Magentas + Reds = Spring Win.
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Anita Pallenberg, Kate Moss 1997
What the Living Do
by Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we
spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
pours through
the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here,
and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street
the bag breaking,
I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush:
This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called
that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter
to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more
and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in
the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a
cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
speechless:
I am living, I remember you.
The French know how to celebrate summer. Look at Jane. Her skin is the same color of the ground they’re walking on. Maybe the trick is to turn into the shade of your environment. Become a chameleon and just blend in.
Conclusion: I need to move to a place of deep violets and golden thrumming tones.
“
The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.”
There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives. “
-Michael Chabon
Note to Self for Spring: Trousers and white tanks.
photo Glen Luchford
TULUM
We bought our tickets for Tulum, Mexico for June. I can’t wait to finally sit on a white beach, listen to ocean waves and swim in the underwater caves exploring cenotes. If you don’t know what a cenote is, click here.
