here i dreamt of quill pens and stamped beeswax

                                    * shot with an old Polaroid SX-70 with expired 600 film

I spent a day and a half in this intimate bookstore while in Paris. It was one of my most anticipated and relished experiences. This bohemian haven has a vivid history and multitudinous shelves lined with new and used books side by side. Most are in English though I did pick up a paperback of Colette's Duo in French to amble through over time. I sat in the lending library upstairs with an ancient copy of Leaves of Grass in a worn tobacco hued leather chair while the bells of Notre Dame chimed over the street and through the open window. After a bit I'd take a break and walk to the cafe around the corner for a cappuccino, an omelette au fromage (with dijon mustard) and salade verte. Then I'd return and peruse the half price books in open steamer trunks and old suitcases on the sidewalk in front of the store, carefully deciding which to take to the cashier to be hand stamped with their insignia and added to my own modest library far away.

The Bookshop has a thousand books,

All colors, hues and tinges,

And every cover is a door

That turns on magic hinges.

-Nancy Byrd Turner

the solitude is animated but not broken *

 

   

Our current record rotation:

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen

Johnny Cash -  Greatest Hits Vol. 1

Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days

Ravi Shankar - India's Master Musician

*  "The solitude is animated but not broken."

From May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude on time spent in blessed company.

winterglow

The wingbeat of December has been filled with leisurely days and small winter pleasures. Replacing the moth perforated geraniums in the front flowerpots with fresh scarlet pointsettias and repotting the window boxes with vibrant red and white cyclamen added a festive air. A trip to Arizona to spend some holiday time with my mom, friends and family sweetened the season as well. 

Bud has had time off and we've strung popcorn and cranberries for our pencil pine, made kitchen messes with homemade fudge and gingerbread house assembly, sipped steamy cups of wassail stirred with cinnamon sticks, and have read Pablo Neruda's Memoirs and The Catcher in the Rye aloud at twilight. I've been forcing Red Lion and Dancing Queen amaryllis and paperwhite bulbs in indoor canisters throughout the house. They surprise me each day with new bits of growth, color and bloom. Friends came over for Eve dinner (the traditional chili and tamales I've had for Eve dinner since I can remember, only now they are vegetarian and gluten free). 

There are no snowmen in Santa Monica, though we do still have the company of incandescent hummingbirds and the black phoebe that's been singing here since spring.

I hope your season has been filled with so much joy.

 

he was a golden moment

Central Park, NYC 1999

Big Sur, CA 2010

It's been a year since we've snuggled up to these spots

or seen the happy swish of his wagging tail.

Life with him was evergreen and enchanted.

I feel forever blessed.

cafe life

I saw a cafe...The smallness of it, the intimacy of it, the humanity of its proportion, the absence of arrogance, the absence of gloss and glitter touched me and once again opened me to tenderness as Paris has always done...One could sit there and feel unique, in tune with the world, or out of tune, feel human, open to human emotions and wanting to weep. One could sit there if one felt the world too big, too barbaric, and once more experience a human setting, a proper setting for a human being who does not feel arrogant, glossy, powerful. The small cafe and tenderness were not gone, the patina of much living, the worn, the tired, the wistful, my cafe, my Paris, where a soul can be a little worn, where it does not have to be shop-new, shop-glossy, hard and brittle.

- Anais Nin (Paris Revisited)