Alice Meynell's Poems - A 1913 Collection

Recently I found a new delight at the book shop. I was arms deep in a second hand poetry table at The Strand, and I pulled out this unnassuming olive green volume:

I liked its pious, Victorian poems filled with straightforward rhyming couplets and floral imagery - this era of poetry really speaks to me for some reason, very schoolhouse to me - but what really excited me was the discovery that this book was signed - in 1914 - by Alice Meynell herself.

I was like, oh, yeah, I gotta buy this. And it was a modest $10. Perfect. A new treasure for me.

There's also a lovely portrait of her by John Singer Sargent which greets you as you open the book, drawn in 1894. I love how rough and thick those pencil lines are.

Here's one of my favourite poems (so far) from this collection:

 

AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL

 There's a feast undated, yet
    Both our true lives hold it fast,—
Even the day when first we met.
    What a great day came and passed,
    —Unknown then, but known at last.

And we met: You knew not me,
    Mistress of your joys and fears;
Held my hand that held the key
    Of the treasure of your years,
    Of the fountain of your tears.

For you knew not it was I,
    And I knew not it was you.
We have learnt, as days went by.
    But a flower struck root and grew
    Underground, and no one knew.

Day of days! Unmarked it rose,
    In whose hours we were to meet;
And forgotten passed. Who knows,
    Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet,
    At the coming of your feet?

One mere day, we thought; the measure
    Of such days the year fulfils.
Now, how dearly would we treasure
    Something from its fields, its rills,
    And its memorable hills.

The Best Prop Ever Made: Red Dragon's Journal

Recently I watched the movie Red Dragon, and we can forget about every single aspect of this movie right now aside from the one thing I was in complete awe of: the journal.

After the movie's intro, we're treated to one of those beautiful '00s opening credit sequences, and this one is laid over extensive shots of the one prop that they truly went crazy for: Red Dragon's own gorgeous, scribbly journal. There are so many pages, it's so thick, and it's just so nicely arranged. I am taking huge inspiration from the neatly arranged newspaper cuttings, sinister medical woodcuts, and perfectly scrawled thoughts in pen. This guy would've have been a Tumblr darling in 2008, most certainly. And for that, I'm more inclined to support his crimes.

I love the way clippings are overlaid on some of these pages - many have a picture in the centre of this huge page, surrounded on all sides by handwriting, and I like that layout a lot, how it conveys a singular focus and feels somehow more chaotic and intense than it might if the image was placed at the top, or top-left, of the page. It just feels more serious, more prominent to the eye. I love that.

There's a neatness to the arrangements of these pages, but still you can feel the frenetic, hurried energy of them. The way the handwriting fills up every tiny space, to the edge and in some cases over the top of the pasted in clippings, perfectly communicates a certain feverishness. There's a great sense of layout that is ultimately just the base for the unchecked ink ramblings of the guy. It's such a great object.

Again, the neatness, and the consideration of layout is clear when you look at each page here, but there are lots of little rough details that bring it back to feeling super real, and like a genuine document of thought - like the torn edges of this headline:

I would love to flip my greasy little fingers through the actual prop. In any case, it's a fantastic bit of inspiration for my journals. I might start collecting more newspapers.

I TAKE TOO MANY PHOTOS (and yet not enough)

I swear, every time I look through my phone’s IMAGE FILES I am greeted by the unstoppable and dire realisation that no, I will never be a true neat minimalist legend. I will simply be a woman with things. And the things I have the most of, clearly, will be all those alluring files I keep on my precious phone. 

Blossom in New York, 8th April 2024.

The best thing, without a doubt, is that they’re backed up. Because they’re not stored in one easily destructible phone, but on Google’s big, meaty servers too, everything was basically okay when I abandoned my poor phone at Heathrow last October. Am I still hurt by how lacklustre the lost & found department at the airport was? Yes. Am I still haunted by the knowledge that at any time it can all go south, and I can be on a 12 hour flight without my phone, saying, “wow I wish I had my phone”, and then be in Tokyo for maybe a week and a half completely phone-less, gazing at commuters eyes fixed on their phones like an orphan at an out-of-reach bowl of gruel? Yes. But basically, it was fine. Still got all my pics. Still got most of my apps (although tragically I lost the now-unavailable free version of Kanji Tree, but the person who made it deserves cash money, and I have other kanji apps).

I went to a safari park with my family, and I saw ponies there (yesssss).

The point is, my pics and snaps are eternal. They will never die. They will exist as long as I have storage left. And I do. I do have storage left.

They accumulate though. Like a big mould. Sometimes I look back upon them, and find seven near-identical photos of me standing in front of a landmark. None of them are “show to another human being” level images. And yet they are here, in the bowels of the phone. Lurking.

I love them. 

Eclipse in New York, 8th April 2024.

Here are some pictures from my recent outings. Try to guess what events may have lead me to take them. Try to imagine the rich life I may be leading. And then smile as you look. These are my images. This is me.

Abandoned Squirtle, 9th May.

Tasty treat, 21st June.

Hand reaching out, 30th May.

Lost Mickey, Tokyo, 3rd Jan.

Delicious Journal •´¯♡*

Yum yum. More journal pages. Please eat them and feel good. The journal had water spilled on it recently, but made a miraculous recovery.

