misswhistle

Blake

2012-02-11T00:19:00.001-08:00

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

-- William Blake

Sunday morning, California

2012-02-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

Diving into the Wreck

2012-02-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

-- from "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich

"The beauty of the world has two edges, 

one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder." 

-- Virginia Woolf

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
     Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
     That is not it, at all."

-- From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

We Dogs of a Thursday Off

2012-01-27T06:45:00.001-08:00

The wine of uncharted days,
Their unsteady stance against the working world,

The intense intoxication of nothing to be done,
A day off,

The dance of the big-hearted dog
In us, freed into a sudden green, an immense field:

Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight

Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs

Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness

Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,

A workday suddenly turned over on its back,
Hoping to be rubbed

-- Albert Rios

Dear Bongo, No

2012-01-25T03:54:00.000-08:00

Bono wrote to Captain Beefheart asking to collaborate, & Beefheart sent back a letter that just said, "Dear Bongo, no."

Ah Wednesday. The spotted hot water bottle that keeps me company during these serial bouts of insomnia is fine underneath my knees unless I shift an inch and then she leaps from the bed, terrified. She trots around the other side and hops in again. And so it goes, rather like a bad marital dance.

I told someone today that I filed for disillusionment, without a hint of irony.

But the darkest hour is always before dawn -- they would have you believe -- so we await the sun with nervous excitement.

Overheard on the Titanic

2012-01-18T02:05:00.001-08:00

by Austin Kleon (h/t Petrikin)

Lucian Freud's Dog Love

2012-01-16T19:58:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about Lucian Freud tonight, after seeing a photograph of him with a fox in his arms. So many of his paintings featured dogs. He loved them. Which of course makes me admire him more.

"The one thing I don't like about them," he says, "is what's called doglike devotion. Also, I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine."

I've reached the decidedly eccentric stage of my life where I dislike anyone who doesn't adore dogs (with one notable exception; and that's because she loves human beings more than anyone I know).

From "The Man with the Blue Guitar"

2012-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

XXXII

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know 
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

You as you are? You are yourself.
The blue guitar surprises you.

-- From "The Man with the Blue Guitar" by Wallace Stevens

Katinka Matson

2012-01-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

via edge.org

Keep Calm

2012-01-16T18:05:00.001-08:00

Gunnel Wåhlstrand

2012-01-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day

The White Room

2012-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

The obvious is difficult

To prove. Many prefer

The hidden. I did, too.

I listened to the trees.

They had a secret

Which they were about to

Make known to me,

And then didn’t.

Summer came. Each tree

On my street had its own

Scheherazade. My nights

Were a part of their wild

Storytelling. We were

Entering dark houses,

More and more dark houses

Hushed and abandoned.

There was someone with eyes closed

On the upper floors.

The thought of it, and the wonder,

Kept me sleepless.

The truth is bald and cold,

Said the woman

Who always wore white.

She didn’t leave her room much.

The sun pointed to one or two

Things that had survived

The long night intact,

The simplest things,

Difficult in their obviousness.

They made no noise.

It was the kind of day

People describe as “perfect.”

Gods disguising themselves

As black hairpins? A hand-mirror?

A comb with a tooth missing?

No! That wasn’t it.

Just things as they are,

Unblinking, lying mute

In that bright light,

And the trees waiting for the night.

by Charles Simic

from The Book of Gods and Devils

Houghton Mifflin Harcourtt, 1990

via 3QuarksDaily

Markant

2012-01-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

War is over:if you want it

2012-01-15T04:56:00.000-08:00

I dreamed I went to Tarantino's house and he lived on a beautiful headland surrounded by water. Each direction the view was more stunning, like the Norwegian sun over the summer sea, light and glittering. So intent on finding the right house, I parked stupidly, too close to the water, and he and I had to haul the car around as if it were a small rowing boat, and secure it with a rope to a tree. The water was high for that time of year, he noted. The dogs swam out of the car to shore. For Dotsie it was easy, but Pepper was spluttering and half submerged and I had to pull him in on a rope. He wasn't doing very well but I pulled as fast as I could so that he couldn't drown. He coughed up sea water once on land and was rickety on his legs. "The sea is always high like this just before a cataclysmic event" said a neighbor, while Quentin was tying off the boat/car, and we looked out to sea together, where all was sparkling -- a little choppy perhaps -- but sparkling and I wondered what horrible thing could occur on a day like today. The neighbor stood with her hands on her hips, her hair swept back in a scarf in the Norwegian fashion, face towards the sun. All three dogs, now recovered, also looked out towards the sun. I leaned my back against a tall silver birch and contemplated what such a high tide could mean and whether we could weather it.

Very little has prepared me for the current tidal wave. I have a small boat, a stick with a red and white handkerchief on the end which contains a cheese sandwich and some satsumas. The children are with me of course. The dogs too, some days more helpful than others. Pepper's life currently consists of pills and peanut butter and the time that falls in between. His back knuckles bleed sometimes from dragging the road, but he seems happy. He sleeps with me on the sofa in the daytime and protects me from marauders.

I do not know anything. This is a journey for which you cannot prepare. I say that without drama. If there was ever a case for living in the here and now, this is it. The breadth of it is too big for one man to take on, so you divide it up into moment-sized bits, and process each one. The bits are punctuated with goodness -- beautiful days, the Senna documentary, drives into the Antelope Valley in search of reins along old Western railroads, past rickety cowboy bars, the boy -- man-shaped -- sleeping next to you and the dog, his hand in yours unselfconsciously. And there are tiny moment of gratitude -- a lunch where you could laugh together, fragments of conversation where there is light, the familiar smile, hidden so much lately, the way his says your name because he forgot he shouldn't.

Part of me wants to be sucked into the ectoplasmic storage box in Ghostbusters, to scream silently for the whole of eternity. Part of me recognizes that everything will get better. And part of me realizes that I am trite and silly and sentimental and ridiculous. And yet another part -- a large part -- has developed an unflinching belief in God.

