imaginary outfit: postcards from italy

Notes from two weeks in Italy, March 2026:

Venice: A shop crammed with velvet gondolier slippers, tiny glass snails and mushrooms and dachshunds (saw dachshunds everywhere). Old wells around every corner and brass door buzzers that looked like doodled faces. Shops selling turned-wood geometric shapes, convex witches' mirrors, and wool sweaters and skirts of elegant plainness and eye-popping affordability. Fortuny's private library/wonder cabinet, with tiny theatres, cloud projection scrims, and pleated silk gowns. The zine library + fabulously slouchy couches at Fondazione Quarini Stampalia (and the tiny Carlos Scarpa garden with its spiraled water channel). Cornell boxes + dog memorials at Peggy Guggenheim's palazzo. A grocery store in an old, fresco-adorned theater. Vaporettos up and down the canals. Citrus trees.

Salami sandwiches and travel Scrabble. Bumping luggage over cobbles. Extraordinarily tiny cars.

Florence: A medieval abbey turned into a massive public library with a cafe on the top and a sneaky, beautiful view of the candy-striped Duomo; the third-oldest botanical garden in the world, full of charmingly overgrown greenhouses and flowerbeds; a garden of wax flowers, cabinets of shells and butterflies and beautiful rocks at La Specola; pictures made of rock at Opficio delle Pietra Dure; the sacred Ainu sticks in the old anthropological museum and its specimen cases made with old, wavy glass; the hidden garden at Basicila San Spirito; the Medicis' citrus collection at the Boboli Gardens (and oodles of little lizards running around in the sun); pop-up paper fairies and miniature accordian-file books with vintage imags of the city at Eredi Paperone; shimmery Rothkos hung in monk's cells next to Fra Angelico's luminous frescos at San Marco. Todo Modo, a bookstore/publisher/press/cafe. Many epic vintage shops. Ringing a bell for spritzes. Salted cream gelato. A roll of watercolor pencils tied with grosgrain ribbon; hand-glazed espresso cups. Diamond earrings of constellations and Florentine sandals in a small shop stocked with expensive workwear. A miniature train world created by an obsessive Sicilian count.


Horrid food poisoning for Sean. An unplanned extra day in Florence. Dry biscuits on trains; blurry landscapes. Five flights up, up, up for rooftop views in Trastevere.


Rome: Bernini's Daphne, with her toes turning to roots and fingers to translucent leaves; gleaming candied peels and marzipan fruits; fountains of sunken boats; a tiny, wisteria-hung balcony over the Spanish Steps attached to the Keats-Shelly house; galleries of micromosaic butterflies and marble animals at the Vatican museums, a starry door, celestial globes, and a floor of mosaic crows; an old cookie shop in Trastevere with photos of beloved cats on the walls; a shatteringly thin biscuit flavored with fennel. Churches everywhere hung with chandeliers and adorned with skulls and angels (my favorites, I think, were the Basilica of Saint Mary Minerva, Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere); the rooms of special stones at the Capitoline, plus its stunning views of the Forum and the city. Cats dozing on broken columns in the Largo Argentina. Passionfruit mango gelato, and another gelato that tasted of peaches and wine (went back for seconds of both). Wild cherry and coffee granitas every day, heaped with whipped cream. A street of shops for priestly vestements and a smocked undershirt of pleated, translucent silk. Crossing the Tiber using oldest bridge in the city. Antica Cartotecnica's old postcards and wall of typewriters and leather satchels; also the little notebooks stamped with the Italian words for dreams and thoughts. Everywhere, fabulous bookstores—holes-in-the-wall with foxed paperbacks, and airy fresco-ceilinged compilations of art books and fancy paper goods.


Glimpses of a garden center we did not get to explore from the taxi window. Duty-free Swatches and Adidas at the airport; tiny magnets shaped like bags of pasta, cans of tomatoes, wedges of cheese, and bottles of Aperol.

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Ichi Antiquities typewriter pants and shirt / Madewell Lantern straw hat (past season) / Runaway Bicycle handloom cotton jacket / Beklina Pensionata shoes / ancient Roman signet ring, 2nd century AD / Plain Goods vintage drop earrings / vintage square-faced Rolex, ca. 1913 / Camp Snap screen-free digital camera (we got one of these for the trip and loved using it) / Il Bisonte Linea 1978 crossbody bag / Parvum Opus intaglio notebook / vintage Super P ballpoint pen.

imaginary outfit: jólabókaflóð 2025 + wish-listed books for 2026

 

The train snakes through the icy mountains, its steady, churning roar breaking the quiet of snow-stilled space. Inside, the traveler gazes idly out the window into the darkening world. An eight-rayed star and glittering snowflake shine from the shoulder of her structured copper cardigan, while wooden adornments dangle from her ears and circle her finger. Slouchy velvet trousers break for a gleam at the ankle, like the rare green flash of sunset, paired with a peculiarly sensible pair of soft shearling shoes. She taps one silvered nail against the glass, then reaches down into a startlingly capacious bag, crammed with things to read. She pulls out a gleaming metal book and opens a marble box of sharpened scented pencils. After ringing the buzzer for a pot of tea and a fresh pear, she turns her attention again to the bag.

