Some people feel negatively about February, including, possibly, Maira Kalman. Or maybe she just picks up on everybody’s February blues. It’s hard to love February in the city, this I understand.
This February, I’m all about Patti Smith (again). Maybe I’ll make February my Patti Smith month. Why not?
But guys….remember those other times, those other seasons? Remember flowers?
Remember how it’s going to be Valentine’s day soon? Let’s not bring up our consumer culture rants again, we do that every year & even the truth gets stale. This year, lets just do some good lovin’. Let’s share what we got, or give ourselves a little bit more. I mean, Phoebe Wahl is doing it! And why not.
If you’re still not feeling good about February yet, then, here! Have this gift! It’s a free Frank Ocean mixtape! Also did you know he has a tumblr?! Fuck yeah, America! You know?
There’s been a *lot* of farmplanning going on in this household, lemme tell you. So many facets are being organized that yesterday I had to call Misha into the bathroom while I was showering so he could write down some ideas I’d thought of while shampooing my hair. The artworks below, by an art student at RISDE whose blog I stumbled upon while tumblr-ing, are the sorts of pieces that relay what I love about a farmy life: patterns, brightgreen and brightpink vegetables, fresh flowers in jars, herbs hanging from string, sitting in the dirt in a dress, handkerchiefs for sweat and color, fairies. Once this farm gets going ,it’s going to be a beauty. It’s going to be a beautiful, colorful, scentful, and shareful thing.
I believe that literature is important, and I believe that beauty is important, too. I believe in aesthetics, not for the sake of aesthetics, but for the sake of adding curation to the world. I believe in beautiful books of poems and I believe in broadsides, poems letter-pressed (letter-punched) into thick paper. One day, I will own a small letterpress, and I will make small books, beautiful books, books that have forests in their peripheral vision. They will be for sale, and they will be available for barter, too, because I believe less in money than I believe in beautiful items, a jar of brightpurple kimchi, a set of photographs with thick white borders, a hand-sanded cutting board. I believe in love and I believe in matrimony if you want it and I believe in admitting fault and in feeding oneself and one’s loved ones. In essence, I believe. As a result, I share this stanza that I love (by someone I know), and this whole poem, which I understand completely (by someone I do not know).
In a movie we see a young family live through
a tsunami. Sheltering in trees. I think of the man I might expect
to find unhurt in a tree above any awful thing. This man who
on Christmas I said I would marry. When I met him I dreamt
we went cheek-to-cheek to the peak of the dome of my room to speak
privately. When something comes true it is like a wreath in your body.
On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:
because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:
Thankful for
winter sun and
a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and
the shoes on my feet and
good soup and a fire and
the ever-discovery of poems and
the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful
and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and
thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!
and emoticons and
thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and
for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful
for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and
thankful for nice thick socks
thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows
thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and
for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”
which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and
thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and
thankful for mittens
and a yellow hat from my sister
and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for
a grey hat from amsterdam
and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck
like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite
which a woman at the stone store told me to select
because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day
and it was
I was sagging that day
I’m thankful for people who help me unsag
like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and
now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and
I didn’t meet Allen Ginsberg; he’s dead and likely never visited White River Junction. The man I did meet recommended that I read Joanne Kyger. As it turns out, she’s great! She’s beautiful!
Then the other day I got in the truck and there were four pumpkins sitting shotgun. I put one out by the mailbox and two along the driveway and one is still riding shotgun.
It’s autumn and the mums are on display. I’ve been reading The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard and oh I love it so much I love it so much. Also, we’ve been drying sliced tomatoes, storing them in oil, stacking them in the cupboards where they’ll wait until they’re given as gifts. Here’s a painting by Joe Brainard, of a tomato.
Many of the houses on our hill and on surrounding hills are huge estates. Acres and acres of lawn. One lone, beautiful building. Like something Hopper would paint, or has.
(Edward Hopper, “House by the Railroad,” 1925.)
In the belly
baguette in spicy olive oil
eggplant parmesan (homemade!)
gazpacho (homemade!)
English muffins (homemade!)
wild grape jam (made by Misha’s dad!)
fresh burrata
dark chocolate
On the table
pint of raspberries
plums
eggplants
apple chips
summer’s last cantaloupe
a tiny tower of sheep cheese
small, wussy avocadoes (we’re not in California anymore…)
It’s funny to me that I don’t even know Lisa Congdon and yet I post things she’s made, like the above Alice Walker. I guess that’s what blogs do, let us be in touch with people we wouldn’t otherwise. I like it when people tell me that they read my blog–it’s always a confession. If you’re reading this, thanks for reading this. When you tell me that you read this, I get pretty joyful.
panache, perhaps 