Imagine you were given the freedom to do everything over again. Imagine how liberating that would feel. How would you stumble? Let me tell you how. You'd stumble through fear. You would stumble because instead of walking as a baby does, and getting up and walking again, each and every one of your steps would be full of second-guessing and doubt. You would take your over-intellectualizing adult mind to deal with the simple task of putting one foot in front of another. And you would ruin it. And you would fall flat on your face as I have done. Step by step, bird by bird (to steal from Annie Lamott), heartbeat by heartbeat. That's all there is to do. Five six seven eight. Dance.

They were filming a 1945 dance sequence outside my office this week, something about the end of the war. Girls with cinched waists and scarves around their heads, boys in high waisted belted pants, the big band sound, red, white and blue bunting, red lipstick and the kind of embraces where the girls were spun round in the air, and the song, again and again and again. Each take the same: the war is over, the boys are home, the girls are thrilled and relieved. And in each others' arms.

Bauhaus & Francis Bacon

2012-01-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

Brutal

2012-01-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

Brutal to give
the prisoner a window --
a blue sky glimpse --

as if an afterlife
existed. Brutal
for you to parade

in a body
in the same
room where I dream you.

-- Andrea Cohen, from Poetry magazine, November 2011

Eyes Wide Open

2012-01-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

This made my day

2012-01-10T23:04:00.000-08:00

Found on my car in the Von's parking lot 8pm. Pico near Hauser. Thrilled.

Afternoon bathe in the LA river

2012-01-08T22:23:00.001-08:00

New favorite cookbook

2012-01-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

StÃ©phane Reynaud's 365 good reasons to sit down to eat.

Utter bliss. Thanks to the Baillies.

For Epiphany: The Magi

2012-01-07T08:10:00.001-08:00

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor

-- Yeats

Poppies

2012-01-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

There is a sadness everywhere present
but impossible to point to, a sadness that hides in the world
and lingers. You look for it because it is everywhere.
When you give up, it haunts your dreams
with black pepper and blood and when you wake
you don’t know where you are.

But then you see the poppies, a disheveled stand of them.
And the sun shining down like God, loving all of us equally,
mountain and valley, plant, animal, human, and therefore
shouldn’t we love all things equally back?
And then you see the clouds.

The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.
That’s how the rain comes, softly and attentively, then

with unstoppable force. If you
stare upwards as it falls, you will see
they are falling sparks that light nothing only because
the ground interrupts them. You can hear the way they’d burn,
the smoldering sound they make falling into the grass.

That is a sound for the sadness everywhere present.
The closest you have come to seeing it
is at night, with the window open and the lamp on,
when the moths perch on the white walls,
tiny as a fingernail to large as a Gerbera daisy
and take turns agitating around the light.

If you grasp one by the wing,
its pill-sized body will convulse
in your closed palm and you can feel the wing beats
like an eyelid’s obsessive blinking open to see.
But now it is still light and the blackbirds are singing
as if their voices are the only scissors left in this world.

-- Jennifer Grotz
(from The Poem Stuck in My Head by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Paris Review)

Begin It

2012-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

h/t India Knight

Notre Dame

2012-01-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

"It's sad to walk around the Seine when you are getting divorced while everyone else
Is kissing and filming their honeymoons or new loves. Even
My husband, after we got back together, laughed at that.
Because he, too, had been heartsick on another part of the planet."

-- An excerpt from "Notre Dame" by Stephanie Brown, from the January/February 2011 American Poetry Review and as quoted by David Lehman in Poetic Perfection: Three Favorite Poems of 2011

Warm sun & thanks, dear reader

2012-01-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

readying for terrarium-making, Laurel Canyon 1-2-12

Strangely, there is optimism. Usually if there isn't, I won't comment, but today it was warm, the sun shone brighter through the eucalyptus, the dogs slept on the deck under blue skies and there was hope. I fixed the lock on the gate using a screwdriver, emptied a bucketful of rotting leaves out of the pool filter, and took apart the floating vacuum (with only moderate success). I moved the furniture, reclaimed the dining room, discovered places to buy Mexican tenangos in the US, spent a couple of hours building terrariums with Minks and saw my best boy friend for dinner. The oldest spotted is walking a little better and I am convinced that it is the sunshine not the steroids that are fixing his ancient rickety bones. New Year has come and gone. I did nothing. I have spent a few days with my children in a warm, beautiful place in Mexico. I have seen an ancient Mayan city. I've listened to various end of world theories and been amused by them. I have made it through a half dozen BAFTA screeners. I have cried at War Horse, marveled at Rooney Mara, been told not to watch Like Crazy because it's the story of our life together, been disappointed by Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close -- a film I wanted to love like no other. I have wept. I have smiled. I have realized that Life As We Know It will never be the same again and I'm determined. Determined. To make this year Count. So, strangely, there is optimism. And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

One thing I know: there are reasons to be grateful each and every day, trite as that may sound. Also, flan is a good way to end any meal. Three spotted dogs are more amusing than two. Catcher in the Rye seems to be riveting to sixteen and a half year old girls. The sea is endlessly healing. Always.

And thank you to all of you who read this blog, who've reached out to me during these last six months and shared love and kindness and funny stories and hope and recipes and humanity. Bloody amazing stuff. I am incredibly, ridiculously, humblingly full of gratitude. Happy New Year.

I leave you with Winter Thanks by Marcus Jackson, from the most excellent Writer's Almanac. If you don't subscribe already, do yourself a wonderful favor in 2012.

Winter Thanks

To the furnace—tall, steel rectangle
containing a flawless flame.
                     To heat

gliding through ducts, our babies
asleep like bundled opal.
                     Praise

every furry grain of every
warm hour, praise each
                     deflection of frost,

praise the fluent veins, praise
the repair person, trudging
                     in a Carhartt coat

to dig for leaky lines, praise
the equator, where snow
                     is a stranger,

praise the eminent sun
for letting us orbs buzz around it
                     like younger brothers,

praise the shooter's pistol
for silencing its fire by
                     reason of a chilly chamber

praise our ancestors who shuddered
through winters, bunched
                     on stark bunks,

praise the owed money
becoming postponed by a lender
                     who won't wait

much longer in the icy wind,
praise the neon antifreeze
                     in our Chevrolet radiator,

and praise the kettle whistle,
imitating an important train,
                     delivering us

these steam-brimmed sips of tea.

