Stacy Horn

Do I know how to post the hard news or what? Like most writers these days, I have to be a very very careful spender. So when my sunglasses broke in several places and could not be repaired I worried about finding an affordable pair to replace them. I need prescription glasses so cheap pharmacy glasses were out of the question.

Warby Parker to the rescue. I got these for $150. A great thing about Warby Parker, for every pair of glasses sold they donate a pair to someone in need! How can they afford to do that, and what a wonderful thing. I’ll post pictures of them in action when I have them.

About the picture below. There are a number of stores in my neighborhood which sell insanely high priced handbags and display them like works of art, which many of them are actually. They’re just incredibly beautiful. I don’t like to carry bags actually, so I’m never tempted. But like a painting in a museum I know I will never possess, I still like to look!

I took this picture because this handbag store was a gallery previously! And before that a firehouse, after sitting abandoned for a long time. Except, maybe people were living in there at the time, I don’t know.

How much do you think those two bags in the window cost? Should we all make a guess and I’ll find out later and see how we did? I honestly don’t have a clue. I’m going to say … $500.

That’s a strange title, I know. Take it easy and write? Can’t be done. But now that all my spring cleaning is done I really need to focus on and finish this book proposal I’ve started. The first draft is complete. Next is the fun part, going back in and polishing it up into the glimmering but morbid jewel I expect it to be. This would be more fun if I was working on an actual book I had a contract for and not a proposal. When it’s a proposal there’s a lot of anxiety underneath, spoiling this fun part somewhat.

But I’m not going to think about. I’m following an enchantment I’ve had for a long time and experimenting with letting it be exactly what it is. We shall see if that draws anyone else in. It has to do with my lifelong romance with the forgotten.

The flowers I bought myself when I finished spring cleaning. Bleecker has been eating the leaves one by one. Bastard. Yeah, I’m talking about you, my little flower-wrecker.

I’ve been reading more about the Jill Abramson firing than I ever have before about a story of this nature. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps because the speculation about it is so interesting, and something about the story has brought out everyone’s best, at least in what I’ve chosen to read so far.

I think there’s also a road-not-traveled element for me. Long ago I decided my temperament was more suited to books than a newspaper. Except I’ve also questioned that decision. I’ve never lost sleep over it – you have to make choices in life and you can’t always know until the end, if ever, if you’ve made the right one. But if there’s any place I’d like to have worked if my decision had gone the other way it’s The New York Times. (And The New Yorker, although not a newspaper.)

So, I’ve been reading about what happened, and daydreaming about their world, and the players, and their lives, and imagining what it would be like to be in it. It looks fun. Even when it’s all temporarily gone to hell like this. I’m sure it’s not a cocktail party right now for those in the thick of it of course, I’m just saying it seem alive and vital and electrifying and I wouldn’t mind being in the middle of that right now.

A street fair on Bleecker yesterday. I left my apartment to get new sunglasses, and while I was out this street fair popped up.

My annual spring cleaning complete, I will now retire to the couch with magazines and lots of tv and marvel at the spectacular spotlessness around me.

Every spring cleaning I choose one home improvement type task. Last year it was a huge one, I had the apartment repainted. (Shudder.) This year I’m having the seat cushions on my couch refilled. Here’s my concern: it’s a down feather couch. I bought it before I was as aware of animal cruelty as I am now. No way I’m refilling it with feathers. Some places collect the down while the birds are still alive! My God, we are a horrible, horrible species.

But I’m afraid that the foam I’m getting instead will be too hard. The softer foam won’t last as long, they said, so I went with the denser foam. Nervous!

Here are Finney and Bleeck, who seem to love the sheets I used to wrap up the old, naked cushion stuffing the couch guy left behind. Notice how close they are. Almost touching!

I once found this great quote about hope in a book I was reading. It summed up all my feelings about hope in a beautifully written, evocative way, and I meant to write it down but I didn’t. Time went by and I forgot where I’d read it.

Every once in a while I look for it again. Because it haunts me. When I first read it I had that lovely feeling you get from the best books, that I’d come home, that there was at least one person in the world who thought and felt like me and everything was going to be okay. Naturally, I want that feeling again sometimes. Especially when I am hoping for something that is just not happening. I don’t hate hope, hope can be a useful, powerful tool. But in the end, the best place to be is to not need it.

I just googled “negative quotes about hope.” No go. This one by Henry Miller came up though:

“Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It’s a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.”

It’s a good quote, and makes an important point, but my hope quote said that and more. Also, I don’t know what he means by a “spiritual clap.” Here’s another quote of his that I found in the same place:

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

My only quibble would be some things truly are nasty, painful, and evil. They don’t just seem to be, they are. That said, they can still be “a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

These quotes make me wonder if I should revisit Henry Miller. Everyone around me in college loved him and so I read a bunch of his books. I liked them enough to finish them, but not enough to save them. You won’t find a single Henry Miller book in my library.

In the end it’s hard to let go of desire. Like my desire to read that quote again. I hope one day that I find the hope quote I love so much that tells me to let go of hope. Ha!

This hope post was brought to you by my stumbling across the picture below in the Municipal Archives digital library. It’s dated 1935-41, and it’s from the WPA Federal Writers Project collection. The caption reads:

“Tree of Hope” near Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre, 131st Street and 7th Avenue. Description: Four colored girls touch the original Tree of Hope. There is superstitious legend that to touch it brings good luck to actors seeking jobs.”

Me being me, I want to track those girls down and ask them what they hoped for and did they get it? You can read about the whole story of the Tree of Hope here.