Emily August

Excerpt from Agitator
Tymoteusz Karpowicz

It was a lion that devoured
your trees in the garden
a goldfish
swallowed your hands

1958, translated by Malgorzata Sady.
Karpowicz was born in Lithuania in 1921.

I love the sense of something large or small creating an unbalanced amount of trouble in its wake. A building falls and only a field of flowers is crushed, no one is harmed. A fly lands on the tip of a glass in the store display and the entire thing tumbles. I also spent too much time reading The Chronicles of Narnia when I was younger, and tend to enjoy the idea of lions unexpectedly entering backyard gardens.

Memory of Your Hands
Malgorzata Hillar

When I remember
the touch of your hands
I am no longer the girl
who quietly combs her hair
and sets clay pots
on a pinewood shelf

Helpless I feel
how the flames of your fingers
kindle my neck and arms

Sometimes I stand this way
in broad daylight
in a white street
and I cover my mouth with my hands

so I will not scream.

1957, translated by Iwona Gleb.

This text feels like the wake of a panic attack, and reminds me of the insurmountable feelings you have when you first fall in love with someone. The feeling of being crushed under the weight of even a memory of feeling is very indulgent and happily reminds me of being a teenage girl. I also love the idea that you can control the impulse to scream by simply placing your hands over your own mouth. I know that I’ve used this imagery myself somewhere and perhaps that is why I enjoyed this poem so much.

I’ve been drawn to the Polish Books books section at the Jersey City Free Public Library, perhaps I am trying to find something about myself there. This is the first of three in a series I plan to write about, taken from The New Polish Poetry: A Bilingual Collection, 1978; Holton and Vangelisti eds. University of Pittsburgh Press.

french netting is a must

that little round thing with the kind of a point at one end

Helping my sister with her wedding veil, and learning to love the idea of millinery, due to two great books from the Jersey City Public Library:

Saturday Night Hat by Eugenia Kim (love love love).
“I Do” Veils by Claudia Lynch (a bit outdated, but wonderfully so).

I just wish I had some old feathers laying around! Any recommendations for friendly trim stores in NYC? I wonder if Rory will want to incorporate LED’s and circuits into the design.

One can dream.

We go shopping on Friday and I can’t wait.

Working with these images for a project I’m working on.
I love both of these images. So much.

Make it Yourself: sewing and knitting hobby book. Picked up at the Salvation Army in Jersey City this weekend along with a book my drawing teacher told me to buy last year, some really cute dresses, and a bright red polyester swing coat that is destined for my etsy shop, since its a tad too big on me. I don’t have time to photograph these, but I’ll get to it this weekend.

Since I have literally given up on my car, and put it in storage, and since I’ve started relying solely on public transportation, I have felt kind of limited in the thrifting sector. Used to be I could pull up to a thrift store, load up my car with whatever I wanted and haul it home easily. Lately, I’ve felt thunderstruck at the prospect of carrying my purchases home in my hands, and in the process, I’ve all but abandoned my favorite past time.

The stupid thing is that I live about four minutes from New York City, which is vintage clothes Mecca if you’ve got the money.

Well, I am happy to report that it turns out the walk to the Salvation Army and back is only about two miles. Once I realized (remembered?) how close it is and now that I’ve experienced how easy it is to walk there, I have started feeling like the luckiest girl in the world again.

I can’t wait to go back, maybe this weekend.

Also, while I was shopping, I listened to the same song over and over. It was by the Doleful Lions, from a Parasol Records comp I got years ago and never listened to. It reminded me of listening to Indie Pop Radio nearly all day long in college. I’ve been feeling like I should sell my guitar pedals and get one like the one Kevin lent me years ago, because there is something about loving a certain sound that will help you write the songs you are hearing and humming.

We are also in the market for keyboards, particularly a Mini Korg or something of the same ilk. Totally missing the ease of the black and white keys. Its a bit easier for my brain to build scales linearly than on the neck of a guitar.

Oops! I almost forgot, thanks to my friend Tricia Royal, who has the most notoriously best blog ever, for linking my quilts post, and to all my lovely visitors for your comments and emails. I am really excited about patterns and lines. Keep sending me your links and ideas!

Got a lovely box of books in the mail from a long-time internet acquaintance. Roxanne at persephassa sent me:

Sylvia Plath The Collected Poems
Lawrence Ferlinghetti A Coney Island of the Mind
Leonard Cohen Selected Poems: 1956-1968
Arthur Rimbaud A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat
Patti Smith Early Work 1970-1979
Dorothy Parker Enough Rope
Elizabeth Bishop The Complete Poems 1927-1979
Philip Levine They Feed They Lion and The Names of the Lost

and my favorite at first glance–
Louis Untermeyer This Singing World: An Anthology of Modern Poetry for Young People

I think I will most closely read Ferlinghetti, but I am excited about each of them. The Anthology is an eighth printing from 1928 and is full of interesting and bizarre illustrations. Thanks, Roxanne!

Ruby is obsessed with the box and papers from the package, likely because they smell like Roxanne’s darling cats.