And so here it is May, May 15 to be exact, and I haven't written a blog (horrid-sounding word anyway, like bog and i love that WCWilliams poem about the blind leding the blind into a bog, about which I got to talk tonight, in the midst of a talk about Proust and the Visual Arts to a group -- over 40 s o that's nice -- of Proustians about the Vermeer and the color yellow and that patch of wall which isn't and all that, andthe Williams poem is about there not being a red, only there is, and so on).  That was a parenthetical remark, it would seem. Anyway, because of this an that, and a lot of both those, I 1) forgot I had a blog (like who doesn't have a blog) and 2) didn't have, it seemed to me, time to put anything in it, the way we used to keep diaries.

Now of course there is time for anything you REALLY want to do, I am told or / and  tell myself, only, you know what, there isn't! But today I taught my last class of the semester, about "Energetic Aesthetics" which, more me, has to do with how if you are reaidng a text AND a piece or pieces or wholes of an art piece at the same time, it is particularly energizing, that is, mind-sitrring. And then the Proust talk, last of maybe i2 or 13 talks out of and in the city this year, about of course, my Modern Art Cookbook I loved doing and love talking about, and Translating Surrealism really fun, with Mark Polizzotti, one of my absolutely favorite people to talk with and converse with, and Bill Zavatsky,  now ditto, having found him again,  in Knoxville, where i had fun meandering to the center of the tiny and delightful town, swinging on the swings they put up on weekends, you know, on the village green, all the sort of thing you do when there is 1) a swing and 2) a town, and Little Rock, really fun, where they so delightfully cooked something like 21 recipes from my Modern Art Cookbook and I got to talk about it and had a wonderful time, preeded by Charlotttesville to be with other Joseph Cornellians, talk about him,and guess what, there's about to be another Joseph Cornell bash downtown,at NYU I think, in the fall, anyway, lots of things .

Oh, and we finished scanning -- well, Jaime my wonderful assistant -- finished scanning j, all the stuff for the next Pierre Reverdy book I am doing, for Black Widow Books this time, after the New York Review Books edition, and I am super-delighted. Joe Phillips of the press is the most intelligently patient and delightful publisher ever, and I am SO HAPPY to be turning this in. These are the translations and intoructions and so on I did with beloved Patricia Terry, now in the sky somewhere, and i am doing a translation and edition of Sol Absolu  (Earth Absolute) of Lorand Gaspar with our friend Nancy Kline, for Rainer Hanshe, of Contra Mundum press, which has won all sorts of prizes these days....

and of course, ongoing things, like "Picasso and the camer"a at the Gagosian Gallery this October, for which I got to write a catalogue essay on Dora Maar and Himself doing cliche-verres together, and working with the supeergreat John Richardson  and EVENTUALLY getting to writing the art and sculpture chapter for the Cambidge History of Modernism, nnd writing on Georges Malkine with his daughter, Fern, and also on Jon Schueler with Lindsay Blair whom I knew through Cornell and on it goes. Only it hasn't been going on a lot but it will.

So here's my midnight or mid-early-morning blog i can't really see, having lost my glasses amid all the excitement over these thisses and thats, and I just dropped an almond in my glass of Scotch which is supposed -- not the almond but the Scoth -- to put me back to sleep. We'll see. 

Passwords and Being Open

Every time

What a nice way to start:  I must have written that at least a month ago, to say some angry thing about losing, finding, relosing passwords, then dashlane, one of those things

and now, months later, in freezing new york, about to go to chicago (more Modern Art Cookbook talks, always fun because you have absolutely no idea who might turn up and it is so deeply non-literary, and I loved the review in the TLS speaking of my grandmother, and will send the one that just came out in Artnews to Julian Merrow-Smith, since his beautiful rougets decorates the top of it) and I loved the idea of doing a Literary Foods book, but perhaps that is not where my heart lies

and someone suggested Surrealism in a Hurry, thanks to George McClintock, what fun that would be, and am enjoying a proposed biography of Georges Malkine (surrealist, friend of Desnos, of Artaud, and a greatly unusual painter and writer and film actor), can work on that in Paris, where I go next week to join in a jury on a brilliant and staggeringly long iimportant, I think, thesis on Max Ernst and how his war experience impacted his work

it is a good moment not being bogged down in one thing you know you have to rush on getting through, just a translation of a scientist poet I love, Lorand Gaspar, doing it for ContraMundum, such a great press, with Rainer Hanshe, for whom I  translated Gherasim Luca, and this will be with Nancy Kline, with whom I did a Rene Char

am doing another Pierre Reverdy, this time with Black Widow Books, who did the Char and a Tristan Tzara and a Robert Desnos, and an Eluard, in fact, just about everyone I ever wanted to translaate!
Thanks to Joe Phillips!

it all feels open and possible, which is probably why I left open that only begun thing at the top of this, called "every time"-- so many things are "every time" and they are never dull
Had breakfast with Matthew this morning, now that is never dull, and spoke with Hilary, who is about to run 5 kilometers in the snow in a rabbit costume at the end of which you get soup and hot chocolate -- she is perfectly suited to Northampton and it to her which is a compliment to both