondly on the slices of cold mutton, the six tomatoes, the bread and butter, the screwed-up paper of salt, the apple turnovers, and the little thick glass that one drank the ginger-beer out of.

E. Nesbit, from The Enchanted Castle, 1907

The World Is Open, The Store Is Closed

2011-09-05T14:51:00.001-04:00

On the last August evening of the final summer of my twenties, I sat in Prospect Park and waited for the bats. A man played the banjo and whistled and sang as men do in parks in Brooklyn in evenings toward the end of August. "The world is open," he sang. "The store is closed." The hard green acorns already scattered beneath the trees. All the ladies wore kerchiefs. Girls soccer had begun.

The bats arrived much later than they normally do--those Northeastern bats, all pointed behinds and cartoon wings. Mosquitoes sucked at my toes and ankles and wrists. I twisted the thick, late grass between my fingers, ate an apple or didn't. For reasons passing my understanding, I was ill at ease. I stood up, dusted myself off, and walked home.

Danger, A Nice Picnic

2011-09-02T12:34:00.002-04:00

Moominmamma stared at the black pool with a look of extreme disapproval on her face.

"I think," she said, "that this is the right moment for us all to go on a nice picnic."

And she went straight back to the lighthouse and started to pack.

When she had got everything together that they would need for a picnic, she opened the window and started to bang the gong. She watched them all running toward the lighthouse, and did not feel the slightest bit guilty, although she knew that the gong was supposed to be used only in cases of extreme urgency. [...]

"Keep quite calm!" she cried. "There's no fire! We're going on a picnic as soon as we possibly can."

"A picnic?" exclaimed Moominpappa. "How could you bang the gong just for a picnic?"

"There's danger in the air," Moominmamma shouted back. "If we don't go for a picnic this very instant, anything might happen to us!

Tove Jansson (words and illustration), from Moominpappa at Sea, 1965
Translated by Kingsley Hart

The Month for Taking Great Care

2011-08-30T18:49:00.000-04:00

One afternoon at the end of August, Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being done by somebody else.

Moominpappa aimlessly pottered about in his garden, his tail dragging along the ground behind him in a melancholy way. Here, down in the valley, the heat was scorching; everything was still and silent, and not a little dusty. It was the month when there could be great forest fires, the month for taking great care.

Tove Jansson (words and illustration), from Moominpappa at Sea, 1965
Translated by Kingsley Hart

So Dangerous, So Sublime

2011-08-27T20:09:00.000-04:00

If ever she went back to England, she could now say to people, "I have been in an Earthquake."

With that certainty, her soused excitement began to revive. For there was nothing, no adventure from the hands of God or Man, to equal it. Realize that if she had suddenly found she could fly it would not have seemed more miraculous to her. Heaven had played its last, most terrible card; and small Emily had survived, where even grown men (such as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram) had succumbed.

Life seemed suddenly a little empty: for never again could there happen to her anything so dangerous, so sublime.

Richard Hughes, from A High Wind in Jamaica, 1929

Louder and Louder Every Moment

2011-08-27T15:14:00.000-04:00

There was a glare of lightning and a crash of thunder all in one, and after that for a long time the thunder and lightning came so close one after the other that no one knew which flash belonged to which clap of thunder. The camp was full of light and the rolling, crashing thunder overhead made things seem hurried, as if there was something that ought to be done but no time in which to do it. The lanterns were lit but, though they were bright in the short moments of darkness, they seemed to give no light at all in the glare of the lightning flashes.

It was dark again and suddenly quiet. It was as if the storm were holding its breath. Then there was a deep, rushing noise, far away, louder and louder every moment.

Arthur Ransome, from Swallows and Amazons, 1930

A Dark and Stormy Night

2011-08-27T14:58:00.001-04:00

Madeleine L'Engle, from A Wrinkle in Time, 1962

Summers, Hems

2011-08-10T14:40:00.000-04:00

The Outside Age Limit

2011-08-10T14:35:00.000-04:00

Once, a terrible number of years ago, when Seymour and I were eight and six, our parents gave a party for nearly sixty people in our three and a half rooms at the old Hotel Alamac, in New York. They were officially retiring from vaudeville, and it was an affecting as well as a celebrative occasion. We two were allowed to get out of bed around eleven or so, and come in and have a look. We had more than a look. By request, and with no objections whatever on our part, we danced, we sang, first singly, then together, as children of our station often do. But mostly we just stayed up and watched. Toward two in the morning, when the leavetakings began, Seymour begged Bessie--our mother--to let him bring the leavers their coats, which were hung, draped, tossed, piled all over the small apartment, even on the foot of our sleeping younger sister's bed. He and I knew about a dozen of the guests intimately, ten or so more by sight or reputation, and the rest not at all or hardly. We had been in bed, I should add, when everyone arrived. But from watching the guests for some three hours, from grinning at them, from, I think, loving them, Seymour--without asking any questions first--brought very nearly all the guests, one or two at a time, and without any mistakes, their own true coats, and all the men involved their hats. (The women's hats he had some trouble with.) Now, I don't necessarily suggest that this kind of feat is typical of the Chinese or Japanese poet, and certainly don't mean to imply that it makes him what he is. But I do think that if a Chinese or Japanese verse composer doesn't know whose coat is whose, on sight, his poetry stands a remarkably slim chance of ever ripening. And eight, I'd guess, is very nearly the outside age limit for mastering this small feat.

J.D. Salinger, from SEYMOUR--An Introduction

Ride All the Ferries

2011-08-03T22:43:00.001-04:00

It is a good idea. Ride them up, ride them down.

Robot, Tape

2011-08-02T19:26:00.000-04:00

For Poetry and the Little Things of Nature

2011-06-20T09:10:00.004-04:00

...every morning at nine I have to attend chapel with her and sit with her onstage in an academic cloak facing four hundred girls singing hymns amid the storm from the organ. I asked for mercy--saying that I am a heretic, that I detest any kind of singing and music--but she answered firmly, "Never mind, you'll love them here." In my honor they chose a prayer to thank God "for poetry and the little things of nature; for a train thundering in the night; for craftsmen and poets; for those who take delight in making things and who make them well"

Vladimir Nabokov in a letter to his wife, October 11, 1942
The New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011

Round, Around

2011-06-17T09:23:00.004-04:00

Self-presents round and bought: A brass bracelet, wound licorice, a pencil sharpener of some small heft and brightness, a pencil with which to rend ribbons, the smallest scoop.

Tiny projects finished, begun: Paper dolls cut 'round and dressed, geraniums potted, summer reading ever so earnestly tucked into.

The Maple Seeds Fall. Some Are Red.

2011-05-31T16:31:00.004-04:00

1. I've never seen red ones! This is the best one. It's so red and helicoptery.
2. That is not for you to eat.
1. That wasn't eating. That was touching. With my mouth.

The Light of the Moon

2011-05-19T18:30:00.002-04:00

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

Robert Louis Stevenson, from "The Moon," A Child's Garden of Verses

Petals, Blooms

2011-05-03T13:45:00.004-04:00

It began with orange tulips, one blowing day when my gray coat became too much to bear. Additional tulips followed. Outside, the pink magnolias called me up into their branches one misty evening, keeping me a secret from those below; my feet dangled high, then higher over the fallen petals, the slick mud. The last of the paperwhites reeded their way up. The daffodils whistled butter and orange. And now it is lilacs, cones of mirth and scent. Bought and received and lining. every. surface.

Growing Things, The Bottoms of Cows

2011-05-03T07:22:00.006-04:00

Aprils, Moons

2011-04-21T12:08:00.001-04:00

One time in April there was a full moon, and the sea was covered with ice.

Tove Jansson, from The Summer Book

Reasons to Recite Chaucer (Spring, Stiles; Also, Cows)

2011-04-19T12:11:00.001-04:00

'Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote...'
At the top of your voice, where you swayed on the top of a stile,
Your arms raised -- somewhat for balance, somewhat
To hold the reins of the straining attention
Of your imagined audience -- you declaimed Chaucer
To a field of cows. And the Spring sky had done it
With its flying laundry, and the new emerald
Of the thorns, the hawthorn, the blackthorn,
And one of those bumpers of champagne
You snatched unpredictably from pure spirit.
Your voice went over the fields towards Grantchester.
It must have sounded lost. But the cows
Watched, then approached: they appreciated Chaucer.
You went on and on. Here were reasons
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
You were rapt. And the cows were enthralled.

Ted Hughes, excerpt from "Chaucer," from Birthday Letters

Puddle-Wonderful, Mud-Luscious

2011-04-18T11:33:00.001-04:00

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings, "In Just-"

A Trusted Child

2011-04-08T11:15:00.002-04:00

The primary advantage of a large vocabulary when you're young is entirely different from the primary advantage of a large vocabulary when you're an adult. When you're an adult it's so you can describe things with precision, and when you're a child it's mostly so that you can insult people without their knowing it or otherwise baffle them. A child with a large vocabulary is a trusted child. The idea is that a bookworm is not the kind of child who would ever get into any trouble. If, however, you are the kind of bookworm that I was, and you're reading Confessions of an Opium Eater, you are probably somewhat likelier to get into trouble than a child who knows fewer words.

Daniel Handler, from Funny Business: Conversations With Writers of Comedy
Edited by Leonard S. Marcus

Of Wet and Of Wildness

2011-03-31T21:12:00.001-04:00

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Inversnaid"

Blessings of Earth on the Sow

2011-03-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of the sow.

Galway Kinnell, "Saint Francis and the Sow"

Sweetest Prettiest Cleanest

2011-03-22T12:36:00.002-04:00

I had luncheon with Shel Silverstein recently. I don't know if you know some of his children's books for us, or some of his stuff in Playboy. Anyhow, he is a great man and I love him. I sat next to him at luncheon and was so impressed with the sense of great at-ease-with-himself which he gave off. He just seemed to be hitting on all 24 cylinders. I was feeling particularly out-of-sorts and displeased with myself that day so I asked him for advice on how to get to be the way he is. "Have you had some psycho-therapy, Shel?" I asked admiringly. "How come you are just so great?" "No therapy!" he said loudly, in the quiet restaurant. "Why should I? If I were hung up on goats why I would just find myself the sweetest prettiest cleanest goat in the world, that's what I'd do." Heads turned and I changed the subject.

Ursula Nordstrom to John Donovan, April 29, 1969
From Dear Genius, edited by Leonard S. Marcus

Bracing, Blue

2011-03-21T09:09:00.002-04:00

But Piglet wasn't listening, he was so agog at the thought of seeing Christopher Robin's blue braces again. He had only seen them once before, when he was much younger, and, being a little over-excited by them, had had to go to bed half an hour earlier than usual; and he had always wondered since if they were really as blue and as bracing as he had thought them.

A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Myrtle, Orange

2011-02-07T21:21:00.007-05:00

One way to weather the rain: At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, indoor bonsai blossoms and the sorts of words one's mouth loves to linger over: quince, apricot, bloom. In other, warmer, moister rooms, olive, jasmine, myrtle, orange. Outside the magnolia trees boast thick, green buds. Everything drips with. Everything drips.

Swap, Not

2011-02-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

February snuck up on me this year. I was just trying to get through War and Peace and knock a bunch of glass stuff over without incident, and then we were here.

Which is to say that though I've received several kind inquiries about the Valentine's Day swap I've hosted for the past two years, I'm gonna bounce it for 2011. For one thing, it's a little too late to organize at this point; for another, I've greatly tired of the word "swap."

I hope you'll leave a comment if this is something you'd like to see happen again next year; I've enjoyed hosting it in the past, and may well have come up with an alternate term by the time Valentine's Day 2012 rolls around. Offhand, "exchange" makes me squirm ever so slightly less; suggestions welcome.

The Secrets of Bees: Queen Cups, Hats

2011-02-01T19:56:00.001-05:00

What I Learned at Beekeeping Class:

1. While blowing smoke at bees (with a smoker, above) allows the beekeeper to plunder the hive with minimal attention from its pointy-bottomed inhabitants, smoke does not technically calm the ladies; rawther, it causes them to gorge on honey in preparation for a fire that may shortly necessitate their flight. Luckily for all involved, bees have somewhat short-term memories.

2. In addition to being good for one only thing, boy bees are the product of unfertilized eggs; thus, a queen who's run out of sperm lays only drones.

3. From her single nuptial flight (an act that sounds much more demure, perhaps, than the mid-air gang bang it is), the queen can stay fulla sperm for four or five years. Though her laying will diminish somewhat as she ages, she can pop out 1,000-plus eggs a day.

4. Swarming may or may not be mitigated by the crushing of queen cups.

5. When introducing oneself to a roomful of serious beekeepers, one might best avoid noting that one is "fond of gloves and hats with veils."

6. When introducing oneself to a roomful of serious beekeepers, one might do well to ask for limited use of the term "virgin queen."

