In Japan now, gave talk on violence out and in: the explosive erotics of Dada and  Surrealism, mostly showing images from both, including Japanese, and wonderful audience and group
about eroticism veiled and the dance of the surrealist encounter and all that, today am being taken to Kyoto, which I loved before, and tomorrow to Hamammatsu to talk in a professor's class, whose thesis I directed
then back to ny to teach my film class the next day
spoke in New London, Ct., on Robert Motherwell, on panel with the Dedalus Foundation representative and a master printmaker, with both of whom we had panels before
then at Penn, with friends I had known, like Eric Sellin, and the brilliant and beautiful and alltogether delightful Wendy Steiner
and this week I teach, well, share about Jean Cocteau and next week also, then Derek Jarman, and Caravaggio via Glenn Gould and Bernhard's The Loser
so they are both dessert
off to Kyoto now

watching..

now watching Jean Cocteau's "Le TEstament d'Orphee" for my coming "Jean Cocteau et le cinema" for Jean-michel Place
about death and flowers and on and on... must go finish watching, and start on catalogs about Kay Sage and Robert Motherwell and go to play with Boyce at 59th street theatre, will pick this up soon

thinking new year stuff!

so one gathers that one, I gather that we, we gather that we should make all sorts of turnoverthings now for the year to come, such as 1) tidy up (this will not be happening) 2) make our desk straight and put the papers somewhere (this will probably not be happening) 3) finish some of the projects started (well, maybe, some of them, maybe) 4) and under contract (this would be SimplyWoolf, an e-book, and also Jean Cocteau et le cinema, for Jean-Michel Place)

and whee, I did put on reserve books for my forthcoming seminar in TURNINGS for the English Ph.D program, and have almost finished reading final papers for this past term, which I loved:
From Mannerism to Modernism in Art and Text, great students, great auditors, it was just plain delight, I hope all around, and have sent in my possible Film course for the fall, after which I retire, and that would be Film Art: visual and verbal interconnections -- with ballet and novels and stories and avant-garde stuff and all sorts of things to show in the film room downstairs at the Graduate School, which I really love, and am glad Paul Krugman is joining us at the graduate school: when asked what would tempt him away from Princeton, he said, Zabar's -- now that is cute

loved having French friends here, Philippe and Francoise Heuze, classicists, and recently Camille Morando (archives at the Pompidou, here to bring back to the Pompidou Francis Bacon's portrait of Michel Leiris from the Gagosian) and Fabrice Flahutez (such  brilliant art historian, here to speak on Matta at the Pace, with Matta's daughter) and Catherine Maubon (with whom and with Boyce we got to hear my son Matthew Caws and Nadasurf play at Webster Hall, the night after the Bataclan massacre, about which he spoke of course, since that is where they play when the group  is in Paris)

so goes New York, and I love writing for the Brooklyn Rail, where I have so many friends, and just brought out GLORIEUSES MODERNISTES: ART, ECRITURE ET MODERNITE AU FEMININ  avec les presses universitaires de Liege that I did with Anne Reynes-Delobel, who had the graciousness of translating my Glorious Eccentrics into French and adding super chapters on Isadora Duncan and Kay Boyle, and introductions and afterwords, so it feels, with lots of illustrations and photographs of Suzanne Valadon, Judith Gautier,Dorothy Bussy, Dora Carrington, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Emily Carr... lovely book, with an Emily Carr on the cover of a Canadian forest... we are all very fortunate!

happy new year to anyone who reads this, Mary Ann