Aubade

I think that there are about twenty-six entries left for me to complete a year's blogging in actual blog form - an alphabet's worth, though maybe (I'm not scrolling back to check) XYZ will have to be thrown together. So I'll start with A for Aubade - not in the sense of two lovers separating at daybreak (Alice venturing down the driveway to pick up the NYT surely doesn't count), but simply as an ode to the dawn, which (if one turned and looked in the other direction) was particularly pink and spectacular this morning. We let ourselves out of the back door to look at it - the presence of a roosting Northern Flicker under the front portale, 12" of brown and gold and fawn feather, is rather inhibiting when it comes to using the front one.

Roni Horne's catalog for her London and NY exhibition included an "index," a set of appealingly random entries given cohesion by an alphabetization of themes. Similarly, the Whitechapel's publication accompanying the Sophie Calle exhibition includes an "Index" by Andrea Tarsia (Head of Displays and Curatorial Studies at the gallery), which starts with Angels and Beds (lots of these in Calle's work) and Carnival, and ends up with Words, X, Yes, and Zylberstein - as in Ella Z, one of the actresses who performs, or takes part, in Take Care of Yourself (2007) - Calle handing over the text of an email breakup to 107 other women, to interpret it how they will.

But an Index presupposes a work already in existence - what attracts me to the days ahead is that I don't know what I'll be labeling - only that I'll be hunting a B tomorrow.