I sit, carefully constructed. Coffee lies within reach. Legs crossed, on the couch, a pillow settled as a spongy lap-desk. A plate balances on the pillow's apex, a beautiful pastry holding court at the center of my being. In my left hand I balance a paperback copy of M Train by Patti Smith. I use … Continue reading A Delicate Mess
Patti Smith
Totems
Emerald green leaves with darker stripes like paint splotches, called calithea lancifolia, in a specked, sky-blue pot; a rippled peperomia, the other houseplant I've managed not to kill, purpley green leaves and magenta stems; a beeswax candle that smells of pine; a framed thistle I carried home with me, pressed into a book, from Scotland. … Continue reading Totems
With a Monkey on Your Back: Patti Smith’s ‘Year of the Monkey’
I finished Patti Smith's newest memoir, Year of the Monkey, within earshot of the Crooked River in, fortuitously enough, Smith Rock State Park. Several birds and an airplane added to the river's babbling. In the morning, M and I climbed, then he went for a run and I hunted up this sheltered spot to finish … Continue reading With a Monkey on Your Back: Patti Smith’s ‘Year of the Monkey’
On Alien Minds, + Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’
In brief: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood I tend not to be swept up in (clued into?) the big happenings in contemporary literature. But something about the release of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, her sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, felt not only of the literary moment but within the zeitgeist. So I snagged a copy … Continue reading On Alien Minds, + Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’
Paris and Patti Smith’s ‘Devotion’
Listening to, Patti Smith, Horses. Drinking, chai green tea with honey Recently a dear friend gave me Patti Smith's newest memoir, Devotion, as a birthday gift. This friend and I have a shared love affair with Smith's recent spate of memoirs, from Just Kids to M Train. At one point in Devotion, Smith is in … Continue reading Paris and Patti Smith’s ‘Devotion’
Dogs, Coffee, & Books 