can phone

 

Telephon S-----------------E, JOSEPH BEUYS, 1974, in the collection of The Broad art museum.

Dearest,

Do nothing till you hear from me; I'll be calling by can.  

A reprise.

 

Ms. Green.

 

Dear Delia,

I've got your songs, here, for today.  If you don't have time, there in your storied afterlife, to listen to all of them, listen to the last one; it's the best, the true song of you, and all of us.  .

First.

Second.

Third.

Fourth.

Last.

points north

 

good & gooey

 

Dear Sugar,

Here (and hasn't it been a long time?) is a recipe for marvelous, sticky, caramelly, butterscotch blondies from the incomparable Claire Saffitz.  If you don't like brown sugar, don't even bother to to tune in.  If you can never get enough of it, well, you have arrived!  I made these similar blondies, from my another of my big dessert crushes, David Lebovitz, and they are delightful, but, if I had to choose, I think the award would go to Ms. Saffitz's blondies.

Obs, you should make both, invite some pals over and do a proper tasting,  Here is a song for you to enjoy while you make or eat them!

white walls

 

OAD & longing longer.

 

Dear Friends,

I have a serious case of Object Attachment Disorder.  Take, for example, this Walter Foster book on how to draw with pastels.  Really, do take it!  I put in a box that I left at the Goodwill, so you can find it there easily.  It looks like an ordinary, harmless, slightly lame, instructional drawing book.

Let me tell you what it really is:  it's a fetishization of pale green wool carpet, romantic love, and velvety softness.  It holds two, maybe even three generations of longing in it.  It's cliché to the max, and I finally set it loose.  No, no; congratulations aren't necessary.  This is about a grieving confession of short-sightedness.  No, it was more willful than that.  Complications?  You betcha!  These great barges of emotion don't float down river easily; you really have to inventory it all to launch these behemoths.  

My Grandmother gave it to me, and like everyone's grandmother, she represented a sophistication that I was encouraged to strive for; she was genteel, I suppose, and from a time period, status, and income level that I did not know, so of course it seemed desirable.  So it wasn't just instructions for drawing, it was instructions for a lot of things, including manners and relationship, and morals, oh!  So many twisted morals!  Still, what it came down to, was the cover.  I loved the cover of this book like crazy.  It was big, like, 18 inches by 12.  It had the same vase of flowers (my Grandmother said: vaahs) on the front and the back, except the back did not have the title.  This was magic to me, this flattened and bizarre three dimensionality.  

I almost just tore the covers off, and pasted them up in my laundry room, next to some other odd private and suspect bits of identity-  prints of Frida Kahlo paintings, a photo of a Spirit Bear, a playing card with a bullfighter on it, an old postcard of a Montana highway.  A sort of vision board of guilty image pleasures.

But see, I don't want to stay in this place of longing any longer, so I say, Take it All Away.

tenderness

 

Dear Old Lover,

Ooh, I found the last of your old letters and poems; there was a choice, a forking path:  toss them or read them?  I took the second, and as as happened before, I saw that it was not just awfulness and neediness and greed, that there was care and compassion, and for us, maybe, as people just learning to swim, there may even have been some of what they call 'love.'  Certainly, there was passion, which is a kind of an absurd thing, with a lot of sequins and glitter and flashing lights and too much of everything on it.  A great, elaborate, frosted cake of passion, with little to sustain anyone in it.  And yet.  I do love a celebration with cake.

One doesn't want, as one becomes, to pretend that it never happened.

The next forking path: what to do with these last words, these recorded emotions of yours, but also somehow mine, as they were directed to me?  I am reading- like writing in reverse, words go in, instead of out-  I am reading a book about the daughters of patriarchy, and I see, that I am so much a one, even as I struggle to shed that mantle, and so, and so, I will burn them, because there is or was a thing there, an energy that can be released, I think, as smoke now.  

Yes; burning will be just reverence enough.

Ground Plane XI

 

what is my job?

 

Dear Y'all,

Here is a fine song for today- I got it from my DJ last week- it's a funny thing, too, because, I thought, yeah, that's the sound I want to share with you, but, I don't always rush to shout it, because I like to be sure it is good enough for you.  You might wonder what isn't good enough, and I'll tell you:  here are three songs that I am not quite yet convinced of.  But, isn't this a good chance for you to decide for yourself?

One

Two

Three

dun, tan, beige, rufous

 

reflection & reflected