Fleur Wood

It's been so cold here, and though I'm enjoying getting thorough use out of my sweater collection, I can't help but think about how nice it would be to bask in the warm sun. Or even just to have the sun stay out past 4:30.

Yesterday I discovered Fleur Wood's website, and I think her beautiful designs are what propelled me even further into my pining for sun and sand.

Then, completely coincidentally, I was looking at Anthropologie's site today and saw for sale a book she's written about party planning and decor. (I swear I didn't see the advertisement on her homepage for the book – at that moment all I was interested in were the pretty dresses!) It's titled Food Fashion Friends: Recipes and Styling for Unforgettable Parties, and I want it. I don't care that it's $50 or that I have no place to throw a party. I'll throw unforgettable parties one day, peut-être. I hope. J'espère.

So I guess it's no surprise that this has been floating around my head for the past three days...

I had never seen the video for this song until now, and hot damn, it's not what I expected. Though it's very cool (and I can't imagine what the set looked like while filming / the crazy editing process), it's not what I would have done with the song.

I think the girl who posted the highest rated comment said it best: "this is so not what I imagined when listening to this song, I always thought of like beach vollyball and stuff." 

Priceless.

Wishful Thinking

I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 4

 

I hope I get at least one letter!

and:

This series will continue into the new year and throughout my four months in Paris.
Have a warm, happy holiday, everyone!

FOR THE RECORD:
I googled "confused french person", just to see what would happen, and this happened:

A coincidence considering I watched that E! special on Gwyneth Paltrow last night (and immediately signed up for Goop)? Probably not. Big Brother is watching.

But hey, happy holiday!

Where I was last night

Not my video, I was too busy rocking out to take a video. But I'm glad a few people did because this is a great memory. Look at that crowd! Such good vibes.

Ed. note:

 I found this picture a few weeks late, but how true it is! Source here.

Christmas!

I'm just so excited.

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 3

 Three uses of the word "blow", and none of what you're thinking!

1.

 

(just change "musician" to "artist")

2.

 

3.

Yellow is my favorite color

Daydream List, print by The Wheatfield on Etsy


(Listen to the full length and infinitely better Daytrotter session here.)

"We treat the night like failed daylight"

I can't remember where I found this article.
It's so beautiful and interesting that I just have to share it.

Why I Adore The Night by Janet Winterson

Mmmmm holiday time....

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 2

CHLOE

beautiful sunglasses on Swirl today by CHLOE. Burgundy is such a nice fall tone.

Paris is a moveable feast and all that jazz

He would go to Europe. That's what he would do. Spend some time in Fort Dodge then take off for a tour of Europe. He would learn French. Learn French, then take off for Paris, and when he got there he would drink red wine in Cacciato's honor. Visit all the museums and the monuments, learn the history, sit in the cafés along the river and smile at the pretty girls. Take a flat in Montmartre. Rise early and walk to the open market for breakfast. He would eat very slowly, crossing his legs and maybe reading a paper, letting things pass by, then maybe he'd walk about the city and learn the names of places, not as a tourist but as a man who comes to learn and understand. He would study the details. He would look for the things Cacciato would have looked for. It could be done. That was the crazy thing about it – for all the difficulties, for all the hard times and stupidity, for all that, it could truly be done.

– Tim O'Brien

Going After Cacciato

Winter Sale - Everything's Got To Go!

By the by...

The listings in my Etsy shop are about to expire, and soon I'll be relocating to Paris for a little while (no big deal). When I return I'd like to start from scratch with all new items in the shop, so I'm holding a super duper cheap clearance sale! There are three scarves left, two of which involve organic cotton and one of which is my favorite autumnal russet color. Did I mention I'll ship anywhere for free?

If you're interested in learning to knit, the needles in my shop are nice and easy for beginners. If you'd like recommendations, or to purchase just one pair out of the set, let me know!

And feel free to buy a photograph of the beach. I don't know where you are, but it's 30 degrees fahrenheit over here!

This project wouldn't have been possible without the help of my two friends, siblings Kristina (the model) and Richard (the photographer). His flickr is a lot of fun! 

What do you collect?

I collect works of art on postcards. And posters. Here's my newest one – discovered at the NY Art Book Fair at the BOMB Magazine table. (I know what you're thinking, and yes, it was indeed strange receiving a package that says BOMB in big black letters across the front.)

It's called "Parting Shots" by David Kramer. Get your own here!

More words from a master

It is claimed that there is such a moment of stooping, 

of summoning our strength, holding our breath, 

a moment of outward silence above the greatest internal
tension that exists between two human beings. 

