when almost everyone wore a hat Sontag had fifty words not from anywhere some readers somewhere bits ever smaller for shipmates big bloody far-ranging in Jewish ethics not the red cape anymore re-trying knots the eraser of the past
Translated as (wickets from Franz Kafka)
the original German ‘dearest Max’ ‘yours, Franz Kafka’ translated as Brod was ‘why do’ tap Hungarian marginals something akin to appreciation indescribably sick of this her prior inattentiveness
Firewood, lanterns (twigs from Peter Allison)
The flute in the fields (tunes from Susan Cheever)
back then came to be shaded by maples under Concord’s great elms Emerson gave biggest little genius’ grouped together a shadow or good sense that house the flute in the fields conceited, laborious on the hay my bad tongue sexy female outcasts hickory trees and white acorns
In Sussex (hills from Jane Austen)
in Sussex as much disappointment as pleasure everything but prudent parties on the fates were made nearly twenty
After a night of crying (chips from Evie Wyld)
Loose hours to fill (grains from Toby Ferris)
a friend of her friend for fucks sake, Dan cousin of gorse had given away names for Bruegel the Elder loose hours to fill one of at least thirteen operas your cow mind wintry concerns of Breda to his deeper blackness from somewhere, Anne Crisscross not circle viscerally, not viscerally how big(…)
Needle or haystack?
“One wants to be the needle in the haystack. Not the haystack.” – Don Draper One sister wants to be the needle. The other sister doesn’t want to be either one. My friend DE would prefer being the needle. Me? I would like to be the haystack.
Third childhood
“For people of my age,” she thinks, “the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist … And if their outer form has been preserved, it’s all the more painful, like a shell with nothing inside(…)
While confined
Vis our quarantine: I wrote the following short essay for Notting Hill Edition‘s newsletter as an introduction to a reprinted extract from FOUND AND LOST: Mittens, Miep and Shovelsful of Dirt: ‘Whilst quarantined with the symptoms of Coronavirus, I spend my days dozing, reading, streaming infotainment, writing, drinking coffee and savouring a single wedge of(…)
