The World Examining Works

Gardening

Two flats of impatiens to be planted before the party.

Need to keep the young gainfully employed and off the street.

Many happy hours spent watering. 

Today, I went up to Union Square and saw lots of fancy nasturtiums all ready to eat. (Lisa Hermanson always recommends photographing stuff through plastic). We used to eat nasturtiums in the old centrury. The long poiny bit contains stuff almost as sweet as honey.

Pea sprouts (through plastic!)

Serried ranks of asparagus standing to attention like those buried Chinese warriors. It is asparagas season

and peony season (possibly my favorite flower ever --so showy, so blowsy, so fragrant so debutate ball summery).

Here stuff you can take home to make your own garden (if you have a garden, that is.)

I asked if I could take a picture of the Flowering Sage, and the young man offered to turn the tub round so the price wasn't in the picture, but I said, no no --it's lovely as it is. 

Painterly

 

On Thursday I was walking past the old Alcamo Marble place which went out of business last year. I imagine it is about to be turned into a new swanky gallery. Meanwhile it somehow manages to remind me of a Dutch genre painting...

You know all --  that red brickwork and a maid sweeping

we even have the requisite bird --with little footprints

and the still life on top of the oil can. None of the colors above have been tweaked.

Now the Instagram version. How filters alter everything.

Later in the day at the Neue Galerie it pelted with rain, and it was good to be inside. Sepia tends to make things look a bit distant and sweet. I remember Edmund de Waal saying he didn't want to write a 'sepia saga' --where the past is oddly sanitized.

How the rain came down! Anyhow, in spite of all the excitement about the Klimt exhibition, my day was made by the discovery of the work of Heinrich Kuhn.

I had never heard of him before and am now utterly and completely smitten. He is the most painterly of photographers. Wonderful.

 

The Joys of Food

 

Early Mother's Day outing to the Mexican restaurant --chips, milk 

black bean soup

yum

clean up required before

dessert

 

Dinosaur

The dinasaur looks a pretty shifty character to me -- look how he has his foot on the boy in the field.

He lives in the castle along with the other creatures.

If you give him enough play dough to eat, you'll probably be safe for a while.

 

 

Poetry

 

 

 

My father, who was a very sensible man, liked the old adage, "Never explain; never apologise." (Though he often did both himself.)

A very small collection of my poems is now available here. (The first two poems appear in a preview).

The poems are about very ordinary things

domestic life

trying to be creative

 discovering bugs that hide under planks

and why jeans wick up puddle-damp and catch on your shoes and trip you up.

I have two proof copies to give away. Just leave a comment or email me and I'll pick  the names on Saturday.

 

Crossing the Road...

 

or cinema verite, or how boring can you get

so it's raining, not torrential rain -- just sort of drizzly damp stuff -- yes yes, exactly like England haha

the family at the kerb are wearing a lot of red. A red umbrella is a good idea. Black ones are duller than dull.

They waited for the walk signal

and crossed over 23rd Street.

 

ps have just discovered Pinterest which is rather fun if you are a visual person and another cheerful timewaster.

 

 

The End of the Rainbow

 

Everybody's looking for something/search the world and the seven seas... Annie Lennox

a bicycle on 8th Avenue

led me to all the bicycles outside the Moonstruck Diner where Berch has decorated the windows for St.Patty's Day

then a lephrecaun

showed me the pot of gold! Wow!

a message perhaps

from behind the pink door on 18th Street (that hasn't been opened for ages)

or the flowers in the window on 86th Street

and the croccii in the median of 8th Avenue

are enough

 

 

 

Details

 

A vending machine on Penn Station offers

little tiny plastic weapons --pistols, grenades, hand-cuffs --all really useful stuff.

Henry thinks it's funny to hide behind his book.

I find a book submerged in a puddle on the corner of 9th Avenue. When I upload the photo, I discover it to be Mansfield Park. I leave the book in the puddle.

The last flower of the Lentan Rose bought on December 3rd --the actual plant now taken out to Long Island to be planted outside where it will be a great deal happier.

Have taken on a most interesting project: working with a Japanese-American woman on her memoirs of internment as a schoolgirl and the family's subsequent return to Japan in 1945. Such stories we all have to tell.

 

Sweet Things

 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

 

Thursday

 

Early morning, the sun not up yet.

The street lights still glow.

At Penn Station the wage-slaves are off to the salt mines. 

How they rush and rush !

One man rushed quite out of his shoe (lower right)

Then some serious art work before Henry gets dressed

then back to bare branches

waiting for spring