Returning home as always is bittersweet,
and voyages are rarely long enough.
Oh we tried, valiantly, to cram as much
into every day (and night) as we possibly
could- but still, the list was far too long!
It was a fantastic trip, perfect in nearly
every way- and yet, when I saw our sleepy
house, and rambunctious be-furred companions
prancing, bedecked in yellow leaves-
oh! I was happy to be home again,
home again- jiggity-jig!
Even listening to my neighbor’s melodramatic
tejano music blaring from his truck across the
street sounded sweet. Some of it, from far away,
starts to sound like a mournful, mexican Nick Cave.
I write, and look out the window and it’s
Fall and it smells like woodsmoke and barbeque.

Wednesday was our first day in San Francisco..
We woke up late and ventured out to Chinatown
for Dim Sum at Gold Mountain, where we stuffed
ourselves silly on dumplings and congee
and tea lotus lychee pudding soup.
Century egg and Lean Pork congee
(皮蛋瘦肉粥 – pídàn shòuròu zhōu)
is one of my favorite things to eat-
the ultimate chinese comfort food.
Hooray for porridges!
Afterwards, we toddled over to City Lights
to make a pilgrimage to the book-temple,
to peruse and digest. I limited myself
(so difficult!) to three books only:

2666 – by Roberto Bolaño
I was lured in by the hubbub,
and by the following description:
“It promises all the Bolaño signatures:
sex, violence, nightmares, stories within stories,
obsessed obsessives, an intercontinental hunt
for a literary recluse, radical art
(one painter finishes a self-portrait by affixing
his mummified severed hand to the canvas),
and the occasional five-page-long sentence.”
Here is an excerpt,
from The Part About the Critics..

Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume III
by Danzig Baldaev
I have the first two, so naturally I had to
snap this one up as well..

What It Is
by Lynda Barry
This book is blowing my mind,
in so many ways. I love everything
Lynda Barry has done- but this is
really something else. I cannot
recommend it enough! Go get it!
I also just found out that she does
a class based on the book,
called Writing the Unthinkable–
I want to go so badly!
Of course there were so many books
that I wanted and didn’t get:

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
-by Victor Pelevin

The Monsters of Templeton
-by Lauren Groff

The Widows of Eastwick
-by John Updike

Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920: Art, Life, & Culture of the Russian Silver Age
-by John E. Bowlt
A short stop at the Cartoon Art Museum
revealed the Totoro Forest Project,
a collection of artworks donated for auction
to raise money to save Sayama Forest,
an urban forest located just outside of Tokyo,
and said to be the inspiration for the wondeful
animated film My Neighbor Totoro.

This was my favorite piece,
Well Child -by Sam Weber


This is Holly Bobisuthi.
I love her a lot. She makes pretty things,
and feeds me candy. She wears sparkling diamante
and teeth and flowers in her long, long hair..
We went out late and met her at Amnesia
for Gaucho gypsy jazz night,
good conversation and amazing home-brewed beer
called “Death and Taxes” that tasted
like chocolate and raspberries.
Also!
This weekend is the East Austin Studio Tour!
I will be helping Colin at his studio
with the hordes of curious art-lovers-
come and see us!
More info here…

He is amazing.
As is his art:

Egg

Cephalopod