In London I slept on a mattress on the floor and woke up to tea with milk in first and cereal that comes in blocks. I went to the British Museum where every sign tells you not to touch the art, tells you about the oils on your skin, which all I could imagine was the imprint of a hand, the memory of a fingerprint, I wanted so badly to touch everything, the folds of Demeter's dress, the hollows where the noses were missing, the velvet ropes. I hesitated over beer and fish and chips, but finally ate chicken tikka and drank crisp cider. I walked around in the dark and watched people kissing in a telephone booth in a diner, and a beautiful woman with wide eyes and an unplaceable accent wrapped my hands around a glass of poison and made me give it to her; later she put her arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear what would happen next, and then it did. I wanted to dance but I did not. We talked about poetry and ate vegetarian peking duck and spoke to random Czech people, as one does in in a Chinese restaurant. In the morning I cursed London outlets and we went to the portrait gallery to see where Julia Roberts broke up with Clive Owen and to puzzle over Andy Warhol. I had coffee and chocolate caramel and coffee and a brownie and coffee and they weren't serving sweets so I ate the brown sugar lumps in the bowl on the table. I walked past more art than I could see and finally stood in front of two paintings and wept with happiness that they had been painted. I thought a lot more about creativity, the old man in the wheelchair still making art, then bedridden, his assistant a beautiful live thing in the room, following his directions to help him continue to create even as he dies, the primary colors of a child's garden and her red red lipstick. In a rainstorm we ducked into a cocktail bar with surrealist photographs on the wall, a skull and a butterfly flickering in the candlelight, and I drank a lavender fizz, which tasted like springtime, the opposite of outside and a perfect contrast to the deep leather chairs. We saw a ballet that was a naked nightclub of strobe and boredom beyond tedium, what I can say is that it was wonderful to see so many people at the theater and the men's room line snaking up the stairs as it usually only does at sports events. We ate more and drank more and got lost and took a taxi and talked about The Knowledge and I fell asleep on a mattress on the floor and woke up and handed my toiletries to a stranger at the airport and came home. 

Apparently they're making a movie about David Foster Wallace. I don't understand. I remember… was it Salinger who complained about how people knew more about Percy Bysshe Shelley than they did about his poetry? Well… here's the thing: Two vast and trunkless legs of zzzz that sexy monster Byron, though, amiright? Sometimes art is interesting, sometimes artists are more interesting. I would think that ideally your art is more interesting than you are, since that's what will survive (to the extent that anything survives, see also: Ozymandius). Although you get some artists and the reason their art survives is because their lives were interesting. But with Wallace, is his life really that interesting? I mean, I'm sorry, is he more interesting than his art? Because I don't think he was; in fact I think he worked pretty hard to not be, to put this voice into his essays that was both extraordinarily personal and self deflecting at the same time. It makes me sad to see people so increasingly fascinated with him as a person when I feel like they probably haven't read anything he wrote beyond This Is Water. 

Ironically in a conversation with Squire two days ago, regarding a comment someone had made about keeping good music under wraps, so as to protect it from "teenage fangirls"; I wrote "Great art is not cheapened by having stupid people like it… [If you're looking at art at the same time as a group of unappreciative schoolkids], the art itself isn't diminished, just your experience of it in that moment. And maybe in that school group there is one kid who is changed, who becomes a slightly better person. Do you keep the art out of the museum because somebody ignorant might see it? Or do you put it in the museum for that one kid? Because I would argue that art is PRECISELY FOR that one kid, you know? and the more people art reaches, the more likely that it can transform people."

