I saw this interview in 1999, around when "The Straight Story" came out, and it totally changed how I look at/understand art/the world. I am always looking for the eye of the duck.
Rest in peace, David Lynch.
imaginary outfit: perpetual flurry
It's been snowing a little every day, and when I look outside, I see stories being rewritten. Or maybe what I am seeing if forgetting. Over and over, paths soften and blur; the cuneiform prints of small creature feet disappear. Almost every trace of where we've been is gone. But because we have been in a cycle of freezes and thaws, and because we've only gotten an inch or two at a time, it's never quite a clean page. Under the fresh fall, crusted ice captures yesterday's footsteps, frozen into trip hazards, marked by gentle dimples.
I've felt low-key disoriented since the election, like I've somehow gotten lost in a familiar place. If I keep my focus very close—birds at the feeder, faces at the dinner table, pen on paper, the river freezing, snowflakes falling—I know where I am. But then, I read the news, and the nausea comes, because the bigger stories are splintering, and things that should be remembered are forgotten, covered over by the relentless more, more, more of the present.
Once, in a very different context, my friend Abbey wrote about her grief about losing the adults in the room—the calm voices and wise minds of earned authority, the trusted experts, there to offer a hand up to understanding. They are almost impossible to find now, lost in a blizzard of takes and anxious posturing and calls to subscribe and junk misinformation and vacuous AI content. It's a perpetual flurry.
But the real snow still falls, for now, at least. And each time it falls, I fall under its spell, enjoying the illusion that the old world can be made new. When I took the dog out the other night, the snow was coming down heavy, and even though the sky was dark, the air was white: there was a strange light, and because I could feel the flakes coming down, icy feathers brushing against my face, my awareness of my body in space was heightened. It was like being in water, that swirl of white darkness. And when we walked back to the door, the dog stopped, so I stopped, too. Through the scrim of snow, I could just see the smudged shadow-bodies of two deer, running through my neighbor's yard. I imagine they were looking for somewhere safe. The coyotes are out.
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Is the new year a clean page? Not really, I think, but it not a bad excuse for trying different things. I'm practicing French verbs, making Victorian puzzle purses, and reading massive Japanese crime novels.
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Knitbrary cardigan (past season; I am hoping one turns up in my size resale one day) / B Sides Lasso jeans in black (got a pair on super sale over the summer, and golly, I love them) / Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass (have been listening to P.G. nonstop this month; "Mishima / Closing" every day) / Ersa Dandin Mini Torso pearl earrings / Composition ledger notebook from Choosing Keeping (if I write in a notebook adorned with Renaissance angels will my words be heavenly?) / lucky gold pencil (I will take all the luck I can hold) / Jamie Haller oxblood Belgian loafers / Christina Iversen Shell cup (found at Bona Drag; no. 1 on my coveted-item list) / Valda mint pastilles (because January air is dry) / Daiyo rice bran candles (this post brought to you by my new painfully twee/self-indulgent practice of lighting a tiny candle and writing whatever comes to mind until it burns out.)
odds and ends / 1.9.2025
Alice Neel, "Snow in Vermont," 1975.
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Beguiling grainy image of a pinecone mobile found on Pinterest; I can't determine the source, but I'd like to make one.
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Garry Knox Bennett, "Granny Rietveld." Via Commune Design.
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Ivor Cutler, "A Clock." Via stopping off place.
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It’s winter now, some months after the phoebes outside have built their nest, raised a family, and moved on. Bitter cold, snow on the ground, blue jays crowding the feeders clownishly while the little birds—chickadees and nuthatches and tufted titmice, downy woodpeckers and yellow-bellied sapsuckers—wait anxiously for the bullies to leave so they can begin their own meal. You might think you know something about me now from the highly redacted scraps of personal anecdote I started with—but really, I could have written anything, shaped those glimpses however I wanted, and you wouldn’t know.
You know far more about me from how I’ve been writing here ... You know what books I’ve loved and why I love them. You know I like birds, you know I watch them, you know I live in a place sufficiently rural to have trees and phoebes. You know many of my days resemble one another, and that I have a house, and that I must not be commuting daily to a job—which in turn suggests I have some other way to make an income. You know I have enough free time to look outside and note down what I see, and that I value both actions.
And beyond those relatively simple facts, you have a sense of my sensibility: my emotional makeup, my responses to the world, my obdurate insistence on revising and revising again. What I notice, what I pay attention to.
Andrea Barrett, "Energy of Delusion," excerpted from Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact and Fiction in Harpers, January 2025.
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The inside covers of the notebooks were used to save a substantial collection of news clippings, an off-beat record of the world through those years of writing the book. There are pressed leaves, wildflowers, feathers of owls and colourful parrots and lorikeets, swans, finches, cockatoos, picked up on walks, hundreds of walks, of walking alone while deep in thought, that in the end, amounted to much of what went into creating this book. The feathers alone form a catalogue of walking through many seasons in different parts of the country.
You will find in these notebooks: broken wings of butterflies, such as the brown forest butterflies found in the summer months when the woods were abundant with their dance; travelling beetles crawling in their hundreds in the leaf litter. This collection was a part of much more. All these objects were studied and, if not intentionally, were thought about as works of scale as were the patterns on a butterfly wing which are composed of millions of scales, grandiose designs developed over aeons of time. All of these collected objects were a reminder of being grounded while facing the realities as we have done in the past, and will do so in the future in dealing with other major concerns which hold no beauty, nor added comfort to our combined humanity.
Alexis Wright, "Dream Geographies." HEAT, Series 3, number 16, September 2024.