-- Marcus Jackson

Chupacabra

2012-01-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

In the Yucatan these hand embroidered tablecloths (or bed coverlets) are known as Chupacabra, like the mythical Vampiric creatures. Elsewhere they are known as Tenango, hand-stitched by the Otomi people. In Xcalacoco, the tables were dressed with them, in bright green, and orange, and pink and I found a red one in Playa del Carmen to bring home. I wanted to bring home one for all my girlfriends. But I discover that you can find them on ebay here.

This beautiful navy cloth is available at Laviva Home.

And this mid-century modern chair is available at Jacaranda Home.

I can't help it. Now you know all my secrets.

This is it

2012-01-02T09:13:00.001-08:00

Jesus had too many barnacles

2012-01-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

"I didn't get Jesus either. I came in on the Holy Spirit, this vague force for benevolence. When I got baptized, I thought Jesus had too many barnacles. He was not a smart guy. He was unnecessarily fucked up. Then I did thirty weeks of St. Ignatius's spiritual exercises, and I got a sense of Jesus as a human unit." -- Mary Karr

Tulum, Quintana Roo

2011-12-31T00:08:00.000-08:00

53

2011-12-30T23:10:00.000-08:00

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
for even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

-- ee cummings

Greetings from Xcalacoco, Quintana Roo

2011-12-28T03:35:00.000-08:00

Christmas sunshine with be-ribboned Bean

2011-12-26T00:00:00.001-08:00

On Christmas gifts

2011-12-25T02:15:00.001-08:00

"To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect."-- Oren Arnold (via Writer's Almanac)

Joni Mitchell - River (for Christmas in LA)

2011-12-25T00:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas

2011-12-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

-- John Betjeman

Christmas: Darlene Love on Letterman (2004)

2011-12-23T04:13:00.000-08:00

Strange light in the foothills

2011-12-18T02:11:00.000-08:00

watercress beds in the Little Tujunga creek

bamboo

looking east

towards the national forest

Shyla in her Christmas coat

Hughie

storm clouds

Santa Lucia

2011-12-18T01:40:00.001-08:00

Lussinatt, the festival of Santa Lucia is celebrated in Scandinavian countries on December 13. However, any time in advent is a good time to make these sweet saffron buns -- lussikatter. Ann, our Swedish au pair (she came to stay with us for a few months to learn English, but couldn't have been more than 17 -- I do remember, however, curiously, that her aunt was the famous opera singer, Elisabeth Söderström) spent an entire December day locked in the kitchen, mixing and rolling and baking. The entire house smelled of sweet yeast and cardamom, my very favorite smell.

Here is the recipe:

Lussekatter
Lucia buns are the traditional treats handed out during the children’s procession and are a sweet bread or ‘boller’. The literal translation is ‘Lucia cats’. This is because of the characteristic winding tail design. The buns are also decorated with raisins.

50 grams of fresh yeast or 1 packet of dry yeast(note: sweet dough yeast is best to use)
150 grams butter
500mls of milk
1 gram of saffron (or half a teaspoon of turmeric)
150 grams of sugar1/2 teaspoon of salt2 teaspoons of cardamom
About 1.3 litres of plain flour (measure in a water jug)
For decoration:1 beaten egg for glazingRaisins

Melt butter. Add milk. Crumble yeast in a mixing bowl in some of the lukewarm milk/butter mix. Then add rest of wet ingredients. (Skip this step if using dry yeast.)Mix in sugar salt cardamom and saffron. Add flour knead until a nice firm dough. (If using dry yeast add packet to flour before adding to the mix.) Cover in plastic wrap and let raise until double the size.Sprinkle some flour on a kneading area and knead dough well. Cut dough into pieces and roll them to long finger thick sausages. Shape them into the famous Lussekatter double spiral. Place on a baking sheet and cover in plastic. Allow to raise for 15 minutes. Glaze with beaten egg and decorate with raisins (usually one raisin in each eye of the swirl.)Bake at 225°C for 5-8 minutes (depending of size). Let them cool on a rack. They taste best lukewarm.

A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day

2011-12-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

-- John Donne

Winter light in Hudson, NY

2011-12-12T01:37:00.001-08:00

Hudson, NY

2011-12-12T01:35:00.001-08:00

The Royalton

2011-12-11T06:17:00.000-08:00

Central Park, morning

2011-12-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

Laurel Canyon morning

2011-12-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

2011-12-08T05:23:00.001-08:00

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.
.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
.

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
.

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
.

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
.

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

-- Mary Oliver (via 3QD)

Madness & Love

2011-12-06T04:03:00.001-08:00

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"

"I do indeed, sir."

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Sunday Sunday

2011-12-04T12:05:00.001-08:00

Dotsie

Fred & Cocomo

Ice at Middle Ranch

Magical bamboo forest

Greater Spotted

Tujunga Canyon sky

Spotteds, Hog's back

Cormorants in Kathmandu

2011-12-03T23:46:00.001-08:00

via The Guardian

And then there's my boy

2011-12-03T18:37:00.001-08:00

2011-12-03T17:44:00.001-08:00

White chocolate buttons, caramacs and a box of Cadbury's yule logs don't make up for the fact that my husband has asked for more of a separation. Apparently the one we have isn't serious enough for him or doesn't quite tick all the boxes. Apparently the whole thing has to burn and die in order for the phoenix to rise. Still confused and befuddled, I mumble my agreement and wonder if my Tardis is about to turn up and whip me home to England for Sunday lunch and comfort. There seems to be an epidemic of separations in our group of friends -- the latest a couple that seemed to be mentally, physically and spiritually joined at the hip -- and one wonders if it has something to do with mid-life. It's such a cliche to buy into that idea but I don't have any better ones. Certainly the existential crises seem more common now than ten years ago. There is something distinctly surreal about waking up one morning to find one's life partner and best buddy on a journey of discovery in which you're not included, not even tangentially. I don't say this with self-pity, merely as a matter of fact. It will no doubt fall into the 'that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger' category, and I say that as a Warrior of Optimism. (And as someone who is a big fan of roast pork with crackling, roast potatoes and parsnips and sprouting brocolli served on a table with a white cloth on it, smack dab in the middle of the Chiltern Hills, preferably with dogs at ones' feet. And maybe a glass of good claret.)