7. Smokers and steampunk aesthetics go hand-in-hand.

Pleasing terms and mentions:
apiary, apitherapy, aster, attendants, bears, beekeeping apprentice, bee master, bee skep, bellows, brood, buckwheat, candy plug, clover, dysentery, emergency queen, fallow, hexagonal, honey flow, linden, mail-order bee, mint, overwintering, peach blossoms, plumose hair, propolis, queen cage, queen cup, rear, requeen, Trappist monks, viscosity, wax cap

The Secrets of Bees: Berries, Twigs

2011-01-31T09:00:00.002-05:00

When Lauren indicated that a beekeeping class would occur at the end of January and said she would accompany me there if I wished, I did not note that the class began rawther early and was located at the very end of of the one line some two boroughs away, or even question what one might do, exactly, at a beekeeping class at the end of January in New York. I simply thanked Napoleonic heraldry that Lauren has a godlike awareness of the choicest niche NYC activities, and then booked myself a spot. It is wonderful to have friends who are willing to support one's fondness for bees.

Wave Hill, at the terminus of the one line,* reached by train, surreptitious Burger King meet-up, and shuttle bus, is a public garden and cultural center, home to artist residencies and beekeeping classes alike. It is ALSO a magical fairyland, all berries and seed pods and Hudson-river views. Early and happy to be so, we wandered those fairyland grounds, surveying the sparkling snow and spotting tiny cardinals and questioning the authenticity of such beautiful vinecicles. Had we been queen bees--that is, in possession of ample honey stores and a cluster of sterile attendants to maintain a writhing, 92-degree ball around our bodies until spring--we might be wandering them still. As it was, we had class to attend.

*Prior to Saturday, I had never ridden to the terminus of a subway line. I was disappointed (by which I mean visibly agitated and arm-throwing) that the conductor failed to say "penultimate" with reference to the second-to-last stop. A MISSED OPPORTUNITY, MTA.

In Which Glass Shatters

2011-01-25T21:05:00.005-05:00

Thus far, it appears that January has awakened in me an affinity for knocking to the earth each and every item that touches my aura. Not regularly given to clumsiness, I've been surprised by my ability to wrack with hapless rigor the contents of my kitchen. Glass, smooth and cool, has proven particularly eager to meet its end: Who am I, dear reader, to ignore bottles' plaintive mews? I sweep, eye grout and shadow, step gingerly. It is January. Glass shatters here.

An accounting:
1. One favored candy thermometer (shattered)
2. Two drinking glasses, water-filled (one shattered, one intact)
3. One mason jar, empty (intact)
4. One coupe glass, empty (intact)
5. One dustpan of shattered glass, full (shattered, intact)
6. One 1/4-cup measure, flour-coated (irreparably--sniff--cracked)
7. One full bottle vanilla, less one teaspoon (shattered, fragrant)
8. One homemade candle, melted-soy-wax-filled (intact[ish])

Purple, Green

2011-01-21T07:00:00.002-05:00

Wednesday Words: Cannibals, Fairies (Liontamers Too)

2011-01-12T11:00:00.001-05:00

At any rate, my slight acquaintance with senators pickpockets and scientists leads me to conclude that they are far from unselfcentred. So, I believe, are all honest educators. And so (I'm convinced) are streetcleaners deafmutes murderers mothers, mountainclimbers cannibals fairies, strong men beautiful women unborn babes international spies, ghostwriters bums business executives, out and out nuts cranks dopefiends policemen, altruists (above all) ambulancechasers obstetricians and liontamers. Not forgetting morticians--as undertakers (in this epoch of universal culture) prefer to denominate themselves. Or, as my friend the distinguished biographer M R Werner once subrosafully remarked, over several biscuit dubouches "when you come right down to it, everybody's the whole boxoftricks to himself; whether she believes it or not."

e.e. cummings, i six nonlectures

2011 Resolutions: None

2011-01-07T10:15:00.003-05:00

For all my fondness of list-making, this business of posting RESOLUTIONS! and GOALS! for what we're going to DO! with our YEAR!!! is rubbing me the wrong way this particular January. The wrong way ENTIRELY.

I'm just going to do everything I can to make 2011 a pretty good year. A pretty good year sounds pretty good.

2010: Done, Undone

2011-01-06T20:00:00.002-05:00

~~1. Go NYC places. Do NYC things.~~

2. Hone my photography skills. Consider a new camera.

~~3. ~~Home: Plant things. Peruse cookbooks. Bake bread. Make jam.~~~~

4. Consider buying pants that are not jeans. Also, wearing them.

~~5. ~~Read poems by poets other than T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens and Gerard Manley Hopkins.~~~~

6. Write a poem a week.

~~7. ~~Return to my breath.~~~~

~~8. ~~Buy a fantastic pair of heels. Wear them even though.~~~~

~~9. ~~Know when long weekends are going to be. Plan things for them.~~~~

~~10. ~~Make things. Craft. It. Up.~~~~

~~11. ~~Keep doing the things I'm doing well.~~~~

~~12. ~~Make a financial plan. Avoid the term "budget" at all costs.~~~~

13. Wallpaper something.

~~14. Consider next steps. Those next steps on that sticky note I've been avoiding. Yes, that one.~~

~~15. ~~Paint my toenails a luscious brown.~~~~

~~16. ~~Write a letter a month.~~~~

17. Work on my French. (Carry flashcards.)

~~18. ~~Try skinny jeans again. Just in case they aren't really that bad.~~~~

19. Visit a farm. Nuzzle chickens. Interact with cows. Learn more about bees.

20. Pick apples.

21. Visit Maine. Or the Catskills. Or Niagara Falls. Or all three.

22. Stick to a schedule.

23. Be tidier. Put things away where they *go.*

~~24. ~~Sit up straight. Mostly.~~~~

~~25. ~~Read out loud sometimes. Reading out loud is my favorite.~~~~

~~26. ~~Make a rhubarb pie.~~~~

La Couleur de Mes Reves

2011-01-06T09:54:00.001-05:00

One restless, sleepless night a boy I loved told me to picture a big, blue polar bear in the snow; a blue polar bear in the snow, he whispered, would lead me promptly and deeply to sleep.

He was right.

I've been admiring this Miró since stumbling upon Dutch Interiors at the Met some weeks back. That it is the color of my polar bear makes smile sleepily.

Friday Poem: Ring Out, Wild Bells

2010-12-31T17:02:00.002-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam (Ring Out, Wild Bells!)"