Inside, there is Edmund de Waal's "book about archives that is itself archival," Bridget Penney's recreation of a book that "contained enclosures ... and that encompasses all that can be captured through the filter of the writer's gaze and mind," and writings by Jenny Erpenbeck on things that disappear. There is Paul Willem's The Cathedral of Mist, telling of "the emotionally disturbed architectural plan for a palace of emptiness; the experience of snowfall in a bed in the middle of a Finnish forest; the memory chambers that fuel the marvelous futility of the endeavor to write; the beautiful woodland church, built of warm air currents and fog, scattering in storms and taking renewed shape at dusk," and a novel by Maurguerite Young that David Shurman Wallace asserts "eschews any stable sense of reality." He described his emotions reading it:

As I waded through dense paragraphs of long, winding sentences filled with images of stars and waves and angels, of seagulls and silk and butterflies, of dreams and illusions and any other abstraction you can imagine, occasionally I felt angry—on a personal level—at what I took to be the book’s obstinacy, its willingness to reprise what it had said hundreds of times before, not to mention the seemingly endless detours that defy any obvious sense of structure. At other moments, I knew that I was immersed in something beautiful and strange, something too big to understand all at once.

There is also a rare collection of Young's essays with her 1945 piece, "The Midwest of Everywhere,"  because this is a place, too, that the traveler calls home:

For me, a plain Middle Westerner, there is no middle way. I am in love with whatever is eccentric, devious, strange, singular, unique, out of this world—and with life as an incalculable, a chaotic thing, meaningful above and beyond the necessary and elemental data of my subject ... I am told by commentators both cynical and wistful, those who have never inhabited my regionless region, that we of the Middle West have no Main Stream, no focus, no elite. 'True,' I would answer, 'the Middle West, though it may have a hidden Gulf Steam, has no Main Stream because it is oceanic'—that is, touching on all shores and limitless. There are no boundaries I know of. I have seen, on the grassy ocean, many a lurching ancient mariner—and once, in an Indiana cornfield, a dead whale in a boxcar. 

The Middle West is probably a fanatic state of mind. It is, as I see it, an unknown geographic terrain, an amorphous substance, the ghostly interplay of time with space, the cosmic, the psychic, as near to the North Pole as to the Gallup Poll.

There are more hefty tomes to consider: a "death-defying feat of ambition ... a spectacular honeycomb of books within books" and a 544-page monograph on Celia Paul, which recalls to the traveler's mind an afternoon in an airy London gallery being held by painted eyes. A unforgettable exhibit of Surrealist and Romantic work is catalogued, as is "five centuries of stars, dreams, and plenilunes" and 2,000 Japanese rain words. Smaller books fill the corners—late ghost stories by Henry James, a book of "melancholic, wandering castles," another with photographs of hands, and one tense with high-stakes mountain drama.

The traveler thinks. What does she want to read? After all, it is Christmas Eve. Finally, she finds what she is looking for—a book of Yuletide hauntings.

Merry everything, friends.

*

Other jólabókaflóðs (Yule book floods).

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TOGA PULLA Motif cardigan / Album di Famiglia velvet W & S trousers / Susan Hable ebony drop earrings / early Victorian carved bog oak mourning ring at Erica Weiner / Jean Gerbino cup and saucer, ca. 1950 / Lizzie Ames custom journal cover / Hender Scheme Mouton Henri shoes / Harry and David pears / Choosing Keeping x Perfumer H scented pencils / Maria La Rosa Verdino laminated socks. 

imaginary outfit: spiderwebs

A season in spiderwebs:

July, Sean calls me away from my desk: An orb weaver is working a marvel, throwing line from the cedar tree to the weeping cherry, a span of more than a meter. We stand and watch it, iridescent, nimble and deliberate, triangulating points of contact, moving methodically as time, laddering precise rungs between radiating lines. It is busy all afternoon, and the finished web is perfect. It sits in the center, and I hope it is pleased. When we look for it the next day, though, it's gone.

August: Nights and mornings, we walk to river. Its surface is a low, slow, late-summer fizz of insect life. Bats stutter-flap from bank to bank, and spiders claim the space between iron struts and wooden rails of the old train bridge. There are at least two different species we observe squatting at the center of the biggest webs—both thumb-sized, one mostly body, another, mostly leg. Their strong constructions last the week, gradually filling with unlucky gnats and flies. We never spot the smaller spiders that make the more beautiful webs; these hang lower and catch the dew, a fairy-tale netting of water and light.

