*

All these little composed drawings are on the back of old prints. When I was back in Minnesota, I went through my portfolio and cut them all up into scratch paper and then had a huge stack I could pull from--and since it was all printmaking paper, it is mostly really nice, really good to draw on, and receptive to watercolor.

Did I mention I have prints in this show? If you're in Nottingham, go see it before it closes (30 August)! I'm making work for submission for another show in September, too.

Good interview with Wendell Berry here.

Berry again: 'marriage as a state of mutual help, and the household as an economy.'

work

My refusal to draw a distinction between the kinds of work I do may occasionally cause problems (insecurity about 'doing the right thing' or 'working enough' or feeling unnecessarily defensive, for example), but in the long run I find that seeing things holistically feeds my work (of all kinds), makes me more inventive, gives me energy, and shows me the way everything is, in the end, connected.

More new places I'm looking these days--

Marie-ici

a a A

I've been writing some words for my dissertation, wandering around town, making more small watercolors, reading books and articles and poems, and making many plans. All work. All good. All useful.

{found}

pikaland
art and ghosts
le train fantôme

One of those days where I don't feel like doing anything...but in a nice way. I'm in a sort of holding pattern 'til I can move into my new place--there are so many books, bits, etc., all over my tiny dorm room at the moment it's hard to work there. I found new things to read and look at here online, though--well, refound--and I have a new notebook as a present from my English, and a narrow-point pen. And watercolors. I suppose I'll make something this afternoon. (What a life I lead!)

back in England, reading about love

Merton: The goodness of the human heart is invincible.

Wendell Berry: Love evidently is not just a feeling but is indistinguishable from the willingness to help, to be useful to one another. The way of love is indistinguishable, moreover, from the way of freedom. We don't need much imagination to imagine that to be free of hatred, of enmity, of the endless and hopeless effort to oppose violence with violence, would be to have life more abundantly.

place

'What place' is exactly the question. Where's home, and what does that mean? I'm ready to go back to England and in conversation I call it home. I'll miss my friends here and my family (and the 24-hour dog-petting access). But I'm looking forward to my familiar desk, my view of Sainsburys, my bicycle; a return to research, reading and writing; seeing my colleague-friends; the wide English sky in the mornings; and the last month or so of the English summer.

object lessons

(Cataloging things so I remember what's happened.)

(How much I can do with what is simple, practical, and leftover: hand-me-down watercolors I've used in Italy, France, and England, the backs of cut-up prints.)

(I'm England-bound on Thursday again. It's been a good stay here. Lots of writing, both dissertation and poems. I guess the manuscript is just about done. Talk of a collaboration on a comic book. Time spent over tea and poems and little paintings. Shadowboxes. Long talks, long-distance. I'm glad to be going back to England--feels like home.)

(Reading tonight, Monday, at Magers & Quinn with Shana Youngdahl.)

(Nice to hear about you. Thank you for telling me who you are, a bit.)

(See you soon.)

you

I like the pronoun 'you'--ambiguously hovering between specific, general, plural, singular. I can double back on myself in its comforting anonymity: no, I can say, I didn't mean 'you,' I meant 'you, reader,' (Reader, I married him), or you-general. And maybe all the while I do mean you: specific. You, the kid who left a blood orange at my seat in poetry class. You, the printmaker. You, boy of my childhood. You, the girl with the bird dog legs. You in your striped sweater, making a cake with me. You. It's sneaky, this short word; even linguistically--the /y/ (yuh) gliding the tongue across the soft palette into the release of /u/ (oo), only one place of articulation away from /i/ (ee): a whisper.

So--who are you? I know you are from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland. In the U.S., you come from all over--Miami, Chicago, Portland, New York, Atlanta, Tempe, Annapolis. In the U.K., you're from Leeds, London, Southampton, Isle of Man, Birmingham, Hull, Edinburgh, Barking. That public 'where' is all I have a right to know, and I respect your right to tell me nothing about yourself and to go on reading. That's the contract here--I've chosen parts of my life and my thoughts to make public. But I'd like to know about you, what you do, what you're interested in, why you're here (and here is a big, big place--not just 'here' on my site, but here in general, even), what you're looking for, what you love. Recommend me a book or a song or a movie. Tell me something that made you happy or hurt you. Tell me a joke. Tell me where you write, if you do, and I'll read it, too. I want to know more about 'you'--where you is both general and specific.