You know how those big storefronts on Fifth Avenue in NYC go under wraps from time to time? How the display windows get put behind brown wrapping paper?  How you know that what’s coming up for display in those windows  is going to be the latest, best, most shiniest thing? Candy colored spring sandals, or a Christmas toy train, the foxiest fall coat, or a big mess of glitzy beauty products ?

Well, that’s what’s happening here – we are officially UNDER WRAPS in preparation for all good things.

Check back soon and see what’s next!

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Never do I crave it so much as this time of year…

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The art of poetry, in other words, is the art of being happily unacceptable in public, of making known one’s otherwise forbidden desires.  The person referred to…as the creative writer is an extraordinary double agent, a figure who doesn’t fit easily into either of Freud’s models of the mind.  Clearly, the creative writer is not akin to the super-ego of the id; he could be described as the eloquent ambassador of the id, who has to some extent outwitted the moralistic clutches of the super-ego.  But the creative writer is not sufficiently addicted to safety, to be merely another word for the ego.  Or perhaps Freud’s figure of the creative writer is the ego in its best, or most satisfied, version.  The poet is our last hope for happiness faced with the scarcity of the external world, the depredations of the super-ego and the voraciousness of the id.  The poet is the person who can get away with it.

 

Adam Phillips, from “Poetry and Psychoanalysis” in Promises, Promises

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leaded, glass, casement

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Breakfast of banana bread,mixed berry compote and creme fraiche after a determined walk around the park. Light streaming into the clean blue-and-wood bedroom. It’s difficult to feel any of these good things. It’s not just winter-tired – I mean it is that – but it’s elsewhere too. It’s a thinness, a starved thing, maybe not needed anymore, obsolete in its way, but it clings somehow. I am irritable at children. Sore. Things (the light, the berries) seem so scant. It is difficult to care very much. I cut my finger yesterday, passed out from the shock, woke up to the ever unchanged sounds of NPR, called everyone I love, got my beautiful daughter to tie up the wound. They all told me I’m not alone. I’m not alone. They are right.

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You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star,” says our man, Friedrich Nietzsche. ..

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One of the ways I’ve adapted as a New Yorker is to have places scattered about the city.  When I’m out and I need to kill time or suddenly can’t handle the noise or a smell or the people, or whatever is plaguing me at the moment I just have to remember where is the nearest shelter: the reading room at the New York Public Library. The lobby at the Algonquin.The little  outdoor courtyard behind the Lincoln Plaza cinema with the view of the last 19th century building on the block. Anywhere in the Metropolitan Museum. Especially the little sculpture courtyard in the back by the cafe and the big square one off the American Wing. They are all a little baroque. If not plush furniture then at least glass bookshelves. If not these things then marble, lamplight, and the good smells of linseed oil and book bindings. Often a chandelier.

Today the NYPL was closed. The Algonquin is under renovation. ( The horror the horror ). The Met was too far. So I am at this place called 57 E Rue. The hotel calls it the “nave” – which is a bit rich, but it does have that quality of a medieval hall.  There’s a hotel lobby further in. I think there’s a law about public space and # of stories – they have to provide it if they build it. Anyway it’s an ersatz version of my primary places. Plush red couches. A coffee bar. Mozart on a repeating sound loop. Chandeliers. It will do. It’s good to be alone in New York.

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…this photo.  It says so much about the holiday.  Pippa’s in it, of course, because Pippa is in everything.  There is so much enthusiasm in it, too – I love how my Dad, Mat and Gus are grinning without guile, and how happy my Mom, Mel, Gem and Lauren look.  It’s also very “me” – the fur collar, the lipstick, the dramatic look – I’m there, but I’m odd.  What can I do?  I spent the weekend being really happy to be with the Geyers, my Mom and Dad, and my sister – feeling really nourished and content and calm.  We had some great meals (thanks for the prime rib Mom and Dad!), took a few driving lessons on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, and counted all two dozen snowflakes that fell on Christmas morning.  It was restful.  I liked that. Some things are simple. I’m grateful for how this year’s holiday panned out – really grateful.

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…drinking coffees in Cambridge.

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stockings hung by the fire…

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