Spring has sprung and so far all I can wear is black.  I blame Patti Smith’s spellbinding memoirs of her early days with Robert Mapplethorpe.  And then there is that album cover.  And that album.  This spring it is feathers for the ears.

The only lab in New York City that develops Super-8 film is down the block from the old CBGB’s so the other day I stopped in.  The boutique there has one wall preserved behind glass, old rock flyers flapping shaggy on the wall.  When I was a senior in high school an extremely obscure band that I was devoted to played a show there.  They were called the Grays.  They were not punk.  Heath had a crush on me so he lied to his mom and drove us into the city on a school night.  On the way home I made him go fast so I wouldn’t miss curfew and the next day his car died.

Androgyny is interesting to me right now, in a diffuse sort of way that will probably require further analysis.  Maybe when summer comes I’ll be back in mod little mini-dresses, but for now I’m making plans to raid the thrift stores of Long Island of their heavy metal t-shirts.  Wearing a discarded t-shirt sleeve fastened around my wrist with a safety pin.  A black boys blazer with too-short sleeves and thin little pinstripe boxes.  Contrary to the weather, I’m on the prowl for new black shoes.

Books are working for me right now.  On The Road again, with a 1999 receipt for travel books to Asia as a bookmark.  Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish.  Michelle Tea’s Valencia which required many extra cigarettes, in the best possible way.  I’m ready to ride a boxcar to San Francisco.  Everyone (including Patti) references Rimbaud, so I’m reading Edmund White’s book about him and afterwards, The Drunken Boat.

Here is the rock n roll amulet I made for Mr. Agony this morning before work, on the occasion of her birthday.

a feather found on the beach, a feather from my boa rom barcelona, a rubber ring from the scrapyard, wooden beads, electrical tape, wire, string