Looking for Mr Tumnus in Prospect Park this morning…

So brand new and crispy they make me wince a little. Trying to break them in before class Tuesday but sooo tempted just to dance in the comfy dead ones.

Snow!

Current reading:

This week’s TLS cover is a cloud study!

A new Substack Piece-- Coffeecore: Tokyo Drifting-- In which I return to Coffeecore, an imagined Tokyo of the pandemic years, and drift into the now, marking time, in a world of sensibility and lattes. substack.com/@avmarraccin...

Daruma for finishing the second book, transported from Senso-ji’s marketplace in Asakusa, now at home in Brooklyn:

A new Substack Piece-- Coffeecore: Tokyo Drifting-- In which I return to Coffeecore, an imagined Tokyo of the pandemic years, and drift into the now, marking time, in a world of sensibility and lattes. substack.com/@avmarraccin...

Airplane thought: I am done calling what I do braided essay. It’s a woven essay. It’s a whole damn tapestry like at Gobelins with a gridded cartoon in the background from a little Leuchtturm notebook that lacks Rubens’ putti but has hundreds of shuttle threads. Tapestry essay.

Ten writing prompts instead of these if I were In Charge: substack.com/@avmarraccin...

One last beautiful third wave ice latte in Coffeecore Tokyo before my flight later today:

More on the only Fragonard in Tokyo here: substack.com/@avmarraccin...

Guess that postwar Japanese building and its architect (you KNOW him)!

Highlights in details from the National Museum of Western Art on my last full day in Tokyo!

It took me an hour of getting lost in Ueno station to find these gluten free churros but WORTH IT. Mochi churros! The first churros I’ve had since I was 12!!!

A Birthday Letter from Tokyo— On Isozaki, Tange, Kurokawa, lateness, this past year, cloud studies, glasses, Auden, book progress, fixed and unfixed stars, and other musings. avmarraccini.substack.com/p/a-birthday...

Another Harajuku detail assortment:

Gluten Free Soufflé Pancakes are so rare and so delicious I had to go back 🤍🥞

Aoyama to Harajuku walk details:

Kengo Kuma pineapple cake shop morning! We love hinoki shomei joints without nails!!!!

Incidental Agnes Denes happening on a back street in Aoyama:

A Birthday Letter from Tokyo— On Isozaki, Tange, Kurokawa, lateness, this past year, cloud studies, glasses, Auden, book progress, fixed and unfixed stars, and other musings. avmarraccini.substack.com/p/a-birthday...

I'm using a Substack to post ephemera and occasionals, like tonight's birthday letter from Tokyo. It will always be free-- subscribe here: Cloud Studies from A.V. Marraccini avmarraccini.substack.com/subscribe?pa...

As you can tell by my profile picture, I got new (old deadstock!) glasses at a very cool little boutique here in Omotesando!

I don’t even like Coach really but this… is getting built immediately in the Sims on my flight home (yes I’m a virtual coffeeshop architecture addict)

Thanks so much to Michael for enjoying We The Parasites— the best birthday present a wormy critic with a bleeding Achillean heart could hope for!

It’s my birthday! So I went vintage shopping in Harajuku, am stopping for fluffy pancakes, and then exploring some deadstock Japanese glasses options. Note cool panting cabinet bomber I scored 🖤

New way to keep up with me: I don't have a substack but am now on the app as avmarraccini -- you can follow me there for notes, and if I ever get it together to work on top of my other work and paid work! I want to make sure I don't lose friends as apps change.

Btw BlueSky, some ballet stuff that happened while I was gone include my switching pointe shoes to Freeds (triangle maker!):

Queer Girl With A Leotard Collection Representation! I normally get really excited for ice skating, but I'll be screaming for Amber Glenn with every stretch velour, custom print, and Capezio transition tight in my drawers!

I try to post some of the same highlights, but for many more Japan details and more, my Instagram under the same username (Saintsoftness) might please you.

This country really takes grates to another level.

This morning and early afternoon in Asakusa— honestly so crowded I’m now sure I got a great look the architecture but a fantastic browsing experience.

Going to Senso-Ji tomorrow and accidentally found this stock image that gives it Superstudio vibes. We love to see the post-war reverse stamping itself on historical memory in this house (brain?)!

Sometimes I think about pulling a late 30s Rimbaud and quitting it all to design Japanese makeup packaging. It’s a very specific, pleasing, maximalism.

Hi everyone, I’m back to try this again— briefly, from Tokyo, where I’m doing some looking for the last chapters of my upcoming book, These New Fragilities. I won’t be checking DMs for now but let’s see how this goes!

@saintsoftness.bsky.social "The Tunnel In the Age of Bad Men" for Dalkey Archive t.e2ma.net/message/0hnc...

For the new Pittsburgh Review of Books an essay by me: “Not Not Revelation: On Negative Capability, Meister Eckhart, And The Paintings of Gotthard Graubner” (Please Google the images, the rights weren’t possible to acquire) pghrev.com/not-not-revela…

In Belgrade on 3 October? Hear Tony Upson talk about art writing as practice and my work in dialogue with Anne Carson and Bruce Hainley. At SKUP Novi Sad as part of the What Should Curating Do? Series. www.wcscd.com/lecture-seri...

For the Berlin Review (@blnreview.bsky.social ): Notes toward a late criticism, on Motherwell's Open rectangles, Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, and enjoining: "Dream About Me" as method. Auch in deutscher Übersetzung von Samir Sellami. blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/...

A new Schattenblog! Under Construction (p.324-44): I consider our Narrator's arrival at a wall-building city, the ends of pain and beauty, migraines, Bruegel, and more: schattenblog.avmarraccini.com/post-14

As you can see from the self satisfied liberal hatred response to completely innocuous posts, this website is not a useful or ethical alternative to twitter. I won’t be responding to messages or posts here for a while. Please use @ Saintsoftness on Twitter or Insta. Email [email protected] .

Wouldn’t be ballet class without a pastry afterward— today I was tempted by miraculous gf scone over creampuff:

I realised I talk a lot about ballet but you don’t very often get to see me doing this thing I love. The studio is busy and we like to keep class private, so we feel safe making mistakes, but one day I was early and there was no class before, so I snapped this:

Bedside table plus the vintage Fragonard at frick postcard:

Omg the creampuff bakery had gf chocolate chip scones!!! I got my Goma (black sesame) traditional post-ballet creampuff and a scone to toast up for breakfast, mmmm.

Hello (finally) from the Fragonard room of the Frick!!

Tonight, more Rilke from Edward Snow, I am standing on the backs of the koi that live in lotus ponds, on Greenland sharks that are 492 years old and have worms in their eyes, on every glowing anglerfish. Objecthood the one bank, historical time the other.

"i bought white boots and very short white shorts so i can blend in. i may have to apply my own rhinestones imperfectly with a glue gun. this is not ideal, but it’s the semblance of the thing that matters."