leaving for France

 how odd to be leaving tomorrow for France, for a week in my cabanon (the "complaining" cabanon) -- the cabanon Bisqua from years ago...

Matthew will spend the night in a hotel near CDG so we can drive down to the Vaucluse the 8, and the rest is lots of friends from always and Philip Hughes in Menerbes, and the restaurant at the Partage des Eaux, and seeing our neighbors Janet Swan and Serge and Suzanne Conil, and then driving to the lavender village of Sault and  aperitifs with Christopher MacRae and Mette, and so on, perhaps lunch at Les Florets on the 11, and then a change of companions in the cabanon...before seeing many other friends and then up to Paris.... 

think i will discard my written talk and just address the images...

New Shoulder!

New Shoulder!

Now with a new, completely new shoulder, I walked a few blocks and felt delightful. So interesting, the lowering of possibilities of things, and then the raising of them once more: like growing aged and losing a year or two.
So we will go to France on Aug 13 until September 15, and that seems quite amazing, like almost normal. Waiting eagerly to see what my new very arty book will look like, and it took 3 years to do at least, for the 30 chapters about gathering around tables and in cafes and academies and salons, and I loved every moment. More soon about more art stuff, and prose poems and such....

and now all this

so it's on all our minds, France and Belgium now, and -- as so often happens, remembering 9/11 - whatever kind of writing and working and giving talks on this and that seems to seem beside the whatever point the world we know is making  right now, in Europe and in our minds and hearts

of course, what's ever relevant depends on so much else -- it all feels like climbing the Dawn Wall without any ropes at all, and still having breath ot congratulate everyone climbing and who has climbed and will