reading aloud

so we just gave a reading at KGB Bar, six of us reading our translations and talking about the authors we just translated for a little press called Contra Mundum, and that was fun; always readings are fun, I think -- a friend and I read in New Orleans, books we translated together and separately and also in Woodstock
well, that isn't much news actually and I have to prepare my forthcoming seminar on Turns and Swerves or whatever I called it, in art and text, having to do with how the road bends or the text turns, that kind of thing, as in Nicolas de Stael or a number of other artists I love -- or how the plot not thickens but swoops away differently from what you might expect
we were in NorthCarolina because my beloved sister got robbed and we had to  straighten up after and such and such, and there are mostly pine trees and marshes, lovely, and a kind of unbusyness, unlike New York which I love living in

BACK IN NEW YORK

just to say to whomever gets this, not just that we are back in the city after the Vaucluse and Aspen (some lovely music, but goodness does it feel like Beverley Hills or something), and here I am so happily teaching in the fall, in French Ph.D. program: "Art and Text: Mannerism to Modernism" and then in the spring, in the English Ph.D. program "art and text: turns, shifts and bends" taking as a prelude Nicolas de Stael's "Bend in the road in the Vaucluse" which kicked off my talk in Portsmouth, England, this summer, and then in the fall of next year, in the Film Certificate program at the same delightful Graduate School of course, "Film and Modern Literature"  -- you know, Henry James and so on...
and that I am so glad to have 2 books coming out in Belgium this fall, one the translation in French of my "Glorious Eccentrics: Modernist Women painting and writing" with added chapters on Isadora and Kay Boyle, thanks to Anne Reynes-Delobel, who translated my seven chapters so I am translating into english her chapters, in case we can reprint the whole thing in English, and how interesting it is, not depressing, that it turns out I can't type more than 2 hours now without my fingers arthritically cramping, and that is for the first time,
like so delightfully some things are for the first time, not like Chapman's Homer or the first cuckoo in the spring or such, but all the same, sort of fun, and we went to the out of doors met performances on HD of Iolanthe and Bluebeard's Castle and then Romeo et Juliette at which all of New York must have been so we sat on the wall
and pretty soon I will think about my ebook contract for a SimplyWoolf, sounds like fun, off to somewhere just on the Hudson right now to not waste the sun

In the Cabanon, Vaucluse

Here in my cabanon, where I have hung out in the summers for, what, forty and over summers?? it is rather unlike New York in any season at all. Steps of stones gathered from here and there over the years, flagstones put down whenever I could afford it (you know, a book on Virginia Woolf, add a terrace, one on Henry James, add stones leading to the bathroom, when I finally had what you  might think of as that, and so on), and the light and the neighbors on the right, on the left, across the way, and up the hill. Magnificent, getting up in the morning, having our coffee  upstairs with our juices -- grapefruit for me, yes, pamplemousse rose, and for Boyce, orange juice, or then, and then, whichever, either our leftover superb boule from the grand boulangerie/patisserie down the hill, which we had for supper last night, by the way, with the lady in the garage (yes) next to the parking lot (good thing Boyce can drive and Does Not go to Sleep at the Wheel, which I have done 3 times, so try not to get next to the steering wheel, which somehow puts me to sleep deliciously until, well, not a good thing, once turned over completely, twice into trees), anyway, her just laid eggs from her chickens, usually given to her children, but today we purchased six of  them and promised NOT to use them in an omelet or any other waybut soft-boiled, which we did, with our fresh bread and demi-sel butter, and red wine from the Bedoin cave, oh heavens, what to say?
Right, stop there.
So then we can tomorrow drive to Carpentras, where the TRAIN ACTUALLY NOW GOES, after Avignon, and so then mosey around this town I so love, and maybe I can take the train to the TGV in Avignon to Paris for the Eurostar to get to London to get to Portsmouth to give a talk on Turnings (yes, but I can't find the Nicolas de Stael ROAD which was my inspiration, oh well), then Paris for my friend Marie-Claire Dumas, and Yves Bonnefoy, and some interview AGAIN about Dora Maar and then back to Carpentras for Mormoiron and our cabanon and various beloved visitors, including Matthew and Emily Bidwell, and my cousins Liz and B and so on and on, with our friends and neighbors and Boyce says: all we do is see people and friends and eat and drink and cook and OH MY GOODNESS WHAT COULD BE MORE DELIGHTFUL???