- Saturday July 16 3AM to 3PM, traffic willing: 495 to 95 to 695 to 83 to 81 to 84 to 90 to 290 to 495 to 95 to 1A to 3 to 102 to Pretty Marsh Road to Tremont Road to Seal Cove
- Found pens I love - the second of four frames in flag below the ink of that pen - and rediscovered, cleaned, reloaded six fountain pens which can only be used on jeffflags, my always has been and always will be rule I made two minutes ago
- Forced by the always has been and always will be rule I make while typing this sentence, I need create new categories both at this shitty blog and the other shitty blog, not a problem there and not a problem here but do you see the motherfucking lawyer I need to deal with to get a simple paradigm shifted?
- The snide watercolor teacher in the Fall 2019 Glen Echo class I took w L and SeatSix told me I made interesting place-mats but the reason I only use primary colors on palette a result of his suggestion to the class that the best way to make grays and (my phrase) transitional bridges, I vouch
- Five disc bag, you didn't ask, from long-range to putter, Beast, Roadrunner, Leopard, Roc, Aviar (the pink one with the Missing Low Is Lame sticker), a vintage circa 2006 cutting-edge bag
- The hiring committee I'm on for my next boss voted unanimously for one candidate as expected but unexpected was one member's utter dismissal of my ex-colleague's candidacy and the overall NO from all members so I am not solely responsible for affecting the life path of the ex-colleague
- Halfway through Blake Butler's brilliant *300,000,000,* it's like brushing my teeth with SOS pads
- I feel obligated to finish it and know beyond doubt if I don't take it to Maine my current self-bylaws say if I pick it up again I must start at the beginning so I will never finish it (at one time not reading it but having it the day-backpack sufficed and I'm taking it with me but if I'm on the same page in August...)
- L packing gouache for me, I'm hesitant, and not just because I'm just relearning my watercolor hand
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PEACH FARM
Dean Young
I’m thinking it’s time to go back
to the peach farm or rather
the peach farm seems to be wanting me back
even though the work of picking, sorting,
the sticky perils and sudden swarms are done.
Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never
been on a peach farm, just glimpsed
from a car squat trees I assumed
were peach and knew a couple in school
who went off one summer, so they said,
to work on a peach farm. She was pregnant,
he didn’t have much intention, canvases
of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste.
He’d gotten fired from the lunch counter
for putting too much meat
on the sandwiches of his friends
then ended up in Macy’s in New York
selling caviar and she went home
I think to Scranton, two more versions
of never hearing from someone again.
I’d like to say the most important fruits
are within but that’s the very sort of bullshit
one goes to the peach farm to avoid,
not just flight from quadratic equations,
waiting for the plumber,
finding out your insurance won’t pay.
Everyone wants out of the spider’s stomach.
Everyone wants to be part of some harvest
and stop coughing to death and cursing
at nothing and waking up nowhere near
an orchard. Look at these baskets,
bashed about, nearly ruined with good employ.
Often, after you’ve spent a day on a ladder,
you dream of angels, the one with the trumpet
and free subscriptions to the New Yorker
or the archer, the oink angel, angel
of ten dollar bills found in the dryer
or the one who welcomes you in work gloves
and says if you’re caught eating a single peach,
even windfall, you’ll be executed.
Then laughs. It’s okay, kiddo,
long as you’re here, you’re one of us.
1/speaking of american malls, the first memorable visit i had to one was in framingham, massachusetts, in the early 1950s when i was in first grade, to see "hopalong cassidy", the cowboy hero whose western tv show i watched - wikipedia tells us
ReplyDeleteAs portrayed on the screen, white-haired Bill "Hopalong" Cassidy was usually clad strikingly in black (including his hat, an exception to the Western film stereotype that only villains wore black hats). He was reserved and well spoken, with a sense of fair play. He was often called upon to intercede when dishonest characters took advantage of honest citizens. "Hoppy" and his white horse, Topper, usually traveled through the West with two companions: one young and trouble-prone with a weakness for damsels in distress, the other older, comically awkward and outspoken.
The actor William Boyd identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public. Although Boyd's portrayal of Hopalong made him very wealthy, he believed that it was his duty to help strengthen his "friends"—America's youth. The actor refused to license his name for products he viewed as unsuitable or dangerous and turned down personal appearances at which his "friends" would be charged admission.
2/my most recent trip to a mall was to the apple store at the montgomery mall - a new battery was put into my 6 year old iphone - that mall seems to be approximately half-full these days although the apple store was busy enough - i don't know if i'll go to a mall again or not
3/
Hmm. If you were standing at my information desk in my dream Bookstore, Better and Bigger than the Strand, asking which Jean Stafford you should read, here's what we'd do. We'd roller-skate through the S section in fiction until we reach St-, while I explained, coolly, that Stafford's fiction and Lowell's poems don't really intersect meaningfully.( As far as Lowell's wives go, you're going to have a better time with Stafford than with Elizabeth Hardwick, but let's just avoid the whole subject of Elizabeth Hardwick.) So we stand before Stafford, Jean, in our roller skates. There are three novels. I do not even bother to pull down a copy of THE CATHERINE WHEEL for you - it's melodramatic, Jamesian, but sloppily so. Which leaves BOSTON ADVENTURE and THE MOUNTAIN LION. I love BOSTON ADVENTURE passionately and re-read it every few years - I love its Cinderella-story meets the class-war structure, and love the somewhat overcooked sentences the first-person narrator constructs. But it's long and asks a lot. Now, THE MOUNTAIN LION. This has believable characters who are children (I don't know how you feel about characters who are children), a steadily more annoying class-conflict element done really interestingly, and - well, in THE MOUNTAIN LION the reader can see clearly how unfairly Stafford thought the world dealt with people, how rotten and raw the deals are - and her descriptions of the physical and social world are VERY good. So, THE MOUNTAIN LION is what I'd place in your hands. I cannot guarantee you will love it, but it's the one you'd have the most patience with.
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