The World Examining Works

The New Normal

 

 

Since I haven't posted on this blog for five years, there may be lots of posting errors.

Anyway, as you will understand only too well, I won't really be examining the world - just my teeny tiny corner of it. I like documenting things. Here are some very dead tulips that Margaret bought me two weeks ago. Here are some kale flowers from the roof. A very empty calendar where I plan to write down who is due to provide dinner for an overworked doctor.

This is 9th Avenue this morning pretty early - about 8am.  I thought it would be a safe time to take a walk - and it was.

I find I have to write things down because one can't dash out to buy things; they have to be ordered and hoped for.

The photos from my study are how it actually looks; tidying up would not reflect how jumbled things actually are.

Such a patina on the little silver jug! Money unused and irrelevant. What can be on the flash drive?

How exciting to have two pears delivered yesterday.

Balloon for a Birthday

 

The best present

a balloon which rose in the air

A Hello Kitty tee-shirt

and the balloon still going up

a splendid balloon

and then there was cake

best of all both together

 

 

 

Melancholy

 

 "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..."

 Creeper aglow on the seminary wall

and more of the same

 and more and more.

A last rose photographed on Veterans' Day.

 The seminary itself looking spooky...

not to mention the contents of a garbage pail spotted this morning.

On a cheerier note a still life at home.

 

 

 

Oh dear!

 

While wandering round St.Agnes' convent in Prague, where there is a most splendid collection of International Gothic art, I was struck by the number of most gruesome martyrdoms and the  buckets of blood. Yesterday was Halloween.

Herewith a few samples...

Tears of blood...

 An unfortunate way to go....in an Edward Gorey sort of way.

What do you expect if you kneel right underneath?

Looking rather stoical with a nail through the head.

Who can He be talking to on his cell phone?

 

Grand Budapest Hotel or Hotel Imperial

    

    We were enchanted by Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel  - a wonderful, over the top extravaganza of a movie -  a mishmash of Mitteleuropa, 20th century history and who knows what else. So we set out in search of somerthing somewhat similar...

Prague not Budapest - and not this building (the hotel in the movie was an artificial construct after all). Anyway it should have had a facade like this... 

But it did have very tall windows.

 though she graces another hotel of the period.

 Such splendid Egyptianate tiles in the hall

not to mention in the dining room where the clock was, oddly, always right.

 Ah, the woodwork and the lights

and the art deco stiatcase

and the servers in those nice extra-long white aprons

 rushing hither and thither...

 

Photos taken in Hotel Pariz, Prague and Art Deco Imperial Hotel Prague.

Ocober 2014

 

 

Veletrzni Palac, Prague - An October Selection

 

The Czech National Gallery was an amazing treat because it contained so much that was unfamiliar to me - lots and lots of artists I'd never heard of before - particularly 19th century Czech ones. There are also a couple of outstanding Klimts. The whole place is huge. I started gathering a collection of dark gems.

Herewith a sampling:

All Soul's Day - I think she is on her way to lay a wreath at the cemetery.

She is tending to the battle-wounded, while Miss Ballgown presides over the chaos.

Oh no! A traffic accident...

Dead, you know...

Beware the water sprite 

and the ghostly hand hovering over your desk.

A film poster from the 20's. A very small prize for anyone working out the exact iconography of this one...

A cops and robbers poster from the same period.

Last of all, a costume hanging to dry in a courtyard from the 1940's - possibly the most haunting  of all the images.

 

 

 

 

Early Fall

 

A Sunday walk round the neighbothood with rather a romantic filter  -but 21st street is very pretty.

Everything rather overgrown near my favorite house.

Foliage - as usual.

Windows...

Pee-gee hydrangea - good to dry - then it bits drop all over the place.

Yesterday morning and looking forward to getting away for a week - see the little aeroplane over London Terrace.

Still reading Arctic Summer and loving it,

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Much Neglected

 

Rather a random selection of photos today -

The season of roof gardening is winding down - but some little snippets from up there from last week

 

I'm drying the orange cosmos seeds for next year's crop. The yellow things are dill flowers.

More of the same.

 

Edible flowers from Union Square - pretty but I'm not convinced about eating them...

A sunflower head drying to same the seeds

 

Gretchen with her feet in sunshine

 

Percy from upstairs sitting in his wooden bowl

and last a poster that had been glued up all ridgy.

Abandoned reading Karl Ove Knausgard's My Struggle since there is such a great deal of it and a lot of it about his failed high school rock band.

Sort of reminded me of The Goldfinch - good in parts but would have been so much better if edited. Just me...

Prefering Arctic Summer  - imagining EM Forster in India.

So that's it for the reading and the horticulture. How very thrilling!

 

Long Island

 

I don't really like seagulls.

They are large and beady eyed and steal your food if they possibly can.

 

However you have to admire their moxie.

Not a bad fate - standing around in shimmering water.

Lori's hydrangeas took quite a battering last endless, freezing, horrid winter so she chopped them back fiercely and now they've returned with a vengeance. 

Barn red is a classic foil for green.

Ah, summer!

 

 

Ruth & Gisela by Elizabeth Wix

Danielle of A Work in Progress has written very kindly about my work.

Hit the link at the bottom of the opening paragraph to see the whole post!

