National Gallery, London.
“London always reminds me of a brain. It is similarly convoluted and circuitous. A lot of cities, especially American ones like New York and Chicago, are laid out in straight lines. Like the circuits on computer chips, there are a lot of right angles in cities like this. But London is a glorious mess. It evolved from a score or so of distinct villages, that merged and meshed as their boundaries enlarged. As a result, London is a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.” —
James Geary, On London
I’m leaving for London in mere hours and will be there for the next week. We have a sort of running list of things we want to see but no set timeline or agenda, which I think is the way to go. Who wants to be tied down to a set schedule in a city like London? Half the pleasure is in walking around, letting the place unfold itself before you as it will, and not as Fodor’s or Frommer’s or Lonely Planet has told you it will.
The other day a patron asked me for a book with short overviews of all Dicken’s characters; she was participating in a local Dickens festival but did not have the time to actually read one of his novels. She said she was “pressured” into helping out with the festival. I wonder if she is worried about being exposed as an impostor?
If I had known that I would have screamed out for “Popular.”
“The heart’s a sprinting thing and hammers fast.
The word is slow and rigid in its pace.
But, if they part once, they must meet at last
As when the rabbit and the tortoise race.
Words follow heartbeats, arrogant and slow
As if they had forever in their load,
As if the race were won, as if they go
To meet a dying rabbit on that road.
Then, step by step, the words become their own.
The turtle creeps to win the prize.
But, ah, the sweeter touch, the quicker boon
Is lost forever when the rabbit dies.”
— Jack Spicer, Reading Last Year’s Love Poems
(via paperbackgirl)
We’re doing another NYC Bookswap, autumn-style!
I am in an all-day training called Black Belt Librarian. I’ll let you all use your imagination as to what it’s like.
Wipe that stupid grin off your face, Griffith Observatory. You do realize you’re wearing a dodgeball on your head? Fantastic. All right, I’m cutting you off now. The astronomers disapprove.
(Costumier: Eric)
AMAZING!
“It is a bright afternoon: what am I going to do? I am going to work with my mind and with my pen, while the sky is clear and while the soft white clouds are small and sharply defined in it. I am not going to bury myself in books and note taking. I am not going to lose myself in this jungle and come out drunk and bewildered, feeling that bewilderment is a sign that I have done something. I am not going to write as one driven by compulsions but freely, because I am a writer, because for me to write is to think and to live and also in some degree even to pray…” — Thomas Merton, The Search for Solitude
Fall is the best…