Blog

  • Flash

    Reading in bed, electronic on an iPad, Tove Jansson's story collection Traveling Light. I was very happy when it, with the other recent ones – especially Fair Play – were translated by a small London publisher; my intense attachment to the Moomin books, especially the eerie late ones, and to my old, beaten-up copy of…

  • If we really…

    At some point in the last couple of months, the often tangled clouds of dream and fantasy – the things that go on in the back of my mind, when I'm washing the dishes or walking to the bus, or… – those clouds have moved into something unexpected… If, when we die, there is some…

  • For Jarman

    In April 2010, I gave a presentation about Derek Jarman, where I worked through The Garden, Edward II, and Blue, showing the closeness to death in each film. Or maybe: not just showing. When I polished the presentation to give in New Orleans, I felt close to something…. I promised, last year, to turn the…

  • Trove

    A quiet holiday: if the theory was that I shouldn't go anywhere because I had three articles to finish and a collection to edit, what really happened was more typical – although I didn't travel I also didn't work much. Today I got back to it, though… But among all the holiday quiet (there's a…

  • Nadir; and the problem of small talk

    At the lowest point of light, time, and the year: that dark still point before the cycle turns back upward. It was interesting to see some people get upset over the entire Mayan-end-of-the-world meme – furious that people would dare discuss something not scientifically proven. But of course part of its attraction for many –…

  • Blurs

    As teaching ended last Friday, I am putting myself back together, after what felt like three months of scrambling to keep up. And yes, I know that there are many people in the world – more energetic, harder-working – who would have been easily able to keep up with what felt like a heavy teaching…

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