voluptuary

my table: mangos, orange tulips, blood oranges

Kate D is preparing our panel proposal on EXCESS for the & Now conference, which if it goes through will hopefully be with Bhanu K, Johannes G, Daniel Borzutzy. and the two Kates.  I have been thinking a lot about excess lately - an excessive style, the excess of emotions TSE was so fearful of (his coining of the objective correlative, there must be a reason for Hamlet's angst, I'm sure he thought there was no reasons for Viv's hot tempers). I never quite understood, because I didn't live here, why there was such gorgeous and detailed descriptions of flora in novels of the Southern gothic. But living here, in early spring, with everything so - florid and gorgeously overgrown, I understand it, and I am glad this weekend I was in the South to understand things like heat and hothouse flowers (it was 86 degrees last Friday). And also Zelda's Save me the Waltz - Zelda's descriptions of flowers in her novel are so lush and voluptuous, so gorgeous, now I understand. The flowering trees here in North Carolina are like candy for the eyes - I cannot take in enough beauty - it is all so vivid in creams and poignant magentas and golds and pinks. Spiky blossoms and little crunchy blossoms. Forsythia a yellow so intense it makes one happy to behold it - I have branches here on a vase on the floor. And orange tulips at the table. And the most decadent rhonoculus in a vase at my desk. I am buying cut flowers with abandon. And on the hills growing wild the daffodils and tulips. And the trees are blooming. Everything is blooming. Cherry blossoms and magnolias and dogwoods. Names like: yellow catalpa, white snowdrop, horse-sugar. I go around examining all of the textures. This weekend hiking on a trail in the Duke forest and then later that evening the Kronos Quartet playing Steve Reich compositions - more on that later, a discussion of Japan and national trauma and how this ties into art (and tomorrow or next day I'll post the video I took Friday in the bathtub discussing Laure and reading Jelinek. I am clothed in this one.) And afterwards we wandered around Duke's campus and even though my eyes were itchy and my throat scratchy I took in all of the vividness. And John and I dressed up - overdressed in a way - there is something wonderful about the asethetic of being overdressed - I wore my new striped dress with the bustle in back that is my inspiration to Zelda that I am going to wear for Green Girl readings, and John wore a striped blazer and tie. We are overgrown and excessive. There are certain joys to that. (I will post a picture here because that is what one does when one is excessive and prone to frivolities. It is us, aping the Fitzgeralds while in a college town).

 a penchant for stripes and poses

"I packed the striped dress that Estelle had helped me to choose,
and the cheap white one that fitted well, and my best underclothes,
feeling very happy while I was packing. A bit of a change, for that had not been one
of my lucky summers." - "Till September Petronella" by Jean Rhys