Books I mean to read but are so heavy or "A Case For Pocket Paperbacks":

The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier
The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore
Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems
At Sixty by May Sarton
A Circle of Quiet by M. L'Engle
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Nikki Giovanni: Collected Poems
Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir

note: Temple of My Familiar- solved
          Plant Dreaming Deep- solved
          Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter- solved

 anyone want large hardbacks/large in general copies of these? Or willing to trade pocket sizes of any of the others?

Another afternoon nap-- longer sunbeams that caress my books instead of blind my pale slightly shattered eyes-- the cat is sound asleep below the green glowed window full of plants. I can't not see a Levertov poem whenever I see that sill now. It's fitting that she ended her life in Washington State. Where all the evenings glow green and shell pink and some of the days as well. Her green-lit poetry in place. Next time I'm home maybe I'll visit her grave. But Seattle makes me mad, especially the East Side and I think that's where she's buried. Anyways, I appreciate her lack of interest in blue. Everyone is always pushing blue on me but it just reminds me of computer screens and evil corporations' logos. I like my greens and oranges, shells and reds.

Grand Union Canal, UK
September 2019

"categorized snapshots"

Trafalgar Square, September 2019
Statue of Liberty, August 2019

I am reading this because I've been kicking up a fight in small group over all the white male theologians we've been reading. But I have no suggestions. I want to be taught but no one knows anything in our group. So I'm reading Weil. I'm very sure she's not the answer. She's too literary and too academic for our group people. She's something like an unincorporated Catholic. But all her issues with "the church" sound like Calvinism. It's eery. I don't love either C option here. I probably won't finish it because I don't like nonfiction. Especially religious academic nonfiction. Too much of that was crammed down my brain as a child. I want something that celebrates the lightness and beauty of God--it should NOT be too much to ask. He created, loves and revels in both. And the happiness of him. I cannot believe he isn't happy. So why are all our churches and small groups and studies so burdened and solemn and fearful??? Another church we used to be a part of just shuttered. With no warning. They posted a formal letter on their website last Friday saying the church is no more and maybe try the church down the street on Sunday. Jesse thinks we should tell Jim this next time he asks us why we won't become members--trust us, you do not want that.

The edition is really lovely though. That's another problem with this for group, I think it's out of print. I also thought of L'Engle's Walking on Water--but most of the group people aren't very artistic. Jesse and I make jokes and prod and some of them laugh--but in a confused way. Very serious people--not all but the general personality of the group as a whole.

London, September 2019

St. Athans Hotel, Bloomsbury

This is the second time we've stayed here. I hope we always stay here when we visit our London people and bookstores. I hope bambi remembers it. Remembers its narrow, creaking stairwells and halls, the sudden seams where three townhouses were melded together, the airy yet dim rooms with views of rooftops and dusk, the miniature washbasins, the perfect shabbiness, the book filled parlor room, the file filled office awash with desks, the thrift store furniture, the toilets down the hall, the garden level coffee house with food we could eat, the Woolfs down the street, Skoobs under the Waitrose, London Review Books just across the square, Coram's Fields filled with friends, Jesse and I drinking tinned g&ts or ciders in the bed next to her and whispering in the light of the streetlamp, the mantel filling up with books I dread packing into my bags, the table with a pile of supermarket bread and apples and currants for the next day's picnic lunches.

Barcelona, September 2019

Pentax Spotmatic F, Kodak Gold 200

1. my twin family members, new york ad man tan
2. morning light in office of the church around the corner from our hotel
3. playing on steps of said church
4. playing in plaza in front of said church--we never venture far
5. morning on hotel balcony
6. street between hotel and the cafe and bookstore where friends work
7. vermuts and late lunch at cafe in above mentioned plaza
8. postcard browsing
9. sorbet the afternoon we arrived
10. pre-nap beach stroll
11. semi ruined building full of plants in that big park by their arc de triumph
12. reading bills on steps of said building while we waited for Jesse to bring dinner to hotel
13. still waiting on steps... not a great point in the trip. All three of us threw tantrums.
14. next day back in comfortable plaza writing postcards
15. walking back to hotel from aforementioned cafe where we ate all our meals that weren't picnics
16. building in evening light on walk back from beach