September, sitting on the couch: I realize almost all of the living-room windows are filmed with old webs, greying the light. Leaves and dried flies bunch in the corners. I go outside with an old broom. The webs catch and twist in the bristles, a grey, sticky cloud like hell's cotton candy.

Last week, walking the dog, sun slanting sharply from the east: the narrowest laser-bright gleam. I stop to look; it vanishes. One step back, and it reappears. A foot or so of delicate line, suspended in space, like a crack in space repaired with microns of gold. One solitary thread of spider silk. Looking up, down, and around, I could not figure out how it was attached or what it was for. It felt like a miracle that it was there at all, and that I was there to see it.

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Related: "Spider and I"

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A low-key everyday outfit inspired by the noncolor/color of spiderwebs and dusk and dew:

J. Crew Carolyn sweater (just bought this; I'm not normally a J. Crew shopper, but it is the exact color of the October fog in the river valley) / Madewell x Kaihara jeans / Amiacalva Easy Bag / Heureu Plegada shoes in grey / Maria La Rosa laminated socks / Victorian sterling and ivory fly stud earrings / Susan Hable ebony love knot / Cirque Siren nail polish (Cirque is my favorite, though I have been enjoying some colors by Manicurist Paris lately).

imaginary outfit: painting shadows on the longest day

 

So, hey, hey, we've made it to the longest day, and here's what I'd like to do: load up an insulated basket with sandwiches (some with soppressata sliced very, very thin, thickly stacked on very white, very soft bread, and nothing else; some with tomato and Kewpie), cherries and nectarines packed on ice, matchstick shards of crisp carrots and celery, a jar of olives and a jar of pickles, lots of potato chips (flat, not ridged), sugar wafers, bottles of extremely fizzy water, and mini cans of Coca-Cola. My dearest friends would not be scattered far and wide; they'd all be here, and we'd all troop off, bumping baskets against hips and shins, to find a particularly splendid tree. We throw down a blanket and after feasting and gabbing, I'd unroll long sheets of paper and weigh them down with rocks and empty bottles. We'd fill the olive jar with water and pull out a set of paints and trace the shadows of leaves and branches, marking the places where we cannot see the light. And then it would be time to pack up and find some ice cream and wait for the fireflies to come out. I saw the first ones of the summer this week, in between the thunderstorms. 

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Labo.Art Camicia Leva top in sushi / Toast macro gingham lightweight linen pants / insulated Bondi picnic hamper by Woven / Golden Rabbit marbled enamel plate / Irodori Kobako watercolor set in graphite / Melin Tregwynt blanket in Catkin / Cirque NSFW jelly polish / Moonstar "Lite Prim" sneakers / Ted Muehling onyx acorn earrings / Dezso gold wire necklace / Victorian engraved foliage ring / Le Sibelle micromosaic butterfly ring.

imaginary outfit: a rainy saturday walk in paris

 

I spent the last two weeks of March in Paris—one week with my mom and sister, one week with Sean and Hugh. On the Saturday that fell in the middle, my sister and mom woke up early to leave for the airport, and Sean and Hugh were scheduled to arrive sometime later that afternoon. So after I got the rental apartment in order, I dropped my bags at a luggage locker. Then, the morning was mine. 

I needed to cross the river to get where I was going: the Musée de Minéralogie, a 200-year-old wonder-cabinet of rocks, gems, and minerals tucked inside the École des Mines, and the Jardin des Grands Explorateurs. After a cold and sunny week, the rain was falling light and steady, but the air was warm. As I walked, I looked. I saw a woman in a boldly striped ankle-length grass-green and navy slicker chatting with a butcher in a shop aglow with pink neon. Nearby, a masted ship carved in stone was frozen in full sail above the door of a boy's school, a comic book shop promised stories for heros, and ancient saints with woebegone faces leaned on each other in the arch around the doors of a weathered church. Tucked in a little alley I looked into shop windows full of glass-tipped pens and prune-colored ink, rings heavy with old intaglios, and silvery Japanese papers. There was a poetry bookstore with simple wood shelves that I coveted (I went back later to get a closer look at those). 

I kept walking, headed toward the flower market. I saw a man riding a bike with two umbrellas open; one over his head, but the other angled over the handlebars, like some sort of mutant turtle. I passed the big old clock; blue, spattered with gold, with a face like the sun and two serene women presiding over the time, wielding sword and scale. I passed lines of people waiting in the rain, patiently waiting to see splendor, and walked on along the wide streets. I passed through a small park littered with the remnants of an old church; it's there you find the oldest tree in Paris. I wandered through a cold, clammy church, dark with stone pillars, then past big bookstores promising sales and high street shops with rainwashed fronts. I saw the backside of a medieval garden and walked through a market with bricks of nut-studded nougats stacked like cinder blocks. I saw a second clock, much smaller,  behind a fogged pane of glass set into an alcove in the thick, creamy walls of the Sorbonne; it was near a statue with a lipsticked mouth, garish against the stone. And eventually I found where I was going, after entering a glassed vestibule watched by a friendly guard and wandering austere school halls marked with noticeboards. I turned a corner and found myself facing a startlingly grand staircase surrounded by murals depicting ice caves and other geologically sublime places. I rang the bell and bought my ticket. I spent longer than I expected looking at the specimen samples, but also at the beautiful blond wood cases, with slanted glass tops, some protected by lids, that stretched on from room to room to room. Tall windows overlooking the Jardins du Luxembourg were thrown open and the rooms smelled of rocks, rain and wood; I caught glimpses of the Eiffel Tower behind a scrim of cloud. 

