Today I’ve been thinking about The Monster at the End of This Book, a Little Golden Book of my childhood featuring the neurotic but lovable Grover (and somehow in my mind, Klaus Kinski). In it he pleads with the reader in increasingly hysteric tones to not turn the page, in a foiled attempt to avoid […]
Like Ali is an Alps Slut, I am an Art Nouveau Slut, which means I spent our short time in Prague (Praha) with my head craned upward and mouth dangling open in rapture. The city looks as though it was designed by Alfons Mucha, in part because it was. The streets are clusters of buildings […]
On our drive home (that would last fifteen hours and saw us arrive home at three am) Ali sweetly indulged my curiosity about the 16th century garden known as Bosco dei Monstri in Bomarzo, Lazio (just beyond Rome). The Monster’s Grove–it’s visionary preferred Sacred Wood of Bomarzo–is something Mannerist and surreal, created to astonish and […]
For my birthday we visited Le Grotte de Frasassi and it was incredible. Thirteen km of the caves are known (it is thought that they extend at least 35 km); we were invited to see about a kilometer and a half of that. “The speleologists held their breath when the stone began to fall in […]
“…the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup, but in myself.” ~ Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way guest artist: Selena Kimball. I am of the opinion that the path to ecstasy is generally paved with something less than ecstatic, much of which is memory-based. In my world view, memory is a key to essential […]
Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine. ~Henry James Florence is a branch of grapes heavy with religious and political history; street after street brash and explosive with testosteroni; it’s a pair of David boxer shorts, unabashedly vampiric to the more-than-willing tourists; yet also an ornate and jewel-encrusted […]
It is perched in a blown glass egg, the base of which reads Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza. The right middle finger of Galileo–this heretic’s reliquary–is tucked in a case among telescopes, celestial globes, solar orbs, and tellurium. Or it would be, if the museum’s wonderous objects were not mostly hidden away while […]
As a friend so aptly inquired this week, the blog can be a bit distracting from the task at hand (aka “my novel,” which I cannot utter without a wry smile somehow), and so, as I am up to my palpably aching eyeballs in research, I submit this Sunday only a postcard from what Ms. […]
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand. Lord Byron~ Childe Harold (canto IV, st. 1) This has been a surreal and life-changing trip. Lying in bed for six days was heart-breaking after years of wanting to see Venice, but more so, it was frightening. The […]
The first chunk of A Love Supreme comes through the tinny car speaker. I lean back and let it slide over me. We are driving upstate for an Easter egg hunt and brunch, to hangout with Germans, fags, dogs and the women who love them. Ali has been teasing me all weekend about being a […]