Friends are kind and try to set me up with dentists from Orange County, film directors, wholesome-looking next door neighbors. I am amused by it but frankly I have no interest. My daughter asks if I would become a lesbian instead. The thought has crossed my mind, briefly. I can't think of anything worse than going through the awkward path to intimacy, the social niceties one has to go through to get to know someone properly, the worry of whether or not to get botox in order to look twenty years younger, or whether your jiggly bits are showing. The closest bump of intimacy was having my hair cut today by a handsome young Italian, who blew warm air into my face as if I was Ann-Margret in an Elnet commercial, and fluffed up my hair with his fingers until I resembled a well-tousled terrier. Ruff ruff. He was also gay which was far easier to handle. I know this because he wore a woman's green and turquoise silk scarf around his neck, which I complimented him on. June, who was having her hair cut at the same time said something very grown up like "phwoar" as I followed him upstairs to the private rooms and gave her a wink worthy of a footballer's wife.

I'm thinking a nice fireman who would throw me over his shoulder and take me to his truck might be in order. I can play the damsel in distress very well. Also, a stubbly beard, strong hands, a broad chest and not a very large vocabulary.

Everyone says -- all my girlfriends, even my mother -- 'oh your life is going to be so much better; this is the beginning of a new adventure' and I smile and I think, but what about the old age I'd dreamed of, where we held hands and read books on the beach as the sun set, or the tomatoes we'd tend together, or the walking tours of Venice we promised we'd go on? What do you do when someone who knows you that well -- knows every single inch of you and purports to love it all -- walks out? What do you do when it's their dream they're following and not your dream? How do you not look particularly pathetic and needy and bereft when you're not really that kind of person?

Who was it that said there is a Paul Simon song for every occasion. The Mississippi delta sounds like a pretty good adventure.

And so I move on to more. "There's a girl in New York City calls herself a human trampoline." More life, more love and, I guess, more separateness.

See you on the bright side. Onward. Sunlight.

PS. Reasons to be cheerful:
Drake
Chinese food
Spiders on drugs
Riding horses first thing in the morning

Christmas carols
Disney Hall by night (see this)
Snowflake gingerbread

terms most useful

2011-11-30T08:20:00.001-08:00

-- John Baldessari

Never Mind

2011-11-30T05:15:00.001-08:00

that guests no longer come unannounced
      or that the photo album contains pictures
of much younger people than we remember being

     never mind that swallows etch Sanskrit
              on the wrinkled sky

                 it's November
     and the present is emptying its wine
                into our glasses

     never mind that we're not touching now

because our shadows are holding hands
         in the dark behind our backs

-- Denver Butson (via Writer's Almanac)

Max Tinglof: A Celebration of Life

2011-11-27T19:45:00.000-08:00

A family we know -- great, kind, excellent people -- lost their son tragically in a car accident two weeks ago. The following heartbreaking video is a celebration of his life.

Sending out love and prayers and sunlight to the Tinglof family.

Max Tinglof: A Celebration of Life from rebekah leekley on Vimeo.

Sun, son, bangs & whimpers

2011-11-27T19:25:00.000-08:00

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

-- TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

I don't know much about bangs or whimpers or how things end. I suppose these things aren't apparent until you're in them, beating down their doors, if you know what I mean. All I know is it's a feeling. A feeling you can't get rid of. I've been accused of being led by emotion, of thinking too emotionally, of being unable to be objective, but I do find that objectivity in the midst of domestic disputes is, well, quite tricky. I can be objective when I roast a chicken or when I write a strategy but in this new life of mine -- the one that I ignore for most of the week while I'm at work and which returns to bite me in the arse at the weekends -- I'm buggered.

Remember these things, my sage friend says, remember what is said and write it down and when you are having a weak moment, when you feel that you should jump back in, just read those things, read the horribleness, remember the horribleness you can be. You're better than this, she says, you're a nice person. I'm not so sure today. The sun was out, sure, and we sat in the driveway in the sun, the dogs and I, watching my son trying to start the dirt bike, blinking into the light, because the trees are too tall for the winter sun in the garden and so the warmth is mottled and patchy on the deck and there's not enough for sunning. So in shorts, we sat in the sun, me, not the dogs, and tried to drink in some light and some faith and some renewal. "Come not to me for solace, but strength and renewal" said Barry in the Eucharist this morning, the first day of Advent. And so I prayed for strength and renewal, but I'm not sure it worked. Between God, and spotted dogs, and my children (whom I'm no longer allowed to call children) and the sun's vitamin D and Thanksgiving leftovers, I tried a lot of things but I came back to one thought: at the weekends I'm a bit weak and frail. So I try to remember these things and remember that I'm better than this and remember that I am Good. Or that I try to Be Good. I think of Thelwell and treating others as you would wish to be treated with ice cream cones and ponies. But others need Other Things that maybe You can't provide. It's confusing.

So there's sun, full-on sun, and there's the son -- buff and tall and now running every day. And there are the spotteds, forming a triumverate of pied strength around me. And someone calls me lambent. But then there's the wall -- the one that Can't Be Climbed -- and it defeats me every time, but still I try to climb it. And the eucalyptus leaves are blowing and the sun bursts through and for a moment everything is okay, the whole of the world is blowing through those trees. And then, there is the reality and the pain.

Not very keen on the pain. It's an English thing, I know, not to be very comfortable with pain. Pain is decidedly un-English and certainly doesn't fit into the "Keep Calm and Carry On" way of doing things. English people drink gin and tonic and whack each other on the back and laugh and say "bugger him if he can't take a joke" and American people, especially here, are earnest and sweet and kind, and worry -- oh my gosh how they worry -- if things aren't going well. I'm grateful for that. The slapping on the back thing is, well, difficult for me. I'm not good at hiding my emotions (see the first paragraph).

And then someone said to me "it's not easy to be a warrior for optimism but that's you" and I thought about that for a bit and I felt sunny.

So here I am, being a warrior for optimism, and yet feeling mightily unsure of myself, wobbly on my legs, not sure what comes next or where I go from here. I'm a sucker for love. Ridiculous, really. I'd jump into an isolation tank at the slightest provocation and quote Timothy Leary to anyone who'd listen. And Huxley. And even Eames. Yes, we're all connected, and when we become disconnected, that's when the trouble starts.

Today I'm grateful for sun, the son, the spotteds, Barry the pastor and his earing, Sandy who eats hard-boiled eggs and bread with me on Sunday mornings, to Minky, to Luc with her advice, to the shooting stars, the big bed we all fell asleep in yesterday while watching The Help (me, son, daughter, 3 dogs snoring), the leftovers in the fridge, the job I love, and to Cameron Crowe, whose film "We Bought A Zoo" makes me believe in the non-cynical loveliness of the world again.

Springtime in November

2011-11-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

This is Los Angeles in November. There are blue skies through the California Oaks. There is nothing better for the soul than walking through the national forest and the ancient trees in the sunshine. More to be grateful for.

Thanksgiving marigolds & Dalmatians

2011-11-24T09:50:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

Every year we call it down upon ourselves,

the chaos of the day before the occasion,

the morning before the meal. Outdoors,

the men cut wood, fueling appetite

in the gray air, as Nana, Arlene, Mary,

Robin—whatever women we amount to—

turn loose from their wrappers the raw,

unmade ingredients. A flour sack leaks,

potatoes wobble down counter tops

tracking dirt like kids, blue hubbard erupts

into shards and sticky pulp when it's whacked

with the big knife, cranberries leap away

rather than be halved. And the bird, poor

blue thing—only we see it in its dead skin—

gives up for good the long, obscene neck, the gizzard,

the liver quivering in my hand, the heart.

So what? What of it? Besides the laughter,

I mean, or the steam that shades the windows

so that the youngest sons must come inside

to see how the smells look. Besides

the piled wood closing over the porch windows,

the pipes the men fill, the beers

they crack, waiting in front of the game.

Any deliberate leap into chaos, small or large,

with an intent to make order, matters. That's what.

A whole day has passed between the first apple

cored for pie, and the last glass polished

and set down. This is a feast we know how to make,

a Day of Feast, a day of thanksgiving

for all we have and all we are and whatever

we've learned to do with it: Dear God, we thank you

for your gifts in this kitchen, the fire,

the food, the wine. That we are together here.

Bless the world that swirls outside these windows—

a room full of gifts seeming raw and disordered,

a great room in which the stoves are cold,

the food scattered, the children locked forever

outside dark windows. Dear God, grant

to the makers and keepers power to save it all.

-- Linda McCarriston,

thappiness

2011-11-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

I love the indulgent, girly, sweet, sad thappiness blog. It's "Virgin Suicides" on acid. Some images below:

She tells her love

2011-11-22T05:29:00.001-08:00

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low:
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

-- Robert Graves

Close

2011-11-22T05:20:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Bishop's "Close close all night" via Poems on the Underground:

First Thanksgiving

2011-11-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

When she comes back, from college, I will see

the skin of her upper arms, cool,

matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old

soupy chest against her breasts,

I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment,

her sleep like an untamed, good object,

like a soul in a body. She came into my life the

second great arrival, after him, fresh

from the other world—which lay, from within him,

within me, Those nights, I fed her to sleep,

week after week, the moon rising,

and setting, and waxing—whirling, over the months,

in a slow blur, around our planet.

Now she doesn't need love like that, she has

had it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk,

and then, when she's fast asleep, I'll exult

to have her in that room again,

behind that door! As a child, I caught

bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds,

looked into their wild faces,

listened to them sing, then tossed them back

into the air—I remember the moment the

arc of my toss swerved, and they entered

the corrected curve of their departure.

-- Sharon Olds (via Writer's Almanac)

Steve McQueen

2011-11-18T04:21:00.000-08:00

the best thing

2011-11-14T06:38:00.000-08:00

Sunday at the Horse Show

2011-11-14T04:08:00.001-08:00

All of it works

2011-11-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

I think I'm immune to the rolling eyes and the "only in LA"s I hear when I tell people this, but my old boy Pepper, who is 13 and could not walk on Monday of this week (he was literally pulling his hind end along by his front paws) is now running around in the garden thanks to acupuncture and Chinese herbs. I'm watching him out there in the greyness of the morning and he's gallumping around with the spotted girls in his new booties, made of rubber-bottomed socks and duct tape by Monica, so that he won't slip on our hardwood floors. I hesitatingly told my ma about the needles. She knows that it can work as I dragged her to marvelous Dr Kearney's office when she was here a few years ago, when she met George Harrison in the waiting room, and came out floating. Pepper is a new boy. His posture is somewhat tripod-like but who can blame him after a week of not being able to get up when he falls down? "It's proven" says Lucy on the phone. "And ancient" I say. "Who can mess with that." And as we justify it in harmony I watch the dog gallumping, galumping along like a patrician General on Flanders field, with wet galoshes and musty tweed.

And then there's the preciousness of life. The whatever-you're-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-about-there-are-others-suffering-more of it all. The kiss-your-loved-ones-every-day argument. The life-is-short-all-we-can-do-is-love theory. All true. All connected. Check this out:

One Day on Earth - Participate Today! from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.

11-11-11 was the day when consciousness was supposed to shift. Or when we consciously shift our consciousness. People are holding hands around the pyramids in Giza, spending all day in yoga and meditation, thinking positive thoughts, working through mathematic conundrums, praying. All of it works. Even walks in the woods.

Onset

2011-11-12T03:11:00.000-08:00

Onset

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church

-- Robert Frost (via 3QD)

Caraway & Orange Seed Cake

2011-11-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

From the masterful Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in The Guardian, a perfect cake for a rainy weekend in Los Angeles:

Caraway and orange seed cake

This simple cake is great with a cup of tea. It keeps well for a few days in an airtight tin – if anything, it tastes even better. Makes one 22cm cake.

