More pearls and a longtime delusion

Beware the urge to check your pleasant word in the dictionary. The familiar one you believe you know so clearly that you'd never researched it. But you don't know. Not really.

All my life—forever, until today—I've believed the surface of a pearl was formed of the magical.creamy.delicious French nacre. But no. Nacre is mother of pearl and lines the lovely shells we used as ashtrays on screened porches circled with windchimes. Fine, but nacre is not a pearl and no one smokes any longer, so I plant succulents in the shells. Briefly. They advance quickly from shallow shells to celadon pots. There's another word I won't look up. Celadon. And shagreen. Onion skin. Penultimate.

I prefer innocence. Illusion. Delusion. I prefer nacre as the surface of my pearls. Or glow.

I checked a thesaurus. There is no synonym listed for 'moonlight.'

Spring arrives in music + impossible greens

"Suppose there is a pigeon, suppose there is" —Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons





Music for this springtime:

• Van Morrison — Astral Weeks Live At the Hollywood Bowl
• Madeleine Peyroux — Bare Bones
• Jolie Holland — the living and the dead
• Neko Case — Middle Cyclone
• Avett Brothers — Mignonette
• Heartless Bastards — The Mountain
• David Byrne & Brian Eno — Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
• Lucinda Williams + Shelby Lynne — YouTube, Still I Long for Your Kiss
  
• + a bottle of wine
  

More pearls and Albert Einstein

This may be the end of the pearls for now. This manipulation, when I am in that sleepy-but-still-pondering place, reminds me of Einstein in his elevator being hauled through time/space — which makes me think of the poem that sent me off into the back alleys of the internets to read about the man in his less lofty moments.

Flying Fish

Eat More Pearls