what is this, tolkeinland?

my two favorite portraits: seamus heaney and sarah lucas.

first of all, hannah, what the hell are you doing to the blog? this is precisely the sort of ridiculousness i predicted might happen when i wasn't around to bully you. periwinkle? and some battle? i didn't look closely...but might it involve french dialogue? you've cracked; what does this say to the children about war? i don't even sense irony behind this template. cornell box and now. or kan's getting a sequined sweater and matching top hat for christmas. and a pack of pall malls for Hanukkah.

so, i of course have a lot to say...none of it terribly interesting. there was the frenchman this morning, the one staring at me longingly in the coffee shop, his perfect four year-old son in one of those trendy brown puffer jackets, sitting in one of those gazillion dollar three-wheeled strollers. he, the frenchman, yelled incessantly into his cell phone. only my french is spotty but i can guess it was something like, "i'll have those quarterly inventory reports on my desk this instant. do not fuck me on this." he looked at me, then outside, then back at me. i had initially taken this as a sign of humility. shyness, perhaps. only he was staring at his gorgeous wife strolling up old brompton road then back at, not me, but the empty table beside me. she enters with another one of those strollers, a whole other small person entirely inside. they embrace. it's clear they haven't seen each other in an hour and a half. easy.

okay: vegetarian to heart attack in one sitting.
we go to a spanish restaurant two nights ago where they shave iberico pork from the pig's leg. at the bar. beside where they keep sparkling wine chilled in a tiffany bucket. i tell kent to order for us both, which obviously goes against everything in my soul, but what the hell?

ahem:

shaved iberian pork (i.e. acorn-fed pigs; the ham is dried in the mountains for 16 months...this is the kind of shit i'm tested on at the restaurant)
sausage bruschetta with a goat cheese spread on top, caramelized (not unlike creme brulee)
chorizo and cheese balls
garlic prawns
skate wing with some sort of foam and vegetables
slow cooked suckling pig

and i'm missing a few. the next morning i attacked 3 museums on 3 different parts of town, followed an all girls kindergarten class around the national gallery while a docent gave a guided tour. only, the girls were smarter than me. so when we studied that degas with the nurse brushing the red-head's hair, the docent asked, "what might hair brushing signify," and some, like, 4 year-old says in a thick english accent, "it means she trusts the lady not to hurt her. you don't just let anyone brush your hair. like, i wouldn't let my leetle brother." and don't get me started on still lifes. they had a field day. one small person identified the lute; i had thought it was a wine chiller.

point is, kent didn't get out of bed till 1:30. he didn't "feel well." i was so mad, had consumed a small farm for the first time in years and managed to do some sort of supermarket art sweep.


and i've been taking notes on anything and everything for 3 days. because i know i'll forget everything. until i get to this sardonic poem in gerald stern's everything is burning. "the nursing / students alone took notes, they would take notes / while jesus was drowning, wouldn't they?"