250g butter, softened, plus a little more for buttering the tin
350g self-raising flour
½ tsp ground mace
½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
Pinch of salt
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
30g caraway seeds
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
80g candied orange peel
4 tbsp milk
4 tbsp brandy
2 tbsp demerara sugar

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Lightly grease a 22cm spring-form cake tin, line with baking parchment and butter the parchment.

Into a bowl, sift the flour, mace, nutmeg and salt. In another bowl, cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in the caraway, orange zest and candied peel. Fold in the flour until just combined, then stir in the milk and brandy. Spoon into the tin and smooth with a spatula. Sprinkle the demerara evenly over the top and bake for 45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out on to a rack to cool completely.

You gotta love Hollywood

2011-11-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

You gotta love Hollywood. At a brainstorming supper for my daughter's school this evening a noted Los Angeles magazine editor greeted me very sweetly and congratulated me on my new-ish studio job. A director whom we both knew stood close by. "It just goes to show" said the editor, "that you should always be nice to everyone because you never know where they will end up." No sooner had the words fallen out of her mouth than she realized her hilarious faux pas and stuttered, "what I mean is I always tell my children to be nice to everyone because they could be your boss one day." I skipped over the embarrassing silence by serving myself a large plate of Cuban pork and platanos with black beans and remembered the words my friend LH told me while we lunched one day at Paty's in Burbank: "To survive in Hollywood, you must never take any of it personally."

On Malick's "Tree of Life"

2011-11-06T05:50:00.000-08:00

I am alone among my friends in my love for Malick's "Tree of Life." Father Barron's observations make me realize why I feel this way:

Via Thelma Adams

Bob & Roberta Smith

2011-11-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

happiness

2011-11-04T05:08:00.001-07:00

by Jennifer Hanley

Imbibe Porto

2011-11-03T07:56:00.001-07:00

Sabbaths 1998: I (Wendell Berry)

2011-11-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
to the lasting world
and will not leave,
whatever happens.

-- Wendell Berry

Macarons

2011-11-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

From this piece in the New York Times. (I just loved the picture.)

Maira Kalman illustrates Michael Pollan's Food Rules

2011-11-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

A world without Maira Kalman is not a world I'd like to live in. More on her collaboration with Michael Pollan here. (via brainpickings).

Bespoke velvet flats from Penelope Chilvers

2011-10-30T21:11:00.001-07:00

Clever Penelope Chilvers! Now you can design your own bespoke velvet flats online:

Mine (I'll have to put them on my Christmas list) were navy blue with a citron yellow lining, pink grosgrain and golden embroidery.

Design your own here.

Why we care about punctuation

2011-10-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

"People fuss about punctuation not only because it clarifies meaning but also because its neglect appears to reflect wider social decline."

From an article by Henry Hitchings, author of "The Language Wars: A History of Proper English," in the Wall Street Journal. Read more here.

Ode to Fred

2011-10-30T10:16:00.003-07:00

Full-on horse love on a cold October morning for Fred, who will be 19 on November 11.

Empanaditas de manzana

2011-10-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

How do you know you're loved? When you come home exhausted from work and you find this, sitting on your kitchen counter.

Empanaditas de manzana (apple and walnut pasties) made by Monica, who also looks after the dogs when I'm at work. How sweet is that?

Update: Monica has posted the recipe here.

Lakota morning prayer

2011-10-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

I thank you especially for the tree with the whispering leaves, for its strength and independence, for its teachings. And thank you for the sacred Tree of Life, which we must nourish and care for, in order to ensure that it blossoms once again and so allows our people to live.

-- Lakota Morning Prayer

Roy Harper Another Day

2011-10-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Old guys, sex in Paris and picnics (the usual)

2011-10-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

The old guy I adopted (he's 12 or 13) is the lion of the house. He's a general, an old soldier, a chap you can't tell what to do, but today he napped with me in bed. In the evening, when there is the starlight barking every night in the canyon, he sighs and whines gently and sometimes runs outside to woof loudly and deeply, while the girls sleep. Nothing can stop him. He is the leader of the house now, the man in control, the alpha male. Everyone else is female and he knows it. While the girls sleep on the LL Bean dogbed embroidered with "Spotteds" he patrols the house and garden and doesn't sleep for a moment. When he barks, I say, "It's okay" but he ignores me. His job is clearly defined and he's definitely not going to sleep on the job.

A friend of mine, recently divorced, went to Paris with four girlfriends for a week-long trip and after a long bout (read: years) of no sex was seduced by a frenchman called Charles, who wore a shirt embroidered with his initials, summered in La Baule, confessed to having three children, and made love to her in the way that only a Frenchman could, storybook style. She is home now, refreshed, radiant, resolute and completely changed by the experience. Four girlfriends had dinner last night at Soho House, amongst the olive trees and the basket lamps and the sofas, and the burrata and dorade and general scrumptiousness, and she held us all in her grip. transfixed by the story of the amazing Frenchman, with whom she swapped no numbers and who she won't forget for years, despite not knowing his last name, having spent 36 hours in bed with him. I can't help but think that the universe gives us what we need. Thank God for that, really.

When I arrived for dinner last night, my friends were sitting around a table looking out at the LA night skyline, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot beside them. It's hard for me to resist my favorite champagne so I broke my alcohol fast in style with two glasses of the fizzy stuff and realized in my lovely buzziness how extraordinarily lucky we are to live in this city at this time. It spreads out before you, the city, Sunset Boulevard a line of lights stretching into the distance, the Pacific Design Center blown up like a museum bathed in light, and then the dark mountains. How lucky are we, really?

And yet this morning I spoke to my mother, who is in Scotland at my brother's house for the weekend. It's a bright October day there and there was lunch on the hill after the men shot, in the hut which is large enough for 19 people. There were quiches and sandwiches and salads and ham and pies and other general deliciousness, a picnic feast with generations of people: my mother, my favorite Norwegian cousin, children on half term, my mother's oldest Scottish friend and her son, my brother's in-laws, their dogs, my mother's dog, her friend's dogs. It's another life being in Scotland. There is nothing on Saturday but the hill and knickerbockers and walking through heather, and the sunlight. There are eggs and bacon for breakfast, a picnic feast for lunch, red wine and venison stew for dinner, perhaps church on Sunday, then Sunday lunch. I can't pretend not to miss that.