In Which Lights Twinkle, Bells Ring

2010-12-24T19:11:00.004-05:00

Again it is time to fill the pies, roll thin the dough. We draw close to the ringing of bells.

Glad and merry tidings to you, dear reader; I wish you thick socks and twinkly lights, and warmth in each of its guises. And a tinge of calm, a wink of bright, wherever you can find them.

Wednesday Words: Christmas Hippos

2010-12-22T11:10:00.018-05:00

Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clockwork mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge deep footprints on the hidden pavements.

"I bet people will think there's been hippos."

"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"

"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."

"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.

Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales

Holiday Windows: Monkeys in Hats (the Gryphon Returns)

2010-12-21T13:15:00.001-05:00

Very early in the morning very early in the month, there was the Viewing of Holiday Windows in the Bitter Cold and Subsequent Warming of One's Extremities. Aside from the general grandeur/stamina that accompanies the tromp, my favorite bit (at Bergdorf, of course) was finding items from last year's Alice in Wonderland/"Compendium of Curiosities" windows in this year's--a gryphon here, a mock turtle or dodo bird there.

It should be noted that the 2010 theme, "Wish You Were Here"--which cuts a wider swath than my freezing-wind-addled brain could handle--includes the following: theatres of one type and another, the sea and the sky, a highly suspect pair of goggles, at least one terrifying, jewel-and/or-ice-encrusted crocodile. And monkeys. A gang (or four) of tiny, finely trussed monkeys.

Watch a making-of (and see the finished windows) here.

A Weekend In: Jingle, Smell

2010-12-17T15:49:00.003-05:00

Last weekend (I'm a tad behind), a fine day for walking, a rain day for bed. A fragrant house of my making: rosemary, paperwhites, clementine pomanders of that sickly, sticky sweet that somehow comforts. The manufacturing of a wreath, a jar filled with boughs. The last green paper, the orange ribbon quelled. Soaps and mulled cider. Snowflakes. Bells.

Housewarmings of Yore, The Gift of Goats

2010-12-16T21:14:00.003-05:00

Due to a request from the authoress/artist-in-residence of one BigBANG Studio, first milk will sustain a momentary break from our largely sporadic and seasonally driven programming to introduce the family pets of my late formative years and early adulthood--namely, two rawther stenchfull Nigerian Pygmy Goats.

In the beginning, the animal situation in my family was fairly mild: We had a girl Saint Bernard called Fred who let me ride her about like a good-hearted Nana, and a grey, lop-eared boy rabbit called Scarlett O'Hare. But the occasion of my family's moving to the m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-s in my seventeenth year ("the foothills," my mother brightly called them) brought about a dusty barn and enough land to keep an animal or two. Dear family friends of the impish and generous variety, having heard my father's enthusiastic call for miniature goats, arrived one day with two of them.

I can report that the billy goat (originally named Dinky, but called Jake by my Pa) was highly malodorous despite his wether status, and in possession of the questionable habit of swiveling his business to relieve himself on his own beard and the lower legs of anyone who happened to be standing nearby, apparently in an effort to woo various parties (which, auspiciously enough, prepared me for life in New York City--and, specifically, for working from various branches of the New York Public Library--somewhat more thoroughly than I might have expected). The nanny goat (originally named Lipstick, but called Mike by my Pa*) was a decidedly demure and gentle affair, and shunned Jake entirely. His best efforts at butting or mounting her invariably ended with her chasing him angrily across the pasture.

Mike left us some years ago. Jake's a little lame these days, and particularly fond of dandelions. When home, I pat his horned head and eye his slotted eyes. He's less stankful in his dotage, Thanks Be to God, and less Pan-fully intent on lady mammals far and near. He is a very old goat, and a very good one.

*I have never decided whether my parents' refusal to name animals according to their sex makes them highly sophisticated zen masters** or just rebellious, or both.

**"Seymour once said to me--in a crosstown bus, of all places--that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold." J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

{Photo credit goes to my Pa; Jake's horns alternate sides, growth-wise--the photo portrays a significantly starboard phase)

Wednesday Words: Triumph, Pine

2010-12-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

And, indeed, it is a kind of ocean. Scented acres of holiday trees, prickly-leafed holly. Red berries shiny as Chinese bells: black crows swoop upon them screaming. Having stuffed our burlap sacks with enough greenery and crimson to garland a dozen windows, we set about choosing a tree. "It should be," muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star." The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute that survives thirty hatchet strokes before it keels with a creaking rending cry. Lugging it like a kill, we commence the long trek out. Every few yards we abandon the struggle, sit down and pant. But we have the strength of triumphant huntsmen; that and the tree's virile, ice perfume revive us, goad us on.

Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory

M-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-s, The Merits of Snowshoes

2010-12-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

My time in the Wild West was cold and bright. Marvelous friends of my parents graciously invited our little clan to their cabin, post-Thanksgiving, which is lovely and cozy and antlerful and achieves perfection in every way a cabin might seek it. There, Something Surprising Occurred: After growing up in Colorado and managing to largely ignore mountain-based sports until now--tilting my head slightly and humming loudly whenever someone mentioned going to the m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-s--I discovered my winter sport.

When one snowshoes, it seems, one has time. While one might fall gently up a hill, the sort of falling that could occur does not involve SKIING INTO TREES or FALLING OFF A SKI LIFT, or anything otherwise crowded or fast or loud or requiring of helmets. Covered in snow, everything is muffled but the birds and the Finest Hound in the West and the pluff, pluff of feet choosing their path. One has time to view sky, note sparkles and seed pods, consider the shadows of aspens. It is a Fine Form of Tromping, and Quite Invigorating. Moreover, snowshoes are handsome, giving one all the more reason to photograph one's feet.

Other Things One May Learn Upon Ascending M-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-s: The definition of a cord of firewood; that one's mother is a Foosball Master; that one greatly enjoys being called "gal"; cabins in m-o-u-n-t-a-i-n-s are full of people one loves.

Saturday-Morning Hieroglyphs, Two Weeks Late

2010-12-03T19:38:00.056-05:00

I am a maker of lists, to be sure. I make short lists and long lists; lists on 3x5 cards (blank, never lined), sticky notes, embossed paper napkins, the backs of smooth envelopes, the fronts of brown bags, and grainy--oh-so grainy--cardboard rectangles. Sometimes I keep them to finger and stare. The numbering in particular gratifies me.

Some days, however, even I grow tired of words, which means I list in pictures instead. Lists concerning packing, too, invariably involve hieroglyphs of what I aim to fold into my duffel. Here, a few of last week's intended items for Thanksgiving travels to the Wild West and back.

