Palo Alto, 11 July 2025
A week or so ago, I shook half a package of musty, slivered almonds onto the pots of succulents (the only kind of plant that weathers a half year with scant attention) that we’ve been reviving from their winter hibernation on the balcony (deck). And a blue jay came along, squawked, pecked, squawked, pecked. This went on for four or five mornings, the sole visitor, and then the slivers of almonds were all gone. But the jay, the same or another, kept turning up, only now he or she squawked louder and louder and began tossing the dried moss and dirt around. I got a broom and swept up the mess and moved the plant, another survivor, inside behind the glass doors. The jay came back and stood squawking at the plant through window. The jay’s a fast learner: he barely passed by this morning, though the pot is back outside.
Someone mentioned a big book by Aragon about Matisse on this blog a few days ago. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow it from the university: Matisse, un Roman. I’m 2/3 of the way through Volume 1, and it is one of those books you’d love to have at home just to glance at it and remember reading it. It’s not a traditional art book; it is a collection of articles, thoughts, messages from Matisse to Aragon during the war when they were both living in the south of France, in ‘the unoccupied zone.’ A kind of album of paintings and essays. Aragon, a communist, was on the run. Matisse would write him messages about the text Aragon was preparing, a text which seems to have just kept swelling. I’ve just read a chapter, written after the war, when Aragon was looking for an account of all the ‘props’ Matisse used in his paintings: chairs, hangings, pots… I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like it.
The news is so desolating: another raid yesterday on farmworkers down south. And the rest.