As I was leaving, I found a locked door—through its glass pane, I could just see a peek of the skylit library, closed that day.  I walked out through the gardens; by then, the sun had appeared, and the famous pale green chairs scattered throughout the grounds were filling up. The air smelled like hyacinths. I made it to the Jardin des Grands Explorateurs and ambled all the way to the massive bronze turtles sunning themselves in the dry fountain bed. Then it was time to meet my guys, so I turned back. But I made sure to visit the bees along the way; I first stumbled across them by accident more than twenty years ago and hoped that I would find them again this time. It felt good to know that they are still there. 

*

Rachel Antonoff Marie the Baguettes Madison slicker / ventilated Calzuro clogs / Two New York sweatshirt / COS slouchy pants / Kathryn Bentley fish studs / Sapir Bachar gold eternity beads necklace / Manicurist nail polish in Hollyhock (I bought this in Paris and have been impressed by how well it holds up) / Nizū Kanū x Niwaki rucksack / The Common Toad and other Essays by George Orwell / Bresciani socks, colored like the iridescent oil slick on a puddle.

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.

*

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.)

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).

imaginary outfit: rose-garden tourism

 

Last June, I was in Portland, Oregon, staying in a neighborhood of exuberant gardens. Plants spilled out and over the sidewalks, filling berms and medians and cracking pavements—heavy-headed rudbeckias and bright wiry poppies, stalky hollyhocks and elegantly gnarled Japanese maples, and everywhere, roses.  In the mornings and evenings, before and after work, I'd go get coffee and chouquettes and walk and admire. One house had tied a pair of scissors to a spectacularly thorny rosebush heavy with blooms, hung with a laminated sign that read "HELP YOURSELF."

Portland is an excellent city for roses—the International Rose Test Garden is there, with its more than 10,000 bushes. A heavenly place, truly, that you smell before you see, but I particularly love the tennis courts perched on the hillside above it. Some time ago, a rainbow array of roses were planted against its chainlink fence, and now it is encrusted with blossoms. Every time I visit, I curse dumb airlines that make toting my tennis things a costly hassle because hitting there would be a dream come true.

I thought the garden and the tennis courts were the rosiest places in town, but as I was ambling in my temporary neighborhood, I noticed a strong scent of rose. Following my nose, I came upon an unlooked-for delight: a diamond-shaped park densely planted with roses, nested right in the neighborhood. As I walked up and down, reading all of the roses' names, I noticed a sign: "South Rose Garden." The fact that "South" was specified made me wonder if perhaps there was a "North Garden," so I walked that way. Reader, there were FOUR rose gardens—one for each cardinal direction, each stacked with rows of blooms named after old movie stars, descriptive adjectives, and forgotten French ladies. I stumbled upon them all, one after the other, increasingly giddy. (I suppose I could have looked it up on the map, but I didn't and got to enjoy the absolute surprise of finding each one.) I had found Ladd's Addition Gardens; four rose gardens framing a central circle with camellias and rhododendrons.

I do not know if anyone would plan a neighborhood around a garden now, but I am so glad someone did, and that people still take the time to tend the roses so anyone who happens by can enjoy them. I'm headed west for work again soon, and I hope to find them blooming.

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Margaret Howell dense cotton shorts / Toast ribbed wool cotton Gansey sweater / La Botte Gardiane Alain shoes / Victorian lock bracelet (similar) / Beaufille abstract petal hoops / Vintage Seiko (similar) / Luzern La Defense sunscreen / Olympus XA 35mm  point-and-shoot camera / Graham Stuart Thomas's The Old Shrub Roses and Climbing Roses Old and New / Zilla rucksack / Photo of Portland's Washington Park tennis courts by Keri Anderson/Heels First Travel.

imaginary outfit: summer trend report

 

Here, in no particular order, are a selection of key trends emerging for summer 2024, sample size (n) of one:

FASHION

Ratty Retired Banker: Well-worn khakis fraying gently at the seams; oxfords, tees, and sweatshirts laundered to within an inch of their lives; busted leather loafers; boat shoes and grubby canvas sneakers that were white once upon a time; rumpled hair a few weeks out from a trim; a penchant for carrying things around in reused plastic shopping bags.  