Be not alarmed, dear reader: not all of those pants made it in.

Buddons, Jewels

2010-11-15T20:55:00.003-05:00

Days that stretched in the warm autumn sun. The Campbell Apartment. A Very Squeaky Train, a scone and a tea, Dutch Interiors. Words with ladies, a picnic near a pond, an Upper East Side romp of the very best sort. Learning to Like Jewels. The meandering of minds. Words in the sun and paper mache. The admiring of paperwhite shoots, the filling of jars with seeded greens. A four-day, New York sort of weekend; the kind in which to remember, the kind in which to forget.

Flow, Throb

2010-11-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

Flow on, river! Flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!

Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!

Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me;

Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!--stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!

Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly!

Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!

Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!

Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, "86: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 11, 111-121

Fill, Light

2010-11-07T17:30:00.002-05:00

This is the part where the remaining leaves cling tight and the sun--what sun we have--shines through the branches. This is the part where we fill the jars and bake the bread and oil the pans and the wood. It is the part where winter winks at us across the dark evenings. In all probability, we do not wink back.

Out shopping for properly fitting pants on Saturday I was bustled and bumped in the manner of pre-holiday bustles in New York City. A man gave me tea while I waited for my takeout and I sipped from the small, round cup and swirled the lime inside it; the tea seemed the nicest tea I have ever sipped, the cup the roundest of them all. Near my house Sunday morning the fine people of Brooklyn clapped and hollered for their marathoning fellows. It gave me courage to bustle and sip and cheer alongside so many. Whitman's words echoed, then got silly in my head the way they so often do in this place: Bustle on, shoppers! Pour tea and juice limes, oh kindly and bespectacled men of Brooklyn! Ring cow bells and hoot, you bundled regarders of athleticism!

The darkness descends, most assuredly. The sun that shines through the branches does so for fewer hours than I would perhaps like. But my jars are full, my bread baked; the city alive with trundling and tea and cheers; the wood oiled and bright. It is light more than enough to weather winter's early advances.

Glory Boat

2010-11-03T07:00:00.002-04:00

The hardy, and we sometimes think presumptuous, writers of children's books are back this year covering a spectacular range and sinning in a multitude of covers. We are offered everything from the adventures of a bureaucratic rabbit, by the daughter of our President, to the Lord's Prayer for either a Catholic child or a Protestant child. It was the odd impact of this slice of the Bible on a four-year-old of our acquaintance that made us question the whole idea of juvenile literature: the child, ever since listening to the majestic cadences of "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory," has been referring in his less beatific moods to a new kind of power boat known to him as a Glory Boat. Even this rather cursory experience with the working of a child mind makes one wonder how any adult has the nerve to prepare any literature for the young whatsoever.

Katharine S. White (New Yorker fiction editor, wife of E.B. White), New Yorker, Dec. 1, 1934
From Minders of Make Believe, by Leonard S. Marcus

Brownstones, Wings

2010-11-01T21:12:00.001-04:00

The neighborhood has been decorated for weeks, and for weeks the children have been wearing capes and wings. I foolishly fretted sometime Friday night and Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning that there Might Not Be Trick-or-Treaters, This Being New York. Inside, I photographed, then straightened the mess from a last-minute fashioning of wax-paper wings; cut, hung (and hung again) a wreath of bats; sniffed a pumpkin while pretending not to sniff a pumpkin. By the time I made it outside the winged hoards had descended. I helped distribute sweets for a while, then walked the neighborhood, grinning into pizza parlors and avoiding the swinging tips of sabers and sticks and tails. The leaves blew, it was cold. I picked up some peanut-butter cups and went home and watched the Muppets and finished The Witches, too. It was everything Halloween should be.

Keep, Hoard: Color, Contain

2010-10-28T09:00:00.008-04:00

While Brooklyn stoops generally proffer interesting loot for those with eyes to see it, autumn has elicited particularly fine gifts in the tin department: one Very Fine Toolbox in my own favorite blue, a Milk Pot Suitable for Canaries, and, if in need of a gentle scrub, a Tin to Rule Them All.

The closets of others wither, drop their colors on the streets.

The Motto of All Witches

2010-10-27T09:00:00.006-04:00

   One child a week is fifty-two a year.
   Squish them and squiggle them and make them disappear.
   That is the motto of all witches.
   Very carefully a victim is chosen. Then the witch stalks the wretched child like a hunter stalking a little bird in the forest. She treads softly. She moves quietly. She gets closer and closer. Then, at last, when everything is ready...phwisst!...and she swoops! Sparks fly. Flames leap. Oil boils. Rats howl. Skin shrivels. And the child disappears.
   A witch, you must understand, does not knock children on the head or stick knives into them or shoot at them with a pistol. People who do those things get caught by the police.
   A witch never gets caught.

Mr. Roald Dahl, The Witches

The Ghosts of Autumns Past

2010-10-26T22:39:00.000-04:00

Wednesday Words: Marmite, Cows

2010-10-13T09:20:00.002-04:00

Maria was ten years old. She had dark hair in two pigtails, and brown eyes the color of marmite, but more shiny. She wore spectacles for the time being, though she would not have to wear them always, and her nature was a loving one. She was one of those tough and friendly people who do things first and think about them afterward. When she met cows, however, she did not like to be alone with them, and there were other dangers, such as her governess, from which she would have liked to have had a protector. Her main accomplishment was that she enjoyed music, and played the piano well. Perhaps it was because her ear was good that she detested loud noises, and dreaded the fifth of November. This, however, with the cows, was her only weakness, and she was said to be good at games.

T.H. White, Mistress Masham's Repose

Children, Books

2010-10-04T09:08:00.004-04:00

Some time ago, magical, clever Peonies, whom I love at least as much as the trees, asked me would I please compile for her a list of Very Good Books for children in general and for *her* children in particular. (She is growing twin girls inside of her right this very minute, you see.) It was an amazing bit of loveliness to be asked, and what happened was that I said yes.

My qualifications? Asked for her credentials, beloved children's editor Ursula Nordstrom famously responded, "I am a former child." I would say that I am a former child who did not like very much to be a child, and so read very many children's books rawther than playing with sticks or whatever it is that other children do, and then never stopped. There are Other Credentials, of course, but that's how it began.

This week I have the great honor to be over at Peonies and Polaroids talking about my favorite subject in the world besides poems and cows. The series of three posts will cover books for three age groups, starting with the Very Small and proceeding through Littles and the Slightly Bigger among us. I do hope you'll join me there.

