Been listening to Scott Joplin all morning, the cumulative result of a posted link on my wall and a sudden desire to not hear a human voice till noon maybe. I remember this set of picture books I had as a kid about four bears who lived together, one of them was called Ragtime and had a banjo and patchwork trousers. It was a prettily drawn bear in a prettily drawn book, one of those things you keep opening to look at long after you know the story by heart, like Half Magic. Only I can't remember what the books were called now. There was also a tiny square one about a red overalled child befriending a panda with these Chinese-style illustrations, lots of bamboo, and one of folk tales from Rajasthan with ornate looking people and another one of Ukrainian folktales, where did all of these go? I should really go out for a bit. Take a bath take a bus go to Adam's and eat six plates of kebab maybe.

Kustodiev

Living as I do and where I do, I don't think I'll ever get over mourning the end of winter.

I'd like to respond to things people say through Mercury Rev songs and albums. Wah, you're a strange attractor. How are you today? All is dream. Please go away. Yerself is steam. See you on the other side. Things like that.

So I got my nose pierced yesterday right before it started raining. It hurt, but not as much as I'd worried myself into thinking. And this afternoon I generally had nothing to do and managed to claw at my nose absentmindedly and it stung in that owstupidstupidstupidfuck kind of way, bloody diabolic inevitability what else. And then for half an hour afterwards I was subject to this bloody diabolic throbbing. So I made myself a drink, and then another, I hate whisky but that's all there was. It wasn't the pain really, just the weather. And then I watched The Royal Tenenbaums for the kathousandth time and felt sublime. It wasn't the movie really. Ok maybe it was, but then it's also been a good Sunday - I had the house to myself and lounged around all day and then got good dinner. Now that it's officially Monday I should get to work.

Kafka on the Shore lovers, some beauty lies here.

Japanesque

OH, where the white quince blossom swings
I love to take my Japan ease!
I love the maid Anise who clings
So lightly on my Japan knees;
I love the little song she sings,
The little love-song Japanese.
I almost love the lute's tink-tunkle
Played by that charming Jap Anise—
For am I not her old Jap uncle?
And is she not my Japan niece? - Oliver Herford

I need a new toothbrush, a new stomach and a new place to go away to, in no particular order. It goes without saying that I only really want the last. This weekend, possibly. Then hibernation till end February. Goodplans. Clap clap.

Solo Goya. Yeh Solo Zindagi. Ahahaha. Delirium. I should make that a label.


Edit: I did. *facepalm*

post type post.

I'm feeling this chatty foodtalk vibe right now and managed to find pictures and everything so you've been warned, here goes. Statistically, I think I've cooked eggs more than any other food but apart from breakfast eggs I almost always cook dinner if I'm trying something new. I like to testrun the food by people who will both eat it stoically and tell me if it could've been better, plus I can't eat a lot of anything I've made so it helps to have stoic eaters around. The real truth is, however, that I'm a baker at heart and would much rather give folks cake than meat, which annoys my folks a little because they'd much rather eat an egg as an egg.

I also almost always never have photos of food because it's a pain in the ass trying to get food to photograph well. These are the only two dishes I have photos of right now, there were some life-altering shots of pancakes with nutella but I can't find them so I'm putting up the two that really made me happy, an improvised shakshouka and coastal mango-chicken curry, both from last year.

I thought I'd make spaghetti and meatballs the next time I felt like cooking, they're ridiculously easy, but I had this brilliant thing at Casa Toscana the other day that I'm going to figure out if it kills me - spinach ravioli with mushroom sauce. I've also been thinking of making brunch on a Sunday just to see if I can because I WILL SELL MY SOUL FOR BREAKFAST, that is how much I love it.

Of course the fact that I found the recipe for baked french toast has nothing to do with this.

Such a long post. Verbose, but long. I call that improvement.

I used to write such a lot of poetry at one time. I wrote about the wind and the sea and the sun and the moon and your moon and my sun and our winds and their seas and whatnot. I read my old notebooks. They're a scream. What is especially startling is that the things in them kept reminding me of a lot of people I know now. Interesting, I can preempt and everything. Now I have the shivers everytime I have to write something that isn't the everyday sameold and things like the sea and the sun when stripped of floridity are infinitely more beautiful but this is a now-thing and will probably be a scream three years later, that is how we live I suppose. I wish I were more histrionic, if I had the ability to throw myself before a bus and flail my arms and declaim about life in general I'd probably be consistently poetic or consistently maudlin, emotional nonetheless. Not that I'm not declaiming about life here, but this is more on the level than, say, writing from an in-front-of-the-bus pov. It might not ever happen but if someday you see me running amok on the road singing a song in dead earnest, take a moment to pause and congratulate me, all right?

Unearthed among markeddowns at bookfair: