I just push different buttons until it does what I want.

I know that she is the engine that drives the train but she has turned fantasy into a day job.

Grate near Spitalfield's Market, London October 2009

"I must have been the first person to put on that mackintosh since the handkerchief was used. She who had worn the coat then was tall, slim, broader than I about the shoulders, for I had found it big and over-long, and the sleeves had come below my wrists. Some of the buttons were missing. She had not bothered to do it up. She had thrown it over her shoulders like a cape, or worn it loose, hanging open, her hands deep in the pockets."

from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

color studies, November 2009

The Medici records show that Eleonora di Toledo's dress maker was paid even more handsomely than Bronzino himself.

She used both of them.

• One evening in Paris, we went to the Escargot restaurant in the rue Montergeuil, in search of snails of course, and of Montreuil peaches. I did not expect to find anything special about the strawberry fritters which I chose out of curiosity for dessert. It had been a good meal, in black and red surroundings of past elegance, with a close friend. Those fritters were to be the fault, the way Chinese and Japanese potters deliberately put a fault into their vases to make them human. But I was not allowed my fault after all. The fritters were perfection, the batter crisp, the strawberry inside firm but meltingly delicious. Even the creme anglaise was right.

-Jane Grigson, Strawberry Fritters

There was an old wig lying in the middle of the road.

He said that his actions were directed by lunar phases.

Philadelphia, September 2009

book ideas and spot drawings

There's a crow flying
Black and ragged
Tree to tree
He's black as the highway that's leading me
Now he's diving down
To pick up on something shiny
I feel like that black crow
Flying
In a blue sky

I took a ferry to the highway
Then I drove to a pontoon plane
I took a plane to a taxi
And a taxi to a train
I've been traveling so long
How'm I ever going to know my home
When I see it again
I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue, blue sky

In search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving.
Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing
Just like that black crow flying
In a blue sky

I looked at the morning
After being up all night
I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light
I looked out the window
And I saw that ragged soul take flight
I saw a back crow flying
In a blue sky
Oh I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue sky

-Joni Mitchell, from Hejira, 1976

When you hear the recordings of his voice you can tell that the crack-up is well under way.

But now she just blinks in and out, like a digital watch.