Dead Letter Department #140

weather report

60 degrees this morning, cool enough to need a hoodie for backyard coffee, and to contemplate the retrieval of the under-the-desk slippers. Even the chickens next door seem to be waking up a little more slowly.

Speaking of next door, they had some sort of torture machine going over there for about 36 hours. I haven’t the faintest idea what it was or why they needed it, but it made a sort of high pitched constant buzzing sound. Are you one of the (unfortunately) elect who can hear the sound of certain kinds of light fixtures? It was like that, only much, much louder. If not, perhaps you’ve happened by an electrical station of some kind where you can actually hear everything working. It is, in short, an insidious, inescapable noise, quite audible both in the yard and through open windows in every room in the house, and although it has stopped, I can only hope that’s because whatever was making it is now irretrievably broken, because how on earth would I mention it to my lovely neighbors? I can hear your mystery machine quite clearly, could we possibly figure out a way to muffle it—oh, you can’t hear it? At all? Now I seem simultaneously fussy and insane to the people that sell me eggs.

Downtown was buzzing this weekend, in the way that end of summer comes for people here, with a sort of frantic delight to make the most of the last few weeks of warmth and semi-reliable sunshine. I went down to Wonderz, which is a great outdoor market that closed off Railroad Avenue, tons of booths of vintage clothes and art, bought something that I will show you once I’ve managed to get a frame for it, and just generally enjoyed the atmosphere & the live music. There were people from the comic convention wandering through, so you got approximately one Princess Leia or anime character for about every ten fashion-forward college students with crop tops and fine line tattoos, and it really was a nice combination.

I passed the Rolling Coffins event at Structures, which I was only clued into because the street was absolutely lined with vintage vans, and ended up at the end of one of the seemingly thousand races that happen every year down at Waypoint Park, where I went to buy an olive pate and brie sandwich on focaccia at Mercato delle Bonta—Frankie’s Favorite, on the menu, and there’s a reason why it’s called that. There was a tiny child in purple velvet pants laboriously climbing up the stairs on their own, having broken free from the playground, who seemed to be headed towards the boardwalk nearby on a solo mission of some kind, so I chatted to them and they chatted back at me (no words I understood, but we were on friendly terms), politely suggesting that perhaps we ought to linger where someone might see them instead of doing a runner until their dad popped up, sighing “My little social butterfly,” and herded them back again.

This week I’m hoping for tremendous progress on my draft, though I will settle for good progress, if needed. The part time gig will be slow, running up to next week’s holiday, so I’ll also be trying to get some things done for my mom that have been on my list for weeks or months, some of which are bound to be a little fraught, like sitting down to do an updated living will for her. She did one years ago, but it was not ready to hand when it was needed, which is of course the whole point of such a document, and also things change with time, so getting it all updated and saved somewhere easy to access really needs to happen. It’s just not a conversation to look forward to, though, is it? And it sure hits differently after her having been through some catastrophic hospital days in recent memory.

I finally mulched over the invasive vine (that I planted! when I was younger & stupider! mea culpa! & have dug out several times since then, for my sins) in the side yard a couple weeks ago, but of course did not buy the correct amount of mulch for the project (have never, in all my years; always too much or too little), so hauled a few more bags out there to hopefully finish that up. There was a great burst of gladiolas the past couple of weeks that I completely forgot I had planted, and some of the roses look like they might bloom again. Also the little pinkish white hydrangea by the bird bath has been blooming continuously all season, so I can only hope it decides to stick around. My vine training was a failure, didn’t take, gone all crispy, so I’ll have to decide what if anything to do with the trellises in that bit of the yard for next season.

This is the first year I’ve thought sort of longingly of actually putting in some new beds in the back, instead of feeling like what’s already there is almost too much to deal with. I didn’t actually pull the trigger, but perhaps next spring that will still hold its appeal.

reading room

For my birthday, I bought myself a couple of expensive magazines & I’ve been enjoying Apartamento so much that I’m seriously considering a subscription. A lot of the interior design glossies that used to be fun are sad and anemic now, but Apartamento is odd and interesting and actually seems to maintain an aesthetic & an editorial voice, as opposed to just providing backing for Van Cleef advertising spreads.

I’ve also been reading one author interview a day from the Paris Review Writers at Work (Second Series, Vol 2), which is completely fascinating & part of a new personal project that I’m hoping to tell you about sometime. The writers are wildly contradictory, giving completely opposite advice in most cases, but there’s something so delicious about reading in depth about how they work in all the minutiae they care to give, rather like poking around a studio & getting to hear all about the type of bristles in the brushes and the light at different times of day.

More soon, and in the meantime, may that hideous noise in the background suddenly cease.