Garden Pajamas: Wearing whatever you slept in out in the yard to do a little light weeding amidst the morning dew.

Poplin: Crispy cotton ftw.

Tomato plant as color palette.

Enormous pants: Must billow, sail-like, in summer breezes. Small children and animals should be able to hide in their capacious folds.

Constant sunhat.

Bag-in-bag: A makeshift coping mechanism for an accessory category notable for a shocking lack of pockets.

Beaded flowers, as adornment and craft.

Silver nails, fingers and toes.

TECHNOLOGY

Single-Use Device Ascendency: Wristwatches, film cameras, turntables, print magazines, and old books in lieu of smartphone.

Phone calls > texts.

The mute button.

Suspended reality: Widespread adoption of hammocks and swings.

Endless scroll: Watching clouds and water move.

RETAIL

Opportunistic drive-by: Stopping at any sale indicated by a temporary yard sign, especially if hand-made.

Used book sales in libraries, cafagymnatoriums, parking lots, etc.

Shops in barns.

FOOD

Tomato sandwiches: Made with white bread, Kewpie mayonnaise, and copious amounts of salt and pepper. Influencer campaign led by Harriet the Spy.

Homemade pie.

Fruit on ice in silver bowls: Chill whatever fruit is in season. Pile ice in metal bowl, preferably silver. Heap on fruit in artful mountainous display. Serve.

Bitter sodas and salty crunchy chips: Every day at 5 o'clock.

Italian jujubes.

Everything in a tortilla. (The lazy person's preferred salad format.)

Abundant pickles.

MUSIC

Haunted hand-claps, doo-doo-dums, and sha-la-las: Songs with ghostly echoes of mid-century pop. (Ex: Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee, Jessica Pratt's "World on a String," and Amen Dunes' "Purple Land.")

Ecstatic Eno + Cale/"Spinning Away."

Guitar solos.

Scuzzy shimmer.

Outdoors listening opportunities.

FILM

The death-rapt (and life-filled) films of Alice Rohrwacher: Namely, La Chimera, Happy as Lazzarro, and The Wonders.

Italian neorealism.

Movies watched in movie theaters, as often as possible. Popcorn (butter mandatory), Coca-cola mini-cans smuggled in.

PRINTED MEDIA

Allergen paperbacks: Will likely elicit sneezing; notable for brown, crumbling pages. Ideally sourced from a library sale (see above) or Little Free Library.

Floral Observer.

Old magazines, local newspapers, and crossword puzzle books.

TELEVISION

Nope.

TRAVEL

Rose-garden tourism. 

Band-based roadtrips.

Micro-excursions: Small outings to unfamiliar places.

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Plain Goods wide-brim linen sun hat / Nicholson & Nicholson Tender poplin top / Shaina Mote Volume pants / Seavees Fairfax lug-soled slip-on sneakers / Rachel Comey Baby Keel silver earrings / vintage Seiko wristwatch / Cirque Colors Sterling nail polish / vintage beaded bag, via Plain Goods / Bembien Clara bag / Virago Modern Classics paperbacks / Sanbitter soda / tomato sandwich / bowl of chips.

imaginary outfit: true colors

I can't quite remember when it happened, but somewhere along the way, I stopped having to pick out my kid's outfits. Now, at eight nearing nine, he is an inimitable dresser. He wears whatever he feels like and only what he loves, and because he doesn't really like most patterns or anything black, gray, or navy, he comes up with the best color combinations, like lavender socks and bright orange sweatpants with a red sweater. Some days, he tells me that he is dressing like the sky and earth, with green pants and a blue shirt, or like a flower, all pink and red with green socks for stems. 

It's a small labor of love to find the clothes that match his visions. The bright colors and simple shapes I could find when he was smaller are more of a challenge to source in big-kid sizes, where dull prerogatives of gender and taste are still stubbornly entrenched. And it is a joy and a delight to see that no matter what I supply him with, he always finds an unexpected way to put things together. He sees possibilities I did not know were there. 

Isn't that the point? That each generation comes along with fresh eyes that see what we've missed or chosen to overlook, that they take what we give them and experiment and discover? I don't think adults are honest, though, about what we want from the young. We tell them to change the world—but only, it seems, if it is not too inconvenient and nobody in charge ends up looking like fools or worse for the choices they've made. We tell them to speak up but don't like it when what they have to say isn't what we want to hear. They are relentlessly pressured into lives that follow old patterns, into the same compromises and accommodations. The message is to be like us, maybe a little better, but not so different that anyone's complacency is shaken, that any adult in the room has to stop and think and question. 

I don't want my kid to be like me, though. I hope as he grows, that he takes whatever I can give him and builds into something fantastic, beyond my limited imaginings. And I hope that I can keep changing, too, to be alive to whatever gets unlocked along the way, from little things like the way red and lilac and green sing together, to whatever radical futures might come into being.

