i have to be honest, eating with chopsticks i have good days and bad. ‬

this evening I made a chicken soup, filled my plate up, put it down with the intention of getting a spoon but instead inadvertently took out another plate for myself and began ladling that one up also. “What are you doing?” After some thought … “I’ve decided to have my second helping first.”

i believe that the diagnostic term for having a mental breakdown during a meal is “soup to nuts”. Of course i can’t claim to have read any of the relevant medical journals.

boots function much better with laces i have found out (yesterday i bought laces for my boots). I enjoy finding out things that folk have learned ages ago. Onward!

dream: driving in a car that is deflating, not just a tyre but the whole structure of the car is losing its shape. eventually we make it to a gas station, at which point the car is completely flat and we are all sitting on the tarmac within what’s left of the car.

It amuses me that the painter Leonora Carrington was expelled from boarding school for “attempting to levitate”.

i feel the time is right for us to be reminded of when Sherwood Anderson met up with William Faulkner (and his deceptively spacious coat) for a drink. “We are wonderful people, we Americans.” !! from “Death in the Woods” 1933. #williamfaulkner #sherwoodanderson

”A man who had been abstinent from alcohol for two years slipped off the wagon and pestered members of the public in the city centre.” I know there’s other stuff happening in the wider world but I say the lead story from the Inverness Courier wins headline of the day.

glad to see that László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel lit prize. Usually I’ve never heard of the writer, let alone read them; but in this case i have. In this case I was so struck by The Melancholy of Resistance; a dense, dark and absurd work; i painted “Leviathan”. #laszlokrasznahorkai

finished this painting yesterday. “writer’s hut.” Acrylic on canvas. #janetframe #NewZealand #nzwriter

"what dissonance there is would not alarm an elderly aunt" from a review of William Walton’s Cello Concerto (1957). haha!

woke up angrily with a dream still in my head about Bitcoin, which I misheard as Bigcoin.“It’s just a rich man’s fantasy, walking around displaying his wealth with an enormous coin.the expense! Having to change all the vending machines to accommodate this huge new form of currency. It’s offensive!”

I can turn any room into a panic room.

it amuses me that Tomas Tranströmer didn't like the central library in Stockholm. the heavy still air "gave him a headache". the books there had no fumes of chlorine and there was no echoing voices like at his local library at Medborgarplatsen with its adjacent swimming pool.

friends. i bought a beer. first one in a couple of weeks. It's a 2.8%-er. so just be aware, in about half an hour you may well get a call with me shouting down the line that you're my best friend, or that I've never liked you, or you'll hear someone sobbing gently into the phone.

in my home town folk are often heard to say “i’ll meet you at the horse.” And “get off the bus at the horse.”

note to self: stop saying "nature's bounty" with a nod of the head and a knowing smile in the supermarket “crisps” section.

Swedish woodland: set-up, set-up, set-up, punchline!

man: me and you are very alike. 2nd man: (hysterically) you take that back!

”As before, here too I have no desire to delve into geographical and seasonal indicators, I'd rather turn my attention to sausages and castles.” Robert Walser

”If there are lawsuits in the north he demands that people put an end to their pettiness He plods about at a loss during the cold summer Everyone calls him Blockhead No one sings his praises or takes him to heart. That is the kind of person I want to be.” fr. Strong in the Rain. Kenji Miyazawa 1933

if i can be bothered i'm going to cancel my subscription to Fatso Magazine.

i'm staying home today to practice wearing a shirt.

What’s the sentence you have heard the most? I’ll start. for me it’s: “Sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave.”

“it was a Chinese restaurant?” “Well; people in hats.”

Mostly boring, interspersed with moments of terror.

“You say yes … which is understood to be no.”

my contribution to Thi Wurd anthology “Earthly Rewards”. #thiwurd

i almost asked an old man at a bus stop if i could buy the shirt he was wearing. i was quite taken with it. his "slacks" were also nice but, of course, because i didn't want to leave him standing his underwear i kept my thoughts to myself. i don't like things to get too far out of hand.

according to my dad one of the neighbours puts on a miner’s helmet and “bogels” about her garden in middle of the night.

foolish foolish Stockholm! If you keep giving your Al Bowlly records to charity I'll keep buying them.

“Certain they know where it resides, there is always a hurried and impatient crowd running around in search of poetry, but when they arrive where they were told it could be found, they are always met with the same response: It moved.” from "Headings" 1924, Oliverio Girondo.

idea for a film: cute elderly couple spend their weekends touring around the countryside in their little car looking for suggestions boxes to put "GO FUCK YOURSELF" notes in. it's a sort of Alone in Berlin for nihilists. btw. they get caught and executed at the end.

I found this definition of the hermetic poets (Montale & Quasimodo)work to be beautiful: they … “found solace in solitude & landscape. empathy with the little and insignificant. Nature is rough, scanty and dazzling. In a world filled with defeat and despair, nature alone seems to possess dignity.”

i think we’ll all just have to accept that Olivier Messiaen liked to wear an enormous scarf.

i picked up a novel today from a free book exchange. After a little research i learnt that it’s considered to be “The 2451st greatest book of all time”. I couldn’t be happier.

I could be wrong but I think the brass section of an orchestra just got on the metro carriage i am sitting in. instruments, tuxedos, the whole picture.