breaking eggs and more on Pinsky (the ass!)
June 30, 2009
Yesterday morning I broke an egg in my jacket pocket. The grey tweed jacket that was made to measure for me in Hong Kong. It was just a small crack and the egg was entirely useable – Grandma, (spelled “grama: by everyone in this family but me) is making muffins with my daughter this morning. How did the egg get cracked? I banged it on the front step railing as I was going for the garden shears – to cut an iris for grandma (my daughter’s idea). The irises are almost done. They were late because of the protracted cool weather this spring but nonetheless, they were stunning. And they will be missed. They are always missed.
It’s been all quiet on the Pinsky front. (For those who don’t know, Thelonious Pinsky is a friend – maybe we don’t pick our friends – living in Mexico, twice removed from his ex-wife and two daughters. He’s living with a woman named Inka.). The last I heard he’d shaved his head, on Inka’s recommendation, and was hard at work on the new book – a book that centres on a high Peruvian observatory, one of the driest, if not “the” driest spot on the planet. Apparently, in 1977, it snowed and the result of this snow was a desert that had not seen rain for over a hundred years bursting into bloom, bursting with life. Pinsky tells me it’s about one man’s experience of this desert snow storm and how it changes his life. Pinsky is like this. He will obsess about the smallest, oddest things. Last year it was picas. Six months before that, it was lichens. A few years back, it was fonts – Helvetica verses Arial, Times New Roman verses Palatino and on and on. Pinsky’s last e-mail was succinct. Three lines: “The writing goes well, with my shit detector in high gear – pumping out 1,500 words a day before my first cerveza. Not all Americans are endlessly consuming Homer Simpsons – most are the same as you and I, wanting to be loved and to be able to love, and failing at both. Inka thinks she might be pregnant.”