Happy mother's day.

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Bluumade jacket shirt in koala linen / By Malene Birger Lanney dress / Tory Burch Violet t-strap / Bembien Bonita bag in tomato / Cirque Nail Colors in Sterling / Mary Macgill woven baroque pearl earrings / Loren Stewart mini mixed pearl safety pin earring / Debbie Carlos Pedrolino to-go mug / Jenni Nuttell, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words. 

imaginary outfit: dressing like a rothko painting

Last week, desperate to escape the glum relentless invariable Februarieness of February (though bedecked with hearts, candy, three-day weekends, and friends' birthdays, the shortest month is always the hardest one for me), we hightailed it to Washington, D.C., to catch some mid-Atlantic sun and the Mark Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. I know it is time to leave town when I start researching yet again just how many days of sun northeastern Ohio gets in a year: a measly 168, and of those, only 66 are truly sunny (and it's been cloudier than usual this year).

We needed color and light, and we got it. Outside, the sun was high and bright, and in the windowless galleries of the NGA's East Building, the Rothkos vibrated with color-generated energy. These were all works on paper—none of the epic canvases—and most of the late works, the shimmering color stacks, were more or less the size of an ordinary window, creating the pleasing illusion of peering into portals framing some other, more intense realm. It was color embodied—not flat, but dimensional, moving and changing as I looked at it—and it was intoxicating; radiant magentas, biting reds, and acidic yellows, pungent deep greens haloed by rich blues that recalled to my mind the lapis brightness of Giotto's starry ceiling. Even the pale works, chalk-like and cloudy, held ghosts of pink and violet. My camera failed to capture any of these colors, and the prints and books in the gift shop did, too.

When I lived in Ireland, the interiors of the apartment I rented were painted egg-yolk yellow. The wood-framed furniture was forest green, with yellow, red, and blue cushions. I was appalled by how garish it all felt, but after a few months, it made a kind of sense. After days and days with no sun, coming home to bright color was unexpectedly soothing, restful even.

While I am not ready to repaint the rooms in my house (yet), I did buy a cashmere sweater that reminded me just a little of the magenta in this painting (which really doesn't read on a screen, sadly), and I am stalking resale sites to build a  different sort of capsule wardrobe for winters to come—a Rothko capsule, to wear when February gets to be too much.

Mark Rothko, "Untitled," 1959.

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Trying to match the colors in this painting was a fun little challenge—these yam-hued silk pants caught my eye, but weren't quite red enough, though I am bookmarking them to watch for sales. And I thought about adding one of these wispy tees as a streak of white, but since this is all pretend, decided to go big with a fancy bag, though the Novella bag by Porto is maybe more my speed—they describe it as big enough to hold a small book, so, sold. And for more immediate hit of color, I ordered a bunch of jelly polishes from Cirque in colors inspired by another painting I love.

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Pictured: J. Crew cropped cashmere sweater in magenta grape / Frame Le Slim Bardot jeans / Harris Wharf London coat / Caron Callahan Alfie flats / Bottega Veneta Pouch clutch / Faris Vero helix and stud / vintage Tiffany Hardware silver ball earrings (new here, though you can turn them up easily on resale sites).

imaginary outfit: convalescing

For the past six weeks, I've been on the mend after having an errant clump of mysterious cells roughly the size and shape of a sweet potato extracted from my midsection. After navigating a season of increasingly unsettling spells of testing and waiting, the definitiveness of surgery was a relief. A plan! Something would be done, something would be known. In the end, I lucked out—an "easy" surgery, with small incisions, that removed the best kind of benign tumor to have. (That pathology report, when it turned up a week or so later, was the most effective painkiller I have experienced.) It was all a physical fluke. 

Surgery is wild, though. One day, I had a regular seven-mile-walk habit and was busy doing all the things, and the next ... I was not. Before surgery, the prospect of recovery sounded relaxing—resting in bed, long slow strolls, nothing to do but read—but it turns out, recovery is its own type of hard work, a shifty dance of pushing forward and easing up, of reclaiming and adapting ordinary tasks and habits. For the first couple of weeks, anything requiring sustained attention was too challenging—my body stole focus and just simply being was absorbing enough. (It was a good moment for crossword puzzles, magazine articles, and short stories.) With time, I'm getting better and better, but I still feel like I am living in two parallel tracks—one in my mind, which holds on to life before surgery as the baseline for how I should be, and the other in my body, which continues to heal in its own inscrutable, nonlinear way. I wonder when this weird awareness will start to fade, when the two lenses click together and simply become ordinary life again. 

Here's to slow but steady steps into the new year. 

