Transactions with Beauty

“What I fear most is despair for the world and us: forever less of beauty, silence, open air, gratitude, unbidden happiness, affection, unegotistical desire.” — Wendell Berry, from This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, page 192 — You’ve probably heard

— I’ve been mulling over what type of post I wanted for my 10 year anniversary of writing in this space, of insisting on beauty and that you are required to make something beautiful.

— It’s the delightful deliquescent dregs of August.

— One of the most useful things I’ve read lately comes once again from the book Faith, Hope and Carnage, a conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan.

— I’ve been thinking about the dead a lot lately.

— I’m not a major film buff or anything like that, but who doesn’t enjoy a good classic film?

— This past week reading Franz Wright’s Axe in Blossom, his last poems and fragments.

— I’m just going to carry on here in this sort of unconnected notes form.

— On repeated play this week, Lana Del Rey’s version of Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood.

— I remind myself that one needn’t pay too much attention to things like the existence of Meta Glasses, but at the same time, as someone who has been reading about the male gaze, reading John Berger, Sontag, WJT Mitchell, Barthes, you name it, forever, I…

— Listen, I wonder, whose silence are you?

— I had this memory of taking photos of a murmuration in Rome.

— One of those books I own and will never let go of is Mickey Rourke and the Bluebird of Happiness: A Poet’s Notebooks by W.S.

This one goes out to all the Li-Young Lee fans out there.

All week I’ve had a book with a broken spine cracked open in my study.

Okay friends, I think it needs to be stated that none of the photos on my wee blog are AI, none of the words are either.

— I don’t think my desk or study has been messier.

— I missed last week here, and in the mode of Julia Childe, I won’t apologize.

Several years ago in Rome, I took a photograph of a piece by Joseph Kosuth, titled, The Gift.

— Let’s start this little ramble off with some notes and quotes on photography.