My husband is in his apartment after having a plate surgically implanted in his wrist. He is surviving on percoset, can hardly eat, is grateful for our visits, for the picnic lunch we brought. There is stark relief. There are sweet strawberries and tomatoes and burrata. I find myself wondering whether to take off my shoes and rest my feet on the bed, whether to climb in next to him and put my arms around him and pray for him to get better, whether to bring mini pumpkins and flowers for the bedroom and loo, and his favorite Russian cookies, and milk chocolate with hazlenuts from Switzerland, or whether to call a friend and go hiking. Somehow I think there may be Paris (where he took me when I was 21) and sometimes I think that Paris is something that happens to other people, like my friend.

The grasshoppers and cicadas are chirruping. All the dogs are finally snoring and it's been a good day. I can't remember the last time I felt that way.

Good night kind friends. Schlafen sie wohl as my favorite teacher, Helga Schmidt was fond of saying.

Morning Person

2011-10-21T11:21:00.001-07:00

God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn's rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from
them and beasts—lizards, big and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah.

— Vassar Miller

peace of wild things

2011-10-18T04:39:00.000-07:00

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- Wendell Berry

The Rejected Husband: two views of marriage by Wendell Berry

2011-10-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

After the storm and the new
stillness of the snow, he returns
to the graveyard, as though
he might lift the white coverlet,
slip in beside her as he used to do,
and again feel, beneath his hand,
her flesh quicken and turn warm.
But he is not her husband now.
To participate in resurrection, one
first must be dead. And he goes
back into the whitened world, alive.

-- Wendell Berry, "The Rejected Husband" (from Given)

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

-- Wendell Berry, excerpted from "The Country of Marriage"

Courage

2011-10-14T04:43:00.001-07:00

My favorite English boys

2011-10-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

After an impossibly stressful week (I don't think I remember stress prior to June 29, 2011) I find myself at home, with the spotteds, and the cicadas chirruping in the trees, a just less than full moon in the sky, and the prospect of my two oldest male friends coming to visit in November. It doesn't take a lot to get me giddy but Giles, whom I met when I was 19, when Jenny and I would go his rooms at Balliol and drink strong coffee while listening to Mahler and staring out onto the quad, and Dom, who was about 7 when I met him, in a wood in Hook, Hampshire when our fathers were duck shooting, are coming to Los Angeles and I'm whoop-whoop-whooping with joy. Both went to an eminent boys Catholic school where they were brought up on fagging and scrumpy, both make me laugh constantly and both hold a place in my heart. Both made Catholicism so alluring that I considered converting, many years ago, when Brideshead Revisited was all the rage. One of them is a brilliant cook, especially of curry, and one has impeccable taste and a mother that I've adored since the day I met her. We spent LiveAid, 1984, together. It was the first time my husband, then boyfriend, had broken up with me, and I cried and drank wine and listened to "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds while Sting's The Dream of Blue Turtles sat by my bed (remember "Free, free, set them free"? click on the link just to see Sting in leggings). Through thick and thin (literally) and misery and happiness, these boys have been my friends and though we may not talk to each other for months (neither are on Facebook so I've become friends with their brilliant children) we are joined at the hip, catch up where we left off, laugh uproariously like teenagers, and piss each other off incessantly. Neither have been boyfriends, yet I've kissed both of them, as one does at 19, and it was lovely. Now, old and wrinkly and more interested in Loch Fyne smoked trout and aged whiskey, they are my saviors. So at the end of a stressful day in the midst of a pretty appalling week, I'm thinking of the kinds of flowers to put in their rooms when they come to stay and what kind of mischief we can all get up to, all together in Los Angeles in the autumn, with the cicadas and the big yellow moon.

Individual Raspberry Bread and Butter Puddings by Clive Baillie

2011-10-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are certain magical evenings that you come back to you in your mind again and again. Last Saturday night was memorable for sparkling conversation with excellent people, good wine, a table underneath the stars and my friend Clive's Persian feast: Rice with tadig, grilled artichokes and carrots, Ottolenghi tomatoes stuffed with olives, capers, herbs & breadcrumbs, grilled lamb chops, and the most heavenly raspberry bread and butter pudding. Clive has very kindly agreed to share his recipe. You may also want to visit his brilliant Cookbook Recipe Database.

Serves 6

6 4.5" ramekins
I cup sugar, plus extra for the top
12 slices of bread
4 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
1 vanilla pod
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup full milk
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
1 lb raspberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Using a circular pastry cutter, the size of the inside of the ramekin, cut circles from the bread slices. In 6 of the circles cut a smaller circle, about 1/2 inch diameter or the the size of one of the raspberries. Butter the slices on both sides and use the remaining butter to coat the insides of the ramekins. Into the bottom of each ramekin place one of the bread circles without the holes.

Pour the cream and milk into a pan. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the seeds. Put the seeds and the two halves of the pod into the pan. Bring it almost to a boil and then remove from the heat and leave to cool and infuse for about 30 minutes. (If you don’t have a vanilla pod you can use a tablespoon of vanilla extra and skip the infusion stage. You could also try nutmeg or ground cardamom)

In a large bowl whisk the eggs, egg yolks and sugar so they are completely blended. Remove the vanilla pod from the cream mixture and pour it over the egg and sugar mixture, whisking until you have a smooth and well blended custard. Pass the custard through a fine mesh strainer into another bowl.

Place enough raspberries to cover the bread slices in the bottom of the ramekins and push them down gently with the back of a spoon (it doesn’t matter if they break). Place the bread slices with the holes on top of the layer of raspberries. Gently pour the custard over the bread, giving it time to soak all the way to the bottom and into the bread. Wait a few minutes then top off each pudding until the cream reaches just below the top slice. Place a single raspberry into the hole and sprinkle a little sugar over top of each pudding.

Place the ramekins onto a baking tray and place them into the oven. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the top is a lovely golden brown and the edges of the bread look slightly burnt (the puddings will rise a little above the top of the ramekin while they are in the oven but once you have taken them out they will settle back down).

Serve with a spoon of whipped mascarpone cream on top.