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Friends have begun to call, and tell us they’ve lost their homes. One said he had forgotten his passport, but he had the family dog, and he’d managed to save his child’s beloved stuffed walrus (named “Walrus”). They’d rebuild with that, he told me.
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Looking out the window into the snow and thinking of Los Angeles.
branches and wire
Photos of kids in Berlin with Christmas tree branches, 1961. Taken by Paul Schutzer for LIFE and originally posted 12/19/2011, then again 12/22/2017.
imaginary outfit: jólabókaflóð 2024 + wish-listed books for 2025
Where has the time gone? I'm trying to resist feeling frantic; the days have seemed even shorter than usual for December, and many of the things I like to do this time of year are only partway finished or yet to be done. Oh well. They'll be just as enjoyable in the slow week between Christmas and New Year.
I'd like there to be five extra hours in the day today, and I'd love to spend a few of them in a bar—specifically, Auntie Mae's Parlor in Manhattan, Kansas. I stopped there on my big cross-country drive in August, inspired by "Somebody, Somewhere." The drinks were excellent, the atmosphere laid-back, and they had little glasses stuffed with old Trivial Pursuit cards: idyllic. I'd order a whisky sour and sit and read, or at least pretend to read while I eavesdropped on the conversational hum of people drifting in and out. And I'd take along some sort of treat for the folks behind the bar.
What book to bring? Rootling through my to-read pile, which has attained vast and terrifying dimensions, I find novels about questioning perception written by a collective, "weaving, programming, and pioneering women," and a fantasy originally published in 1981. There is a book about faux mountains, another about mountain hoaxes, and a new volume of apologies for stolen rocks. A beautiful edition of two special poems is in the mix, along with a memoir of life with 1,117 pomegranates, recipes for candied fruits, and an exhibition for a show I wish I could have seen. I find this collection of études, though I cannot play them, these photographs of apple trees, and while I'm dreaming, a first edition of Villette. I've somehow turned up a copy of this sold-out work, which is "a loose compendium of photographs and texts that picture, examine, explore, and / or suggest the human body in states of abandon, helplessness, terror, subjugation, serenity, and transcendence" and this "history of feminist designs for American homes, neighborhoods, and cities," described by Paul Goldberg as"full of things I have never seen before, and full of new things to say about things I thought I knew well." And Yoko Ogawa, one my favorite living writers, recommended this two-parter, saying it "portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts."
Wishing us all the ability to escape the darkness.
Merry everything, friends.
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Baserange Mea beanie / Atelier Delphine Mana coat in porcini / Vintage wool skirt from Plain Goods / Rodebjer black Cisne ribbed turtleneck / Ersa Dandin mixed pearl earrings / Cirque mother-of-pearl nail polish / The Eleven Associates of Alma-Marceau published by Anomie Press / mendiant shortbread from Nature's Candy / Rosa Mosa Leo shearling clogs / cashmere knee-high socks.
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Other jólabókaflóðs (Yule book floods).
gifts for somewhat practical aesthetes
An efficient all-in-one hat and scarf by Xenia Telunts, available at Folk.
A tree curtain by random clichés, for greenery that never needs watering.
Fleurs D'Hiver herbal tea lollipops, for a particularly lovely cup of tea.
An aluminum coffee pot by knindustrie, to add flourish to a daily ritual.
A minimalist cookie zine with just four recipes, each inspired by an artist: Halva af Klint, Sonia Dough-lanay, Anise Albers, and Almond Thomas.
A paper fan that recalls a sunlit forest canopy, for lo-fi a/c.
A spiraled basket made of coppiced willow by Rachel Bower Baskets, for corralling a collection of handmade wooden spoons.
An easy-to-find-at-the-bottom-of-bags Caro pen by Craighill, and an Ina Seifert lanyard to keep it (and keys) handy.
A chair by Cultivation Objects that recalls telephone seats, for texting and word games.
A cherry wood cable wrap by Naoto Yoshida, for keeping cords neat.
Miriam Murri's dog-waste bag dispenser for Alessi, for putting a little shine on a most unpleasant chore.
A cheery and sturdy Hender Scheme tissue case, because tissue manufacturers seem driven to choose THE WORST patterns for tissue boxes. Why?!!!!
gifts for the spaced-out
A glassy glimpse of celestial bodies by ilikoiart, for extraterrestrial gazing.
An eclipse viewer made for the total solar eclipse of January 4, 1925: "Of all the wonders of astronomy, there is no spectacle more fascinating than the total eclipse of the sun."
One solar system for suspending (Tour D'Horizon solar system mobile) and another one for wearing (Kapital Universe gabbeh scarf).
A bottle of ink the color of moon dust—Jacques Herbin Pouissiere de Lune.
A Keplerian solar telescope, for spotting sunspots.
A dish of stars, by Astier de Villatte.
Victorian Man-in-the-Moon moonstone and diamond earrings, for hanging the moon.
The 2025 Sora daily calendar, for keeping track of lunar phases.
A top made of vintage Japanese embroidered silk Obi that shimmers like starlight, from Stitch and Tickle.
Marking Time by Chris McCraw, for seeing the mark of the sun, or this book by Emily Sheffer, for seeing the mark of the moon.
An Astroblaster, for demonstrating gravitational rebound (and understanding supernovas).
A fragrance based on a scent NASA developed "to train astronauts on how Outer Space actually smells."
Dendera's double-layered shifting maze, for navigating ancient constellations.
A card by Noat that tells it like it is. (There are stars inside.)
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