Tower poppies

Blood swept lands and seas of red. Wish I could see this one in person! (Link via B.)

Traces

This is lovely.

Extreme sport

Lucie Brock-Broido interviewed at Poetry (via Douglas W.):

Attar of hyacinth is the scent I’ve worn all of my adult life, the only scent in fact. (I eschew change.) So consummate is this pressed oil, though, that on more than one occasion, I’ve been told of the lingering presence of my absence in rooms I’ve been in. The man who runs the elevator in the building where I live once told me that, were I to commit a crime, I would be apprehended instantly. Hours after I am gone, he told me, the evidence of hyacinth goes up and down with the elevator all night long.

Everything's coming up roses

Just a quick post to say that I started my first-person rewrite of BoMH part III on Monday night and I'm incredibly excited about it!  It's totally turned around how I feel about the book: there's always been a claustrophobic hothouse-type aspect to the story that I have disliked, and this opens things up in a funny and interesting way that I am very much enjoying.  Haven't been so interested and engaged by something I was writing since a day I stole in February to reimmerse myself in a piece I wrote a while ago about the 'minute particular' in life-writing and the novel.  (It's one of my projects for August to get that out as a real article.)

I was unusually frenzied in my work life from December through May, and then in the aftermath of that I was uncharacteristically grumpy from May pretty much right up until now.  I'm hoping this marks a real turning point. 

I had one of those days yesterday where everything just seems to go right (clearly this follows in the psychological aftermath of  near-magical Monday-night and Tuesday-morning writing sessions).  I walked down a block I don't usually traverse and found myself in the amazing surrounds of the flower market, which is really like something out of a fairy story; I had an amazing lunch (best conversation ever!) with my editor at the hyper-palindromic Ilili (the space is beautiful and the food is very good; I recommend the prix fixe lunch - we shared grape leaves and hummus for appetizers, then I had the grilled chicken salad and the "Ilili candy bar" for dessert); I generally avoid crosstown buses, as they are often slower than walking, but heat changes the equation and the M23 - I had known this but somehow forgot it - actually goes all the way to Chelsea Piers; I had an enjoyable run workout on the indoor track at Chelsea Piers followed by a dip in the pool; then I took the M23 again to the first meeting of a mindfulness-based stress reduction class I found online and that seems exactly what I've been looking for.

Closing tabs

Dancing your PhD (FT site registration required).

The amazing kidney chain.

Martin Amis's arcades project.

Botanical forensics.

Can't recommend The Broken Heart at all (I think this review was too kind); Galileo had its moments, and the set and staging are gorgeous, but it necessarily provokes the thought It is a good thing that Brecht does not have much of an influence on current playwriting...

"his Weariness recalled her Dreaminess"