This (↑) is probably my favourite page. Two glorious little creatures, floating in the sky. I just like their shapes a lot. Last week I watched 2010: The Year we Made Contact, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that film really matches the first in many cases in terms of visuals. It's different, but I really liked it. I love all the tech forms, blinking buttons, etc. Just thinking about space. Made me wanna be some kind of engineer. But I never will be!

Here we have Cinnamoroll, that dear little dog, expertly sitting on my boarding pass. Thanks, dog. My favourite detail of this spread is that hand reaching up from somewhere unseen to almost touch the topmost dog's nose. That's me, spiritually.

This one is obviously a celebration of Hello Kitty, but the horse is really important. It would be nothing without the horse.

Banana drawing. No explanation needed. I love the brown spots forever.

I drew this during my Barbie in the Nutcracker (2001) video research. Beautiful couple. Barbie and her sweet nut.

In March I had the absolute pleasure of seeing Jonathan Richman in Brooklyn. He was amazing. He was wonderful. He was perfect. It was such a relaxing show, too - I rested a bag of bread against the stage for most of it.

The Spongebob here is really accurate.

Snake in my boot. This just came straight from the dome. Sometimes you're thinking about snakes in boots.

Picasso was Wacky!

 Two years ago I went to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, and there was one room I loved in particular. It had paintings of a woman holding an egg (she's just like me fr), among other things.

Finally, this month, I drew two of them. My own beautiful little Picassos.

When you look around the room in question, you'll see numerous versions of the same painting. There's something almost childlike about seeing iteration after iteration of the same thing, the same picture in different shapes, warped into oblivion. It's this amazing, revealing space that perfectly communicates the impossibility of documentation. 

Clearly Picasso was not trying to meticulously depict reality as he saw it, but in the repetition of these subjects it gives the feeling of an endless, shifting dream. Every time you look back, something has changed.

It's also just really cool on a formalistic level, seeing the endless variations that are possible while a scene is still recognisable.

And here is our egg woman. God, I love her.

Look at these three paintings of three ladies with a cat:

They're so different and so perfect and so fun! And I have to think, then, that a lot of the point of Picasso's weird, wonky shapes was to construct something funny. Like, look at those faces. That's peak funny. That would be enjoyed very much by a general Tumblr audience (the supreme art connoisseurs).

It truly makes the concept of doing five thousand paintings of the same exact thing (edit: in this case, studies of Diego Velázquez's 'Las Meninas') seem extremely appealing. What if I did this? It would be a really good project, I think. But what is the perfect subject? Impossible to choose.

To conclude, check out this cute plate Picasso made:

hehe :-)

Lazy

Good morning. The air is luscious and there are three beds in the apartment. One ultra soft, one absurdly firm at first touch, and one sort of normal. A true Goldilocks type situation. I am in a haze, just filled with that deep, utter exhaustion that comes after long flights or arguments. I am sunk into my own cloudy mind and it feels small in here in a way that I always enjoy. Like a feathery pillow is all around my thoughts, a cushion on each wall. And I think it’s funny, by the way, to imagine my head as a room. It makes me think of BBC Sherlock’s iconic mind palace, but his seemed far too active. There is no wooshing around this room. This room is about chilling, and lying down. It’s nice.

There are golden geometric patterns on the curtains, a series of connected cubes on royal blue. It’s very “showroom” somehow, but I like the way the dim, warm lamplight reflects against those lines of gold, making it seem thicker and brighter in some places, like when more ink comes out of a pen.

I got up ravenous earlier, and ate cold Domino’s cheesy bread. God’s own delicious bounty. Eating that, covering myself with a soft blue blanket, knowing the air outside is cool, but too crisp. These are the things to love with a half dormant brain, on a sweet January Wednesday.

Later I will watch a movie and wake up and rest my journal on my lap, compare the uneven pencils and draw myself and all the animals with long necks. Giraffes, llamas, pelicans. It’s a pretty day full of nothing.

Let it last forever.

*

It’s almost 11am, and I’m hungry. Why is it that hunger feels like a little animal biting your insides? I want to learn everything, every word stored neatly in my head, on dark mahogany shelves, organised alphabetically and shaped like swirling galaxies, twinkling in soft purples like a field of lilacs growing in an endless black lake.

You can get these microwavable breakfast sandwiches, croissant style with bacon and eggs. It’s sort of disgusting, and the directions tell you to wrap a paper towel around it when you heat it up. I think of Victorian children surveying this great marvel of technology. We are preserving too much. Nothing is perishable. I stuff a salty nugget of bacon into my mouth. It’s good. The Victorian children in my mind scramble for a morsel. I don’t let them have it. It’s all mine. I’m alive, after all, and a fully grown woman. Life should be warm, delicious, and a little bit disgusting for me.

Bags.

I uninstalled tiktok this morning. I choose not to hear anything more about Ethan Slater, and his ragged face, a cooked Illumination Studios character. I’m not doing it. I can read or force myself to study more. I’m not hearing any other girls’ sad dating stories or skincare recommendations or endless two word style terms that describe nothing. It pisses me off. I’d rather cry a little pool into my pillow. I’d rather stare out the window, clean the sink. I’d rather do anything.

All my journal pages, slammed on the screen

 Ain't nothing better than this. Pencil & pencil & pencil & pencil.