Never never never

2011-10-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

More from Clerk Ink Well here (h/t @indiaknight and @katherinejames)

Mean Time

2011-10-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

The clocks slid back an hour
and stole light from my life
as I walked through the wrong part of town,
mourning our love.

And, of course, unmendable rain
fell to the bleak streets
where I felt my heart gnaw
at all our mistakes.

If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say.

But we will be dead, as we know,
beyond all light.
These are the shortened days
and the endless nights.

-- Carol Ann Duffy (via The Guardian's Poem of the Day)

Tania Kindersley: Quote of the day

2011-10-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

Tania Kindersley: Quote of the day: It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign beh...

Street Crossing

2011-10-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

More from the 2011 Swedish Nobel Laureate:

Cold winds hit my eyes, and two or three suns
dance in the kaleidoscope of tears, as I cross
this street I know so well,
where the Greenland summer shines from snowpools.

The street's massive life swirls around me;
it remembers nothing and desires nothing.
Far under the traffic, deep in earth,
the unborn forest waits, still, for a thousand years.

It seems to me that the street can see me.
Its eyesight is so poor the sun itself
is a gray ball of yarn in black space.
But for a second I am lit. It sees me.

-- Tomas Tranströmer
(translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

The Killers - Romeo And Juliet

2011-10-08T05:35:00.000-07:00

Heavenly version of the Dire Straits song. Vivien and I know all the lyrics and sang it many, many times to each other while waiting for the bus in Oxford (which never came).

Thank you for the love

2011-10-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

For all of you who left me such lovely, kind messages on yesterday's post, here's a treat: The Verve at Glastonbury, playing "Sonnet." And thank you so very much.

Woof. I am a dog

2011-10-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

My friend P called today at the office about a business thing and told me in passing that she loved my blog because I'm always happy. God Bless Miss P I thought. Or rather, I'm sure I do a very good job of appearing that way, as if my roses are blooming and the blue birds are whistling overhead. The truth is, dear reader, that I rather fear that I'm done with my life as I know it. I've tried every single thing in my bag of tricks that I can must to bring my marriage back together but I've rather given up. There is not a thing you can do to make someone love you when they don't, as many country singer/songwriters have told us. I can't be steadfast and hold my head up high and wait for him to come home. I can't turn the other cheek and get on with my life. I can't pretend that I don't care. I'm just not made that way. I make friends slowly and, with one or two rare exceptions, those people are my friends for life. I protect them bravely and lavish love upon them and laugh as much as I can, but I do not know what to do when love is withdrawn. I don't think I've ever experienced it and I'm doing a particularly lousy job of being Grace Kelly about the whole thing. I think it might be that I've come to the end of my rope. I don't like this one bit and I don't think I'm going to take it anymore.

I don't even know what this song is about but when I listen to it it makes me feel the way I feel now, sort of empty and whistling inside like a suit of armor without a soldier. I think we've come to the end. I've tried to be jolly and smiley and a good sport about it all, but I don't like it one bit. The man I love doesn't live here and it doesn't look as if he's going to come back and I don't know why. I've thought of everything I can, turned over every little pebble in my brain, but I still don't know what it is or whether I could've done anything differently. The whole world, in 14 weeks has been turned upside down and shaken a few times to see what would fall out. Many things fell -- parts of my heart, a few odd socks, the alarm clock on his side of the bed which became my nemesis, cups of tea together in the afternoon, Sunday newspapers. The list could go on rather boringly, I know. I've started watching documentaries every night to distract me (some good ones: Buck, Bill Cunningham New York) & am enormously grateful for my job which fills my days with excellent stuff and good, solid people. But unlike my executive self, I'm not clever or strategic when it comes to this stuff, I'm not the character in the books that lures the young millionaire into a marriage of furs and emeralds, I'm the girl on the corner looking up the stars, wishing for the boy's hand in hers, and her head on his shoulder. I can't plan and execute a Grand Illusion whereby I pretend to not care with such aplomb that he comes running back in shocked awe at my icy demeanor and my couldn't care less attitude. No here I am, dumb as hell, heart on my sleeve, miserable. Lovely Monica who made me tea this morning to help my fluishness said "no-one should ever care about people who don't care about them" and I nodded in agreement, ferociously and wholeheartedly till I left the room, teacup in hand and realized in horror that it doesn't really matter to me. I'm a dog, not a cat. (You are aware that all people, without exception fall into one or the other category. You are either a dog or a cat.) A cat doesn't give a shit about anyone. A dog loves even the person who beats him. I wake up every morning smiling at the sunshine, stretching into the new day, wagging my tail while making the tea and the smoothie for the child who wakes up grumpy but appears from the shower with a grin on her face. And I do expect the best. And I do believe everything will get better. But today, I'm not so sure. It might be time to let go.

And as I say every night, before I go to sleep, God bless Mary Karr, who gets me through the crud better than anyone. Sleep tight, sweet princes and princesses.

The Couple

2011-10-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

More from 2011 Nobel Laureate Tomas Transtromer:

They switch off the light and its white shade

glimmers for a moment before dissolving

like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.

The hotel walls rise into the black sky.

The movements of love have settled, and they sleep

but their most secret thoughts meet as when

two colours meet and flow into each other

on the wet paper of a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer

tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have approached.

They stand close up in a throng, waiting,

a crowd whose faces have no expressions.

Richard Feynman on Beauty

2011-10-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

After A Death

2011-10-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

-- by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature today

Everything Moves To Live

2011-10-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

Because I love you, everything moves
We must advance to live
Aim straight ahead toward those you love
I went toward you, endlessly toward the light
If you smile, it enfolds me all the better
The rays of your arms pierce the mist

-- From “Mourir de ne pas mourir” (“Dying Of Not Dying”) by Paul Éluard

Xeni Jardin's lovely essay on poetry and the Godard's "Alphaville" -- from which this is taken -- is here. (via Poetry Foundation).

The Map as Art

2011-10-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Matthew Cusick, “Fiona’s Wave,” 2005

Matthew Cusick creates outsized collaged paintings from fragments of atlases and school geography books published between 1872 and 1945, a time of much mapping and remapping. More on The Map as Art via The Morning News and more here via The Fox Is Black.