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).