{Image by Cassia Beck via Peonies herself}

Wednesday Words: Each of Us, All of Us

2010-09-22T10:25:00.002-04:00

Sometimes words find us when we are looking for them but do not know we are looking for them. Sometimes they are a salve. From this week's New Yorker, the always-marvelous Brenda Shaughnessy's "I Wish I Had More Sisters":

I wish I had more sisters,
enough to fight with and still
have plenty more to confess to,
embellishing the fight so that I
look like I'm right and then turn
all my sisters, one by one, against
my sister. One sister will be so bad
the rest of us will have a purpose
in bringing her back to where
it's good (with us) and we'll feel
useful, and she will feel loved.

Then another sister
will have a tragedy, and again
we will unite in our grief, judging
her much less that we did the bad
sister. This time it was not
our sister's fault. This time
it could have happened to any
of us and in a way it did. We'll
know she wasn't the only
sister to suffer. We all suffer
with our choices, and we
all have our choice of sisters.

My sisters will seem like a bunch
of alternate me's, all the ways
I could have gone. I could see
how things pan out without
having to do the things myself.
The abortions, the divorces,
the arson, swindles, poison jelly.
But who could say they weren't
myself, we are so close. I mean,
who can tell the difference?

I could choose to be a fisherman's
wife, since I'd be able to visit
my sister in her mansion, sipping
bubbly for once, braying
to the others, who weren't invited.
I could be a traveller, a seer,
a poet, a potter, a flyswatter.
None of those choices would be
as desperate as they seem now.
My life would be like one finger
on a hand, a beautiful, usable, ringed,
wrung, piano-and-dishpan hand.

There would be both more and less
of me to have to bear. None of us
would be forced to be stronger
than we could be. Each of us could
be all of us. The pretty one.
The smart one. The bitter one.
The unaccountably-happy-
for-no-reason one. I could be,
for example, the hopeless
one, and the next day my sister
would take my place, and I would
hold her up until my arms gave way
and another sister would relieve me.

How It Is

2010-09-08T19:19:00.003-04:00

Wednesday Words: Types of Bitches

2010-08-18T23:16:00.008-04:00

More here (90, in all).
What type of bitch are you?

Ambles, Stoops

2010-08-03T09:00:00.001-04:00

I think I'm starting to get the hang of Brooklyn; life in this fair borough, at least in the summer, requires ambling. In Brooklyn in the summer, we amble up, we amble down.

In Brooklyn in the summer ladies in shops speak of tzatziki and watermelon. There is yoga beneath an old Catalpa, the sun twinkling through the beans like the star nobody thinks to take it for. In Brooklyn in the summer there is the Brooklyn Farmacy, all counters and egg creams and fans that spin. In Cobble Hill the men gesture at one another, discussing baseball even when not discussing baseball.

We confer about groceries the way New Yorkers everywhere do, referencing the Fairway with great frequency, pricing chickens with vigor. But in Brooklyn we know the secrets of stoops, say "ball field" more often than the others, possess an astonishing enthusiasm for beer, carry children on our shoulders, amble slowly beneath the fragrant trees.

Weekender: Garlic, Peas

2010-07-07T17:56:00.008-04:00

Sometimes the fourth of July weekend is hot and crowded and not much else. I did not know it until this week, but it is true. Between the heat and the crowds, sometimes there is nothing to do but eat melon and popsicles and try not to sweat on anyone. Even carrying one's favorite shady parasol may deplete one, it turns out.

And if one is standing, flushed and damp, in one's kitchen, crazed with heat and holding a small bagful of sugar snap peas, it is also true that one should pickle them quickly, unthinkingly, using Deb's easiest of recipes (Oh, Deb! She of pickle brilliance!), and then eat the whole batch 24 hours later and then begin again. Between pickled sugar-snap peas and mornings spent in cold baths, one might make it through the weekend. Then again, one might not.

Breathless, Imp

2010-06-29T22:48:00.013-04:00

I've had many a short-hair muse since first cropping mine. But now that I've finally made it over to see Breathless all shined up and remastered, it is Jean, Jean, Jean all the time. Based on the somewhat impressive number of short-haired ladies who turned out for this particular film Sunday last, it seems I'm not alone. May short-haired imps abound, wear stripes, collars, tees.

Paper, Ink

2010-06-24T07:30:00.012-04:00

It has been many months since I returned from my little Paris month. Very many indeed.

I bought just a few things for me in that land of matching roofs, and tucked most of them away for another day. A day in late spring or summer, perhaps, when I might wish to be someplace else. It is nice to have them out and about. A lacy chemise, a wooden ladle from E. Dehillerin, a length of gorgeous fabric, a copy of Le Petit Nicholas. Glass yoghurt jars. A bag of lavender. Savon, a vintage dress, paper and ink. Treasures, each.

For writing thank-you notes, catching up on correspondence, thick Paris paper, tinned Paris inks.

Words to Read When You Wed

2010-06-22T08:19:00.005-04:00

I'll be over at A Practical Wedding this week, where beautiful Meg is reprising a series I compiled for her long and long ago. She's rerunning the compilation of pieces--Words to Read When You Wed--for summer brides seeking not-so-traditional readings. How I got lucky enough to make it into the pantheon of Classic APW, I have no idea. If you haven't seen them, or need some lovely words, pray skedaddle to the land of Meg.

I had the great honor of hearing a smattering of these pieces read at Meg's own wedding. Full and lovely wishes, words uttered beneath the sun. I may or may not have cried two times. Dear reader, may you find words for you.

Weekender: Fireflies, Curds

2010-06-21T22:16:00.003-04:00

On the day before the first day of summer, they came to catch fireflies. Heads shorn they ran, jars in-hand, beneath the low-hanging branches. The lady, more magpie than mother, plucked an escapee out of the air.

A haircut shorter than I'd like/the perfect length for summer's dawn.

The line to glean Shakespeare tickets; a line that I love to wait in, a cool morning at the park. A breezy drink with the truly affable. A splendid set for The Winter's Tale, all puppets and boats and numbrellas and mist. I don't know why I'm always surprised by Shakespeare--that however well I know what's coming I sit, mouth slightly agape, stunned and made to grin and weep. Among many nodding sheeps, a line just for me: "the queen of curds and cream."

Stone fruits, bees, beer that is cold.

The heat. The heat and damp to which the only proper response remains running through sprinklers, eating popsicles, catching a film. For two glorious hours, the cool of the theatre. A matinee, a matinee.

