The World Examining Works

Sfumato

 

Earlier this week the weather was misty and English --quite unlike the clear piercing light we usually get.

On Monday morning the tall buildings were shrouded in fog. (Shrouded always sounds a bit melancholy and romantic.)

Even the tree by the Midtown Tunnel managed to look picturesque.

Billowing something or other between the buildings of Penn South.

Dusk looking towards 23rd Street.

All these bare trees remind me of photos I took several Decembers ago on the beach in Morocco

where magic forests were created by the tide pulling dark sand over light sand or viceversa. I have always kept these pictures when much else has been lost.

Such trees, or coral, or roots of teeth 

Here trees reflected in water on 24th Street.

But back to the old misty business --Cold Spring Harbor on LI on misty Monday with the Hipstamatic filter

and the plain version.

Lastly Miss Gretchen -- like Diddle Diddle Dumpling my son John/One shoe off and one shoe on.

 

And the winner of the Novica gift code was commenter #6 DCW. I will send the code via email so you can buy someone a present from their  new gift finder.

 

 

Foreign Details: File under Overload

 

Travel is meant to broaden the mind. I think it just confuses me. I just got back from England where I spent the first half of my life, but is now almost a foreign country. I'm overwhelmed by echoes from the past.

A shop in Spitalfields -- Jack the Ripper territory --where I never ventured as a child since the buildings were black as your hat. It's now rather chic.

 I search for typically English things: here a roller towel -- something that doesn't exist in America.

Here a poster of where my brother worked for many un/happy years and charming lampshades by Cressida Bell.

I go on a bus through Picadilly Circus where large numbers of people are rushing about as people do in cities....

but some of them sit.

Normal life: invitations and CD's and socks.....

not to mention the Aga and the teacosy

and my friend Rosie's piece de resistance: Toad in the Hole. Bliss.

And another roller towel with more jolly color than usual.

The next day I go to the Imperial War Museum where one is bombarded with so much information the mind reels.

A bus from The Great War recalls Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.

Here technicians work on a plane from the Second World War....

and children make notes....

Here a horribly bad photo of Edith Sitwell from the current Cecil Beaton show....so I think I'd better stop and go and look for more roller towels, and maybe have a nice cup of tea.

 

On a completely different note: Urban Intersections opens at The Quidley Gallery today featuring one of Robert's paintings. Do go if you are in Boston.

Water

 

Run as fast as possible

to the edge of the water

to see the swan

and draw in the mud

run round the pond

to see the ducks

and look for turtles and fish underwater.

All photos taken in Huntington NY

Note: Robert has a painting in the show Urban Interections at the Quidley Gallery on Newberry Street in Boston. Opens Thursday Oct 25th. Do go if you're in Boston.

 

Robert Moses Beach

 

Towel, hat

Lifeguard

Boogie board

Contrasts

Walk

Dig

Wet

looking west

 

 

Gadgets and Beach Reads

 

We are out on Long Island where we used to live and have a big garden, so it's bitter-sweet enjoying what used to be commonplace.

On the other hand, Countrymice might want a glimpse of the city. The answer, of course, would to be astoundingly rich and have both....and then there is the bother of two refrigerators and so on. But I digress.

My cell phone has this gizmo ( I think it was free) called Frametastic. Not sure whether it is a good thing or not. Anyway, it's fun to play around with. 

As well as looking at flowers, we went to the beach where I managed to study vegetation too.

 Probably better without Frametastic.

 Talking about beach reads, three of my books are now available in a Kindle edition and therefore super inexpensive.

A Fortunate Child a novel based on the true story of two women, one German, one English, during the Second World War. About mothers and daughters and adoption and joy and loss.

New Roof in October, a small book of poems

and also two books for the 9-12 year old set

Jane in Winter

and

Jane and The Essex Serpent 

These last two are adventures set in the 1950's. Happy Reading.

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.