I have a book recommendation for you.  Ruth & Gisela by Elizabeth Wix is a wonderful read.  It's a mixture of domestic fiction and war story told from the viewpoints of two very different women--one British and one German whose lives will touch briefly and later intermingle in the most unexpected ways.  I could imagine it the sort of novel that Virago would publish--particularly one of their older titles with those distinctive green covers that I very much miss seeing on their new releases.  Or perhaps something along the lines of a novel that you'll find in the Persephone Books catalog.  As for the story, think of something by Sue Gee or maybe Mary Wesley or even closer to Margaret Forster's work--all authors I have read and loved.  It's domestic fiction of the cozy variety but the story has substance as well.

via danitorres.typepad.com

Ruth & Gisela: The Story Behind the Story

Ruth & Gisela is the sort of book I was sad to have finished and as much as the story played itself out just perfectly, I wanted to know more, to have the characters tell me more about their lives, to know how everything turned out after that last page was turned.  Elizabeth Wix was kind enough to answer my questions, and so interesting did I find it all, that when I asked her if there was something more I could share about the story, she agreed to drop by here today and guest post.  This is some of the story behind the story:  

via danitorres.typepad.com

The Children

 

The grandchildren keep themselves very busy.

playing with yoyos

painting abstractmasterworks

building cities 

 inspecting the bricks in the patio

filling the watering can 

 climbing at the beach

and chasing bubbles.

 

Urban Gardening

   

I got terribly bored of looking at the previous nasturtiums...

 

anyway, the roof garden and the tree pits are flourishing  -unlike my writing or blogging... 

 

I have been smashing pansies but the results are pretty much the same as last year's...

These are some bits and pieces from the roof.

 

Light through glass - rather fun.

 

Huge excitement - I bought two tiny vases - about the size they appear in the photos and have taken about a billion photos of them.

I am meant to be writing an essay about "Why I Write" hmm.....not very useful when one isn't writing much at all. I'm mostly copying my long essay about life in LA in the seventies. You can imagine what a huge audience there is for that little snippet.

Also not writing an essay about Persephone Books.

Also thinking about what an endless audience there is for self-help books - about the billion ways there are to improve one's self.

Possible title: How to be Idle and Enjoy It: A Thousand Strategies for Wasting Time.

File under: Family, Dog, Food, Friends, Blogging, Taking Photos of Things...

Happy Weekend.

 

 

Flowers and Things

 

The usual foray up to the green market at Union Square.

The bliss of nasturtiums and the similarly colored micro mesclun.

Ate it for supper and it tasted like spicy hedge clippings. 

Really can't tell if these are anemones or poppies of some sort. Julia, where are you?

It was sunny yesterday. Almost warm enough to sit outside at a cafe.

 Then it rained. This photo was taken squinting through the chainlink fence of the PennSouth Community garden. I am a complete sucker for Hipstamatic 99cent  lenses. This one is called Monti. It makes things look misty and mildly historical.

How ridiculous to be wearing such garments in May.

I hear they have early roses in England!

 

 

Lemons

 

 

 

  

I have been looking at some Flemish still lives...

 

 

The plate is from The Musee de Marrakesh

 

The little green jug is from rue riad zitoune djedid.

 

 

 

A Morning with Pirates

  

 

The pirates were busy painting when we arrived.

Gretchen was working on 'non-commital abstractions'

and Henry was concentrating on a Van Gogh-esque field of grass.

Image #4

Then they decided to build a race car track

with many interesting twists and turns.

When all the cars were on the track, there was a traffic jam. Luckily Mama was in the first car and Granny and Grandpa were in the second one.

Croissant break with Aggie and a new hat.

Then it was time to go outside. Got outside. Horribly cold and Aggie has no hat.

Therefore homework for Granny.

 

 

Comfort Food

 

 

 

 

Last Saturday was so cold and so depressing I was reduced to taking photos of anything bright that was lying around the place.

 

I had gone down to Chelsea Market very early in search of

 

a rutabaga. It is waxed and somewhat resembles a canon ball. It weighs a lot too.

 

I had been very taken with a recipe I read in the Times. The ingredients list included the said item. I include the recipe here because it turned out wonderfully well. I omitted the sage and thyme and substituted chopped up sun dried tomatoes.

Below find a photo of a discerning diner (not eating the recipe above!)

 

Herewith the very fierce cat who lives at the flower shop.

For some reason the light there is often very pink.

Weird.

 

 

IMAGES FROM AN ISLAND

 

This winter has been horribly long and cold and snowy and altogether depressing. We were lucky enough to escape for ten days to Barbados. Here are some random photos. The first of beach vegetation.

Very shallow water

and patterns in the sand.

 Someone else's castle.

A house in Bridgetown

and The Christian Science Chruch with splendid windows.

A bird who made off with a packet of sugar.

Limpid, blissful water at Mullins Bay.

Late afternoon

and, corny, beyond corny, tropical sunset with palm trees - very pretty anyway!

 

 

CO

 

 

Cabin Fever

 

 

 

 

Winter is getting a bit old hat around here - but must be even more so for the inhabitants of North Dakota and Minnesota. So I have taken to meditating on mandarins - well - looking at them anyway.

 

I like the ones with leaves on best.

 

 

Robert is painting - as per usual. I always find the painting eqipment picturesque in itself.

the tape, the paper towels, the blotches, the blades etc etc.

 

even the gloves and the face mask.

 

This was once a very nice linen skirt from Eileen Fisher that I had had for at least eight years - even when we lived in Morocco. (Sob sob) - and R. says it isn't really absorbent. Lil assef (too bad) quelle domage (what a pity) che vergonia (what a shame). Weird that when you get really ancient you have all this stuff floating around in your head...

As you can tell the cold is getting to us.

This is a metal baking tray with tin foil in it - and paint too. At least it's nice bright color.

Hope you are feeling cheerful and colorful.

 

Another Party

 

 

A little bit of snow still left on the ground.  

They wait at the door for the guests to arrive.

 Then hear  a story about heros

 

who wear colorful masks and capes to give them power and distintion.

 

 

glue felt and glitter

 

the costumes are made

 

 

donned

 

let the party begin!