The sun gilds the leaves. The fireflies weave their magic low.

Balloons Are for Filling

2010-06-10T07:00:00.001-04:00

Balloons were next. Here is how.

Balloons are for filling, for filling all up.

Wednesday Words: Buddons, Corn

2010-06-09T08:00:00.003-04:00

She plucked off the last of the silk threads from the ear and dropped it into the tin bucket with the others. Inside the bucket, the bright ears of corn lay on top of one another, pointing in all directions, their perfect yellow kernels shining in the late afternoon sun like little buttons asking to be pressed. There was nothing like a bucket of uncooked sweet corn to really turn around your day. The yellowness, the fertile symbolism, the promise of melted butter: it was enough to change a boy's life.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Reif Larson

Bells on the Door, a Very Old Goat

2010-06-06T11:46:00.012-04:00

Where I grew up there are some bells on the door and a Very Old Goat. There are some other things too. Chickens just next door, for instance. Littles and pancakes and tickles and tag. Twinkly aspens, a rooster that crows. My little family and cold beers on a warm evenings, and my big family too. Painted toes. The first margarita of summer, an outside fire and the cool of the evening smelling of smoke. My birfday mama. And houses with bells on the doors that used to be my houses that are not my houses now but still sort of are. I pat the Very Old Goat and the Worn Pup and give them lubs and thank them for being the goat, the oggie-dog. I wonder if I will see them again. I kiss the cheeks and shoulders of those I love. It is enough/it is never enough.

Then I am home in my new house, my now house.

I'll need to hang bells on the door.

Wednesday Words: Sprig, Thrush

2010-05-12T09:58:00.003-04:00

For mourning spring and other things, a cone of wafting lilacs and four sprigs of Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd:

1.
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd--and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

3.
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.

4.
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would'st surely die.)

7.
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

All over bouquets of roses,
O death I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and coffins all of you O death.)

Sour, Sweet

2010-05-10T07:30:00.021-04:00

By the time the trees leaf out, I have already tired of summer. May leaves me listless after all those blooms, preparing for the truly hot days and eyeing the green nervously--that green that stole me away from parsing sentences each year and the secret freedom of sharpening a pencil in the back of the room. The asparagus and the rhubarb arrive just as I've descended into full-fledged mourning, and I spend a couple of weeks protesting the coming of the leaves, filling my house with lilacs and reading Whitman and pretending the early blooms haven't gone, that the first peonies won't arrive for another few days. These stolen spring weeks are all rhubarb to me: all that is sour, all that is sweet. The green is coming, most assuredly, the peonies already here. But today for breakfast butter and flake give way to the sort of sour that also is sweet, the sort of sour that also is sweet.

Regarding rhubarb galettes, the making of, Lily has the sort of recipe one might follow if one were a follower of recipes. I recommend buying enough rhubarb for two. My darlings, you're going to need two.

Wednesday Words: In Which Children Disappear

2010-04-28T08:27:00.002-04:00

More on growing this day, sans chamomile or licorice, from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women:

Jo followed a minute after to wave her hand to him if he looked round. He did look round, came back, put his arms about her, as she stood on the step above him, and looked up at her with a face that made his short appeal both eloquent and pathetic.
"Oh Jo, can't you?"
"Teddy, dear, I wish I could!"
That was all, except a little pause; then Laurie straightened himself up, said "It's all right, never mind," and went away without another word. Ah, but it wasn't all right, and Jo did mind, for while the curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend; and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy Laurie never would come again.

In Which We Grow, Drink Chamomile

2010-04-27T08:22:00.005-04:00

As you probably know, chamomile tea tastes of straw from the bottoms of elephants. And elephant-bottom-straw tea is for grown-ups. I had successfully eluded both chamomile and grown-up-ness for many years, generally scrunching my face at both, until some weeks ago when a lady at the biscuit store accidentally gave me chamomile with milk in lieu of Earl Grey, and something happened: Dear reader, chamomile was delicious. I smelled it and took a long drink and then another and then one more before saying, "ExcusemepleaseI'msorryIbelievethisischamomile." I scrunched my face up a tiny bit, but I didn't mean it. Shame ensued, as it does for lovers of the forbidden. I fled. A month passed.

And then last Thursday I bought a cup of it to accompany me home on the train from Boston. (Reasons: It was raining. I wore a trench. I knew no one would know me on the train.) I leaned my head against the glass and inhaled deeply and drank. Some miles in, I spotted a rainbow. Whether the chamomile brought the rainbow about, I cannot say. But the rocking tracks and the chamomile did something over those miles through Stamford and New Haven, and when I reached the sparkling city all lit up I was loving of those dusty golden orbs and tea that tastes of straw, and I was grown.

Other indicators of aforementioned grown status: enjoying black licorice, watering plants in the sink, forgetting things, discussing the Comforts of Barley with friends at dinner, owning pants in two sizes. I am horrified/don't care.

Wednesday Words: Exactly Full

2010-04-14T07:50:00.005-04:00

An excerpt from Craig Arnold's poem "Couple From Hell," from his collection Made Flesh.

Here is a small cafe
opening for breakfast
a zinc counter catching the light
at every angle in bright rings of glitter
A cup of black coffee is placed before you
brimming with rainbow-colored foam
a packet of sugar a pat of butter
a split roll of bread
scored and toasted and still warm
The butter is just soft enough to spread
the coffee hot and sugared to perfect sweetness
the bread grilled to the palest brown
crisp but not quite dry
You tear it nearly into pieces
eat them slowly when you finish
you are exactly full

In which Blooms Drip, Hellebores

2010-04-13T07:30:00.007-04:00

Brooklyn is full of magical things. Among them, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Last week, strong pink cupped petals, pleasantly shaped greenhouses, blooms that dripped, hellebores (hellebores, hellebores), and one brave turtle trying to eat the petals all up. I gave the turtle a little name, but he did not like the name said go away can't you see I have enough to deal with like all these ginormous fishes and only petals to eat. So I said hellebores, hellebores, hellebores and stood and smelled the breeze.

Weekender: Be and Tee

2010-04-12T08:00:00.064-04:00

This weekend, clementines in a white bowl. Curtains hung to billow, hooks hung to expect. A small castle spied on front steps. Found, a tissue-thin gray tee, sleeves long enough to cover the tops of hands. It is how sleeves should be, how hands look forward to cool summer nights, perhaps before a small blaze. The trees leaf, the petals drop. Oil of clementine. On a blanket and beneath kites, gorgeous poems by a poet gone missing. Poems that made me, as Emily says, "feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off." Poems for now, yes. But also for now and for now and also for now.