So I'm here all "these people don't DESERVE to watch a film about him" and on the other hand, who am I to say, if some How I Met Your Mother fan who had never heard of Wallace comes to at least TRY Infinite Jest or A Supposedly Fun Thing, then that's good, right? His work will not be tarnished by a movie. And at least the movie is based on an interview with actual him instead of cobbled kiss-and-tell interviews with people who knew him. So I don't know. I'm uncomfortable. But I'm not going to dismiss the idea out of hand. I always felt like I knew him; I did not. That was part of his gift, that voice that felt like he was standing right beside you, telling you what he saw so that you could see it, too. I'm not unhappy if other people feel that way. The world is lonely enough; when we hear the voices of great artists, however we come to hear those voices, it becomes less so. I hope.

Read 12 books by non-English writers (in English, but anyway)

Watch 12 Czech movies + 12 Woody Allen movies

Learn 12 songs

Cook 12 new things

Yeah, it's not Woody Guthrie's resolutions, but it will do. 

I went to a play in London earlier this month partly because I decided that I wanted to be the kind of person who could say "I went to a play in London earlier this month" and there was a really easy way to make that happen. Anyway: play in London. And this is on top of a music festival in Vienna the previous month (partly because pretty much the same reason). Plus going to an unprecedented number of live shows here in town. And what I have felt at all of these shows is really, really lonely. 

I've been thinking about it because on the one hand it makes no sense. I was with friends at both shows; both shows were crowded with people, it was not unfriendly, in fact in some ways I felt more unified with the audience than I often do (that is, I felt like we were enjoying the same show, for the same general reasons, which I don't always feel). And yet I just felt so lonely. I felt like I wanted to stop everything, turn to someone next to me, someone I liked, and say, "Hey, did you just see that?" and know before I even opened my mouth that they did, that they saw what I saw, and that their opinion would help inform mine. I don't mean they'd have to agree with me, but that we would have our experiences clarified and enhanced by each other's. 

But the trick here would be the moment of stopping everything. Because I hate to look away from a moment that is happening to observe it, whether that means taking a picture of it or turning to talk about it or even just smile — it feels like the moment gets changed irrevocably by the need to observe it, and the more I enjoy the moment, the less I want to turn from it… I want to be in the moment. And that means that I have to be alone in it, and so what I felt, what I've been feeling, from surrendering to being alone in intense moments (not turning away to look at my friend, not taking pictures, etc), is really lonely. And I've been thinking about how much of life is like that, the decision between living the moment and sharing the moment, and how hard it can be to do both, and how even if you do a really really good job of documenting what happened, you cannot really have someone in your experience, I mean no matter what you are alone, even if you could stop the moment you would still be alone. I would still be, I mean. I don't think it means that attempts at connection should not be made; in contrast, I think it's the most important thing to attempt. But it means I'm realizing it's even harder than I thought. 

I don't remember who taught me about this very serious disease that parents get, whereby they believe that the sun shines from their child's ass, but I always try to keep it in mind when I'm on the verge of praising Squire. Everybody thinks their own kids are great, it's a good way to make sure we don't kill them when they're annoying. Also, if we didn't think our own kids were fantastic, who would? Like, this is the person who you are hormonally gifted to unconditionally love; if you can't do it, who will? 

Dear Poland, 

CAN I HELP YOU WITH SOMETHING? SERIOUSLY WHAT.

Love,

Anne

Hey so it's fall, my favorite season when I can get it. Last year was summer and then it rained for a week and it was windy and all the trees went from green to bare, like strippers who don't know that the tease is at least half of the point. I mourned the lack of transition, and it made me grumpy(ier than usual) for the winter. 

This year lacked the Indian summer we were promised, but still: fall is falling. The leaves on fire, yellow and red, and crunching nicely underfoot most days (though not this morning, as it rained last night). The morning wants hats and gloves already, but by afternoon most of us carry them around if there's a little sunshine. Trying to grab the last bits of vitamin D, like the last drops of syrup in the bottle. Sweet, sweet, and disappearing. In the evening our speech is puffs of smoke on the clear cold air. 

 So I'm happy. I do like a season, it's one of the best parts of living here. A transition. A sense of movement. Like a new year every few months. 

What else?