Raphael's Handwriting

Raphael's handwriting really was beautiful, so was his mistress. Speaking of beautiful, Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal, was stunning. After a still-birthed daughter, she became addicted to laudanum, depressed, and killed herself. R was despondent and threw a manuscript of poems into the grave. Seven years later, he's addicted, depressed, and suffering a huge bout of writer's block, gets an exhumation order, digs her up to get the manuscript (she's still lovely, according to witnesses, but smells) and we get the dramatic monologue "Jenny", which I quite liked when I was younger, and still like, a little, in much the same way that I occasionally still read Sidney Lanier. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Best that no one tell the rap singers that the trilby was originally a hat worn by a diminutive actress with no shoes. Talent doesn't correspond to hat size. Something dead nearby, because the vultures are circling. I only notice because of the shadows sweeping across, as large low-flying birds come between me and the sun. Probably a gut-shot deer shot by a poacher. Must be south of me because I can't smell it, maybe a dog on Upper Twin. Glenn is premiering the Wrack Movie at the museum September 25th at noon, all of you who can should be there. Interesting, I think, that this will also be a film about place and process, which Liza's movie was, which indicates a direction, a field of interest, one that has always been an interest of mine, people in a particular place. I don't aspire to anything anymore but I do observe. What we have, locally, is a lot of really poor people, trying to get by. They rob each other. It's a cycle. I understand hunger, but I keep a shotgun by the door. The sun is playing havoc with my thinking. The slanted light of late summer and fall, is one of my favorite things in the world, the way it cuts across everything. I always forget, I'm not that smart, really, and this diagonal thing happens. I'm stopped dead in my tracks, Elvis singing from his black velvet, I love only you. Message in a bottle. I can't be any more specific. Something you found washed ashore. Maybe a piece of amber with an embedded flea. An old shark's tooth. We should talk later. We might have something in commend.