Celery, Oats

2010-04-08T07:30:00.003-04:00

I'm a girl who loves her oatmeal. When I saw Mark Bittman's post on celery oatmeal a couple of weeks back, I knew it was one of the first things I wanted to make in the new kitchen. It seemed to me the peanut butter and pickles (or miso eggplant?) of breakfast: celery and oats finished with soy and sesame oil. I dreamed of it for days while boxing things and eating cold pizza. I stared at the ingredients for a few mornings. I wanted it to be good.

Stirring it on the stove one morning this week, it smelled marvelous. I sat on the floor to enjoy it, in the nook I've already come to favor. While I will not say that it wasn't delicious, I will say that it left me a tad wanting. My mouth clearly wished for an additional facet--something toasty, bitter. Something silky. Sesame seeds themselves, perhaps, to squeak between the teeth. Next time. Morning repasts come too early to mess around with wishing.

On Searching, Home

2010-04-06T07:30:00.013-04:00

On having abondoned you all for weeks and weeks, I will say this: Finding a New York apartment is a little tricky. It is requiring of very many questions and very many naps and very many wonderings about What Sort of New Yorker one might like to be. Like most things worth having, it takes searching time and bits of worry. In the end, though, I needn't have worried so much. I had forgotten that wands choose wizards and not the other way 'round. So it is with cornicing and milkmaids. There was searching and looking and looking some more, and there were plenty of opened cabinets and furrowed brows and heads shaken no and big long sighs on wet sidewalks. And then, one day, we were home.

Leaving neighborhoods is difficult, changing boroughs a little strange. No matter what one gains on the other side, rending, too, requires naps. I have loved Manhattan dearly. But I'm told that trees grow in Brooklyn. Grand, flowering ones. Judging by the state of my sinuses this week, they do indeed. We are happy to be home.

Weekender: Easter, Trees

2010-04-05T07:30:00.005-04:00

An armful of greenmarket peach blossoms. Daffodils in jars and herbs potted. For Easter, the ringing of bells, all it means to sprawl in a sunbeam, cafe au lait and a morning bun, blossoms tattered on the trees. La salade nicoise, all sulphur and vinegar and new greens.

And firsts. Firsts as spring demands.

Wednesday Words: Juice, Joy

2010-03-31T07:30:00.002-04:00

This poem is a deep, deep favorite; one I invariably mutter all spring long. For the second Wednesday of spring, Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring--
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightenings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.--Have, get before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

In Which Time Passes, Cake With Flags

2010-03-30T07:30:00.004-04:00

Two things, dear reader.

1. I've lived in New York a year this month; it has been the year that flew. Truth be told, I'm glad to have it under my belt. First years are tricky things. Also, when I meet a new person and they say how long have you been in New York and I say I've been in New York about a year, I won't even be fibbing now. Except maybe I'll start saying two.

2. And speaking of two, we at first milk turned two in February and the day came and went and we forgot that we were two. But two we are. Happy birfday, first milk. Thanks to all of you who stop by even when I'm off tending other things. I love you like pink magnolias and blue sky.

Maybe you are tired of looking at this cake. But I am not tired of this cake. It has flags, dear reader. Flags and chocolate frosting. From forty-sixth at grace.

Weekender: Magnolias, Spring

2010-03-29T07:30:00.005-04:00

A Met visit. Emerging turtles. A sunny outdoors adventure laughing day and a chilly staying-in-bed day. Cardamom coffee. Pink magnolias and a pale blue sky. Happy spring to you, to you.

Grasses, Tend

2010-03-13T10:43:00.007-05:00

Am I ok? Yes, thank you very kindly for inquiring.
Have I been hiding? Yes I have.
Hiding lots? Yep.
Behind the curtains? Yes.
And under the duvet? Uh-huh.
And behind the trees? Behind one tree in particular.
And behind those grasses? No. Not there.
Do I intend to come out? Yep.
Pretty soon? Yes.

Thank you, dear ones, for all of your wonderful comments over the past couple of weeks--I know I've been absent. I have a little something in the works, and have needed to tend it with the energy I usually alot for this lovely space. I think one more week should do it, and I promise to pop in if I possibly can.

Smooches and lubs,
A.

Print, Risk

2010-03-01T21:56:00.002-05:00

You may have heard something recently about reading the printed word. You've likely heard that in addition to reading the printed word, many have taken a pledge to do so. This pledge, the baby of east side bride and cevd, means we are committed to reading books and newspapers and magazines and subway signs and words that are printed.

This all sounds very pleasant--coffeehouses! the smell of ink!--but I would like to remind us all that pledges are rarely made without a bit of underlying risk. In this case, make no mistake, we undertake a great deal of it. To say nothing of stepping silently around the characters who spend time at libraries, we must reckon with smudgy, soft ink on our hands, paper cuts, early-evening cherry pie cravings when nothing else will do, men at bars who ask--or do not ask--with cocked eyebrow, what we're reading. We risk missing our train stop or leaving a half-finished paperback in the back of a cab. We risk heading in bleary-eyed, achy, having a poem knock the wind out of us as we cross the street. We risk daydreaming, staring at strangers whose toes remind us of Seymour's, glimpsing the dust of other worlds. We risk walking into another land and coming back changed, or not ever quite returning at all. It is a brave choice, to make a pledge. And if we're going to Read the Printed Word, it seems important to face the facts.

A list with a Lauren in its pocket: I face risk with lists. At least for the time being, books I've finished in 2010 will appear at the right-hand side of this blog. This is not to say I'll list everything I read in print, for that would be a bit unwieldy. I'm leaving out research and professional livres, for example, and t-shirts and street signs and newspapers and magazines and plaques and calling cards. Mostly, you'll see fiction and livres for littles and collections of poetry, and only those read from cover to cover. Will re-reads be included? Of course. Categories may or may not appear. I'm prepared for all sorts of possibilities.

What, dear reader, have you got going, printed word-wise?
What have you risked recently by burying your nose in its depths?

Twirl, Roll

2010-02-22T09:00:00.007-05:00

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

2010-02-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-15T18:47:00.009-05:00

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

2010-02-12T07:16:00.006-05:00

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

2010-02-10T22:00:00.006-05:00

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

2010-02-09T09:15:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-08T21:36:00.001-05:00

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

2010-02-05T09:00:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-03T09:30:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-02T09:38:00.003-05:00

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