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Some things I have found useful since my surgery: THE GREAT wide-legged cropped sweatpant (There is no elastic waist, which means you can tie them to rest gently wherever is most comfortable, and The GREAT's website includes all the measurements for each garment, making it easy to obtain pants of sufficient looseness for post-surgical swelling.) / THE GREAT long-sleeve crop tee  / Inventive Sleep backrest wedge pillow (much more comfortable than a shifting mound of treacherous small cushions) / Serta electric sherpa fleece throw (amazing; nothing else felt as good) / Hydro Flask 40 oz All Around travel tumbler / IKEA Resgods folding bed tray (invaluable) / Sockwell Circulator wool-blend medium compression socks (to switch off/cover hospital-issued TED hose) / Salomon RX slides (comfy, with a nonslip grippy sole). 

Also pictured: The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories / Slush Club cup.

Not pictured, but essential: ARQ's generously cut high-rise undies, for avoiding tender incisions, and a Jellycat sun purloined from a kid's bedroom, useful to press against your abdomen while laughing if you, like me, foolishly elect to watch a comedy special the day after you come home. 

imaginary outfit: jólabókaflóð 2023 + wish-listed books for 2024

December 24th, and time again for my favorite Icelandic tradition—the Yule Book Flood. So here I am, swaddling myself in knits and plaids and plonking down on the small grey sofa by the fireplace. (Though it is small and upright, it is peculiarly suited to extravagant lolling.) There, in the glow of the Christmas lights and the ambient red heat of the electric fire, with a sharp, salty snack and something to drink to hand, knowing that, finally, everything is wrapped and ready for tomorrow, I'll pick up something to read.

My imaginary to-read shelf is well-stocked. On it, I've finally secured a long longed-for copy of Edith Sitwell's A Book of the Winter, and I have the collector's edition of Michelle Oka Doner's Intuitive Alphabet. Then, there's Alex Arzt's fascination with feral cabbages and Suzie Alan Skunk's Maybe I Think You Stink, a "celebrated work of poetry and skunk culture written by and for the small animal community." Mathias Énard's new novel about "the one day in the year where Death and the living observe a temporary truce" beckons, too. I might while away a happy hour or so learning about the secret lives of stones or exemplary fools or odd jobs, or perusing exhibition catalogs "of the Disappeared, Destroyed, Lost or Otherwise Inaccessible" or Lois Dodd's windows and reflections. There's copy of The Girls, a "wry, macabre tale of simple country living, brutal murder, and a reasonably happy couple" by a "most startlingly offbeat suspense novelist," and Howard Fishman's life of Connie Converse, too:

"Converse was notable for preserving a greater level of obscurity more extreme than any of the others: recordings never commercially available; no connections to any scene or famous figure; being a guitar-playing singer-songwriter (and home-taper) in the early 1950s, before such a thing existed, who played only among friends before dropping out of music in the 1960s and ultimately disappearing shortly after."

(I think I found out about this book through Kelsey Keith's Substack.) 

In other Substack recommendations: Jess Stanley's praise of Naomi Klein's Doppelganger landed it on the must-read shelf:

Klein has taken everything frightening in the world—Steve Bannon! Vaccine denial! Fascists! Colonialism and racist scapegoating! Inaction on climate change!—and made the state of the problem clear. Sometimes you just want someone older, wiser and cleverer than you to put your worries in order and point you in the right direction. Klein does this! 

More directional reading: Sadiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Rinaldo Walcott, and Vicky Osterweil on looting, which Osterweil describes as "a nearly irrecuperable aesthetic gesture against the police, whiteness, and the regime of property that gives those forces power and purpose," and David Graeber's Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, a book about, yes, 17th-century pirates, but also about what Francis Gooding calls "living, practical" experiments in "new ways of organizing social life," not to mention "blood pacts and poisonings, magicians and princesses, off-grid pirate towns on tropical islands, impostor kings lording it over phoney empires, and more."

Back in real life, I'll probably spend the evening in my pajamas with the Penguin Book of Christmas Stories. Italo Calvino and Angela Carter for Christmas—what could be better?

Wishing everyone, everywhere peace and somewhere safe and quiet and calm to read.

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Aunti Oti fisherman sweater / Needles shaggy wool plaid pants / Lelet chain-bow bobby pins / Satomi Kawakita dangling diamond earrings / Georg Jensen "Acorn" Stilton scoop / Stilton cheese in a ceramic crock / Anthony Treherne & Co. miniature set of Shakespeare / Lobmeyr Persian flower tumbler / Comice pear / Effie's Oatcakes (delicious) / Jamie Haller bronzed penny loafers.

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Previous jólabókaflóðs!

 

imaginary outfit: park bench

 

Imagining for a moment that I had more time—a clear hour between the tasks that fritter holes in the hours between pickup and drop-off, an actual temporal escape hatch from the endless scroll of attention-fragmenting to-dos—I'd like to sit on a park bench and do nothing. I think one of the saddest scenes in any book I have ever read is the end of the The House At Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin takes Winnie-the-Pooh for a walk and explains that because he is going to school, he won't have time to do nothing anymore, and nothing is his favorite thing to do. That passage has been one of the touchstones of parenthood for me, to keep our lives as underscheduled as possible so that my kid gets plenty of nothing. (I get all of my best parenting insights from children's books; Moominmamma's endless well of calm love, hands-off support, and helpful handbag items are things I think about all the time). Still, the somethings encroach, and I need plenty of nothing myself to function.

