Shiro Kasamatsu, Evening rain on Shinobazu Pond, 1938

I have a clear mission this week.

Before we start, let's just be up on Shinobazu Pond for a minute. Let's be at that bridge. We're alive and for a lot of us it's nearly spring. That's a specific and auspicious set of circumstances we can toast with a few breaths in this evening rain we've been given.  

A "clear mission" is, okay, optimistic. What I have this week has the force of a clear mission, if not the clarity of a clear mission.

What I mean is that it's clear to me that I have a mission, even if I'm not clear on how to get it done.

  We have got to enjoy being alive this week and I mean with a vengeance. Eyes, nose, mouth, skin, brain, everything we got. Flavors most, colors go, eyes open—

I feel like a hostess throwing a party that I didn't know I was throwing until the last minute, like right before the doorbell started ringing, where every guest who's coming, this is the last party they'll ever get to go to.

here comes a Mary Ruefle poem

             As far as wine, we should go to 1998 for that I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS THE BEST, IN FACT I KNOW THAT IT'S NOT, IT CAN'T BE THERE'S SO MUCH WINE and I barely drink it anymore, only for special occasions but this is the best one from my memory so it's the best thing I can pour for you

      and somebody should make this, no? I'd say me but it needs fluffy egg whites and I've only ever failed to do those right.  somebody who's good at egg whites, get in there. this is you.   Richard Sax's Chocolate Cloud Cake

what else

smell this, it smells great, it's a great smell

  the doorbell is ringing again: somebody's arriving for this, the only party that will ever happen, and somebody else is leaving, by which of course I mean dying

THINK FAST/NO PRESSURE/JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE NO PRESSURE

?

<<thinking>>

Peaches aren't even going to be in season for months

     but I'm offering a guarantee that these will be good peaches, maybe the best you ever ate, so is it going to kill you to get to Seattle early and wait in the parking lot of Metropolitan Market for this to start?   

it might a lot of things can happen in a parking lot

Oliver Jeffers, Constellation Road Map, 2018

this is so good

One Word: Dipshit by Halle Butler

in the Paris Review, read it here, it starts like this:

I was on an airplane last year, and the woman sitting in front of me was a real piece of work. She had two young kids who were totally fine, totally quiet, really low energy—but she kept trying to engage them and turn everything into a teachable moment.  She had a very loud, affected voice. I shit you not, this is a direct quote: “Asher, if you wish it, you may have one of your Laffy Taffys now, but then only two Laffy Taffys will remain.” How elegant! The kid didn’t respond, didn’t care either way, but she kept pushing them on him as if it were some kind of Stanford marshmallow experiment. Every time she said something, she repeated it (once more for the balcony!). Of course, she read to them, at top volume, from some Amelia Bedelia–style chapter book the whole flight, overarticulating like it was fucking Chaucer, nervously glancing from side to side to see if we noticed how good she was at this. Meanwhile, the kids tuned her out to play video games and eat wads of candy. When the plane was descending, she was like, “The flight to Manhattan is not all that long, if you recall the flight to London. Do you recall when we flew to London? That was a much longer flight than this, the flight into Heathrow. You may have another Laffy Taffy if you wish.” At that point, the guy across the aisle closed his eyes, exhaled, and said, very softly, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Shiro Kasamatsu, Spring Snow at Toriko Shrine, Asakusa, 1934

      you want to know something else funny? my husband was writing the eulogy for his mom today, that notoriously easy thing to do, and then he clicked over to do something else for a second without saving it and the document disappeared 

TRY AGAIN, DAVE!

   oh god  "funny", you know what I mean.

  remember the mary ruefle poem from up there? Here's the whole book, you can read it right now, whole thing     Let's lie down on the floor now and listen to this. 

 Weekly Zephyr Playlist #61

Please know that I really appreciated your messages in response to last week's issue. They meant a lot. I wanted to respond individually but we were heading into the thick of it. And yes: two days ago, she went. I couldn't have had a better mother-in-law. Like a best girlfriend. When Dave and I met, he told me about her in nearly our first conversation and then I met her and found out why. She was and is the most special one.

    same artist same pond but 1934

and a misty evening instead of a rainy one

Wake Up Call

“The water is slapping wake up, wake up, against the boat chugging away from Venice, infinite essence of what must end because it is beautiful,

Venice that shrinks to a bobbing, pungent postcard and then to nothing at all as the automatic doors at the airport obligingly shut behind you.

Re-enter the world where everything’s much the same, where you’ve gone slack again, and don’t even know it, so unaware that you actually shrug to yourself,

I’ll be back, and yes, for some lucky stiffs it’s true, sometimes it’s you, and you’re sure to get more chances at Venice, at Paris, and that blessed, unmarked place

where you sat on a bench and he kissed you that first time, so many kisses, you hoped he would never stop, you can hope, at least, not ever to forget it,

or forget how your babies, latching onto your breast, would roll up their eyes in ecstasy that was comic in its seriousness, though your joy was no less grave,

but you’re not going back to so much, and more and more, the longer you live there’s more to not go back to, and what you demand in your gratitude and greed

is more life in which to get so attached to something, someone or someplace, you’re sure you’ll die right then when you can’t have it back, something you don’t even know

the name of yet, but will be yours before receding as an indispensable ache; what you’re saying is Lord, surprise me with even more to miss.”

– mary jo salter

 : /