Couchette

"a railroad car conveying basic non-private sleeping accommodation"





Sophie Calle and Annecy Attlee.

Nora

Pin-up for June? Nora Barnacle. Tomorrow is Bloomsday, so here is the lovely and long-suffering woman who made it all happen (by agreeing to meet a certian James Joyce on June 16th 1904).


"O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactusses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I though well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

James Joyce, Ulysses

A dying art

I cannot throw away envelopes.

Mushrooms on toast

Dead letter office

I am reading about the dead letter office (a warehouse in Belfast) and undercover mail. Did you know that during the second world war post to enemy countries was sent via Thomas Cook in Lisbon?

"Letters and envelopes must omit the sender's address. They must only refer to matters of personal interest… (a) no reference may be made to any town (other than Lisbon), village, locality, ship or journey… No indication may be given that the writer is not in Portugal… (b) mention of a letter … received from or written to enemy occupied territory is not permitted… " Dr. Josef Wallach.

The same process for undercover letters was used thirty years later by Israel and the Arab states following the 1967 war. I am pretty excited, will have to see if I can find out more in Lisbon at the end of the month.

Solis Laundrette (no.355 Bethnal Green road)

To the sky

Letters on sun spots.
The filling in of perfect blanks with iron pegs.
I have twenty-six pegs and none of them cast a shadow like the sun.
Its spots are fiery ink, bullet holes, visions.
And I am a mad man, long past the point of pulling threads from the sky.