So, to the park bench. No headphones, just the happenstance combination of breeze and leaves and insect-whir and the distant dull grumble of people moving from one place to the next in cars and planes leaving vaporous trails. No phone, just sunlight and shadow. Nothing to do and nowhere to be.

I might close my eyes and think of the things I need to do; I might wonder what we'll eat for dinner and if I need to run by the store later. Or I might remember lakes. This was a summer where I swam in five—Ontario, silty-bottomed and still; Huron, clear as green glass and boneshakingly cold, edged with stones white as bones full of the skeletons of tiny, long-dead creatures; Superior, brown and clear and also cold. Its rainbowed rocks were pieces of whorled time, embodied and solid, that you could pick up and marvel over, eruptions and foldings frozen forever in bands of color. Michigan, the lake most like the ocean, edged with golden dunes that seem to stretch forever, and Erie, the lake I know best, with water like labradorite—translucent grey and brown and blue by turns.

And then my time would be up, and I would need to get back to all the other things.

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Janessa Leone bucket hat / Arq Cameo crop top / Ralph Lauren paint-spatted pants (an affordable alternative to Bode's pair for this season and Comme des Garcon's from 2011) / Shaina Mote work shirt in East / Arcopedico shoes / Mondo Mondo cosmopolitan hoops / Victorian silver love-token necklace from A. Brandt & Son / 1980s mechanical Timex / Zilla gold foil lunch bag / The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield.

imaginary outfit: a day-and-a-half knocking around new york city

 

Other than a frantic hour last August for a strategic bagel acquisition/bookstore bathroom break, I have not been back in New York City since the pandemic started. It's strange to have been away for so long from a place that was once home. Barring illness, delays, or other catastrophes, I will be there again this week for a very short visit, and I have been having fun contemplating improbable itineraries. Here's one:

Day 1: Arrive in the afternoon. Drop off bag and set out seeking Karma (bookstore and galleries) to look at Thaddeus Mosley's trees and Paul Mogensen's mathematical processes. Buy an imprudent number of heavy books, then pop into The Fortnight Institute to see Leonard Baby's pretty pictures. Stockpile sugar from Economy Candy and wander in and out of Top Hat, Bode, and Sweet Pickle Books, before wending over to Oroboro, C'H'C'M, and John Derian to buy something for my mom. Wind up at The Drawing Center to get lost in mythic worlds. Do I have time to sneak into the Renee Gladman exhibit at Artists Space? How fast can I walk and look? Dinner with friends.

Day 2: Up early-early for glorious, glorious lox at Russ & Daughters Cafe, then a train uptown and strolling near the Reservoir in Central Park until The Met opens. After admiring the scholar stones in Gallery 213, a long amble downtown (with stops to contemplate the cerulean ceiling at Albertine and the small boats) to see the new Kiki Smith murals in Grand Central, and then maybe MoMA for Ming Smith. Pause for a restorative buerre et jambon sandwich at L'Ami Pierre, hoard pens and other necessities of life at MUJI and walk down Library Way, then to Chelsea for Ja'Tovia Gary at Paula Cooper, Miyoko Ito at Matthew Marks, and Charles Atlas at Luhring Augustine. A look around at Printed Matter on 11th if I can make it there before they close, with a stop at 192 Books. (My vacation tradition is to stress the zippers on my carryon by cramming it with books.) Walk and walk and walk until my feet complain, and then acquire Thai food.

Day 3: Another early morning and a long train ride to the Upper West Side. Egg bagels from Absolute and a walk in my old neighborhood. On to the airport.

Mostly, though, I will be so happy to walk and walk and walk and see where I find myself.

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Anine Bing fleece coat (the 2019 HYKE x North Face long fleece coat is my unobtainable ideal, though) / Malo fuzzy hat / Stella McCartney 48mm round tortoiseshell specs / russety sweater, like Sakaya Davis or IOLO / Comme des Garçons flowery pants (with long johns under, if it is chilly; in my dream, these flowery balloon pants would be a soft, medium-weight flannel, akin to cozy pajamas) / Rachel Comey Bond earrings / Cirque nail polish in Zeitgeist / Pedrolino travel mug by Debbie Carlos / Portage "Pocket" notebook (I get these at my local hardware store) and green Artline Fineline pen, for notes / Auxiliary pockets for masks of varying intensities, Metrocards, museum postcards, and various souvenirs, a.k.a. Clare V. denim tote of yore / Hansel from Basel daisy socks / New Balance 1906R sneakers / something to read that folds up small and can be recycled when I'm done.