notes from pockets

fig. 1

fig. 2

fig. 3

snippets

I have a bad habit of tearing bits out of magazines, and then either pinning them to my corkboard or leaving them in odd places.

Today, I have discovered:

1. A meticulous description of a bathroom, complete with cut-crystal bottles of unguents.
(torn out from a magazine that uses an oddly spaced serif font, found under the desk blotter)

2. "Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing/Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing/For the dear instrument to bear."
(learned this is from "First Fight. Then Fiddle" by Gwendolyn Brooks. Pinned beneath a postcard from the Paris Natural History Museum)

3. The phrase: "skippering on a feather bed."
(no idea. Scribbled on a receipt for ice cream.)

4. A photograph of a tray of taxidermied canaries.
(tucked into a stack of letters from beloved friends.)

5. A list of different models of coffins that were available to colonial Americans.
(I've a suspicion that this is part of the material I've been collecting for a story about ghosts and funerals... Little wisps of things that prickle, but haven't gained momentum yet.)

6. A recipe for scones.
(abandoned in a tangle of ribbons and elastics that are meant for pointe shoes.)

Cleaning! It's like a treasure hunt!

taking a break

Am doing some work today and this is where I am:

There's my notebook with the (very) scattered notes for the next bit. When I'm staring into space (which is often), I sometimes fiddle with the little glass fox Shan brought back from Budapest. That's green tea there... The tea is essential because I'm always cold and it gives me an excuse to wander off to the kitchen for the kettle. My favourite pen, a Sonnet, which makes writing entirely un-hand-cramping. I found that paper in a drawer and it's fabulous. It's from a pack of 100 sheets that I think I got from a Japanese stationary store: B5 loose leaf "art spiral." Originally, I believe there was a binder it fit in, but now I just shove the finished pages into a folder until I type them up.

Had a lovely dinner last night with Heather, who's off to Berlin on Monday. We did some shopping for travel thingys, admiring the lovely things in the Apple store especially, and made a pumpkin pie. It was a nice evening. I was cranked up on sugar and tea and so didn't get to bed until three in the morning, but I woke up feeling splendid today so I guess there's no logic in it.

It's not even 5 o'clock and it's getting dark. The short days are so unsettling when they start. I aways have this irrational feeling that the quantity of daylight shrinks a bit every day and will go on shrinking until there's nothing left but this endless nighttime, but then I get into winter mole mode and am just as shocked when they start stretching out again.

That's about it really. I've just found out that the Magnetic Fields are coming in February, but will probably have to be reminded... I'm always forgetting to go to shows that might be good. Ah well.

Back to work.