GIFT ALERT : These perfectly delightful books are fun for littles and then the not so littles too.

"There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – "

The witch works with cold realities. She walks the mud, she walks the mist. Puddles on the threshold of ice become her scrying pools. Trees become a black scratching against sky gift her a new secret language. No season is hollow of magics. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

M. L’Abbé had remained in the shadows. At this, he drew in his cheeks, took his pipe from his mouth, and blew a smoke ring after a long moment. #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

I just saw that Ireland made its basic income for artists permanent and I have never been so jealous. What must it be like to live in a country that actually values the arts? I'm happy for all Irish artists and hope maybe this kind of thing will expand elsewhere.

From in Her Shadow Night black Book of Hours scattered with small gold flowers rout of enormous fires widening nothingness -Jonathan Griffin

This is actually a good example of why the customer model is wrong. I wouldn't have chosen poetry writing, but UNC made me take a class. And it absolutely made me become a much better writer, with an eye to concision and an ear now trained to the rhythm of words. I'm a better historian as a result.

Broke: Not writing at all Woke: Writing more to get better at writing Bespoke: Writing more so you have an excuse to commission your friends for art to go with your stories

"...Ma per fortuna è una notte di luna, e qui la luna l'abbiamo vicina..."

This is your yearly PSA that La Bohême, too, is Christmas music.

I’m into you. I’m in your DMs. I’m into all that. I’m in ternet. I’m in lust. I’m in a meeting soon. I’m in tongues. I’m in Quixote. I’m in your head. I’m inchoate. I’m inbetweenstates. I’m in péril. I’m in distress. I’m in a dress. I’m at this address. Nasser Hussain, I’m In, from Love Language.

"I had designed a throne for him in the hereafter he ruled over."

Wherever did you put my quilted petticoat?

"seven flights up grew narrower and meandered into different pathways. At my labored breath, he stopped on each landing. Towards the fourth flight he supported me, then carried me fully in his arms up to the final floor that surely finished in the clouds." #writesky #WritingCommunity #writingprompts

cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to have stumbled upon the Paris building shared by metal music fans and the union for metal workers, what a delight

They see me hyggin, they hatin.

So for Christmas I'm going to do a Marie Antoinette pouf complete with a Christmas tree, fairy lights, ornaments, a Nativity with Wise Men and shepherds and angels.

I am incorrigible. So please don't incorrige me.

If I were the spirit of Christmas subjunctive...

Odd little piece of mine, originally published by The Mythic Circle some years ago. I hope you like it.

Jonathan White is just who we need right now to fight.

A creepy story about an Etruscan mirror that you might like. It was published in an obscure journal, so I hope it can find more readership this way.

I suppose it's best I don't have a cat, for if I did I wd just be compelled to dress her in a nightgown.

"But as for me and my house, we will serve wine."

Whether I'm a writer or an art historian depends one which way and at what hour Aby Warburg looks at a given decan on the Schifanoia walls.

“I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors; I will not go looking for keys.” ― André Breton

Oft called a fruitcake, does that give me the right to be daily doused with cognac in a dark corner up through to Christmas day?

harp sonatas and victorian novels and rose perfume and pink hair powder.

I need a quilted petticoat.

While on a long migratory flight, one crow says to the other: “Have you bred any good rooks lately?”

Midsommar, mais c’est pour célébrer le Beaujolais nouveau.

Earlier today, I was notified that someone was at my door. This is who it was:

At Daniel Arasse's2003 funeral someone came up to me and said he'd been looking for me, that he had something important to discuss with me, wd catch up with me later. I didn't know who he was nor did I ever find out. I often think of it.

Before the midterms of 1866, President Andrew Johnson called his congressional opponents traitors and said they should be hanged. Voters were so profoundly moved by his words... that they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the Fourteenth Amendment.

THINK ABOUT IT: I've never seen a boy called a 13-year-old man. In fact, I've never heard the words "underage man." HAVE YOU???

Animation Over the bookcase between a T'ang musician and a Oaxaca pitcher incandescent, lively, with glittering eyes of silver-paper watching us come and go the little sugar skull. -Octavio Paz, from "Object lesson" (tr. Muriel Rukeyser)

Jamal Khashoggi. Say his name.

Hey, my beloved Fat Monster won 2 awards. Give it a read? Fat people are preyed on by society and by monsters: body horror, multi level marketing schemes, fungus creatures, pyramids... amzn.to/4j1TSn3 #horrorwriterschat

"...the knife and a letter, sole traces of the erased murderess. The wound she left, a third and last trace of her life, should have gaped at the viewer. Citizen David barely hinted at a scarlet streak, when real blood flowed like tides in the gutters around us everyday. "

What’s up guys—are we doing this or what?

A soul like an ice cream headache.

We need to start responding to Maga with "Quiet! Quiet, Piggy!"

outside a downpour back's pain cheered by flaring heat sipping cherry tea

It occurs to me...long, long ago I took a picture of John Dee's obsidian scrying glass (behind a reflective glass display case, I mention for the meta of it) in the British Museum. None of that roll (as I said, "long ago") of film developed. None of it. Why am I realizing the reason but now?

Time to bring back this Patricia Lockwood banger.

Pope Leo absolutely cooking

‘Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.’ —Alice Wong