There is no way of saying what takes place in that moment. 

It is, so to speak, the shadow that passion casts ahead of itself. 

An organic shadow; a relaxation of all earlier tensions 

and at the same time a new and sudden state of bondage
which contains the whole of the future; 

an incubation concentrated on the point of a needle . . . 

And on the other hand it is a nothing, 

a dull, vague feeling, a weakness, an anxiety . . .

Robert Musil

The Confusions of Young Törless

Oh, and did I mention I love NPR?

Photographer Jeff Sheng's current project, titled Don't Ask, Don't Tell, involves taking portraits of people in the U.S. military who identify themselves as LGBTQ. He does it in such a way, though, that the subjects do not give away their identities. The pictures end up communicating their frustration very clearly. It really makes you think (if you're not already thinking it), why the heck does this law exist? These are proud, free, American people. Let them live openly, damnit.
Successful political artistic ventures never cease to impress me.
NPR wrote it up.

YOKOO

I love artists.

YOKOO ON ETSY

What I've Been Looking For!

This quote I found on one of my favorites, lolita, explicates literally perfectly a sentiment that I have been struggling with for the better half of my conscious life. I didn't think it could be done.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs;
ask yourself what makes you come alive.

And then go and do that. 

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

- Howard Thurman

Exactly.

Black Pumps // Black Friday

By Enzo Angiolini. 

The purchase of the day! And I didn't even pay this much!

We all march to our own drums

at least according to NPR, some scientists, and an illustrator...

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 1

Linen: A Living Material

HOW cool.

via reMade USA by Shannon South

Triptych

I can't believe that on October 23 I wrote that I had made a total of 16 prints for my photo class — it's less than a month later and I've now made well over 50. I don't even remember doing all of that work. Maybe in the world of a working photographer that isn't considered very much? I don't know. 

These are three photos I took down by the bay in my hometown. One of my photography assignments was to shoot a roll of my 'conceptual self portrait' — representations of me that don't involve my physical body. I shot the above with my Lomo LC-A and Tri-X 400. The top one is a double exposure of the water and a jetty that juts out into it. I really like how these function as a set. Is there a well-paying job out there for people who like to take pictures and talk about art all day? 

le sighhh.

At this point I meet Me face to face.

This is the most interesting research I've ever done.

At this point I meet Me face to face.
I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and
dearly and damnably important to Me.
Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with
great intentness.
I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming
trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus:
I am rare— I am in some ways exquisite.
I am pagan within and without.
I am vain and shallow and false.

I am a specialized being, deeply myself.
I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other

pointes.
I am dynamic but devastated, laid waste in spirit.
I'm like a leopard and I'm like a poet and I'm like a religieuse and
I'm like an outlaw.
I have a potent weird sense of humor— a saving and a demoralizing
grace.
I have brain, cerebration— not powerful but fine and of a remarkable
quality.
I am scornful-tempered and I am brave.
I am slender in body and someway fragile and firm-fleshed and sweet.
I am oddly a fool and a strange complex liar and a spiritual vagabond.
I am strong, individual in my falseness: wavering, faint, fanciful in my
truth.
I am eternally self-conscious but sincere in it.
I am ultra-modern, very old-fashioned: savagely incongruous.
I am young, but not very young.
I am wistful— I am infamous.
In brief, I am a human being.
I am presciently and analytically egotistic, with some arresting dead-feeling
genius.
And were I not so tensely tiredly sane I would say that I am mad.

Mary MacLane, in her journal. Butte, Montana. Early 20th century.

Marie Bashkirtseff

I am attempting to read her journals, which are compiled into one volume titled I Am the Most Interesting Book of All. She was born in Russia, lived in France, and died at age 25 from tuberculosis. She was an artist and avid academic.

Saturday, April 24, 1875

 I had a dream in which I saw an enormous bouquet of yellow heads of wheat, as big as my bedroom, hanging from the ceiling. It was hanging above a table all covered with flowers and magnificent fruits. This dream put me in a good mood all day. I was so happy that it was a pity to be that way for nothing. I put on the white silk skirt, and, for a blouse, the top of the white Jewish dress in light wool embroidered in white. I wore not even one plain gold bracelet and no gloves. There was nothing on my head, either, except two long curls tied together. Oh, yes— two diamond earrings.


my favorite.

Some new mantras

I know one is supposed to choose a single mantra for repetition, d'habitude, but I lately I've found some longer quotes that I wish could be inscribed on the backs of my eyelids so I could be reminded of them approximately 25 times per minute. In reality, they're not mantras at all; they're long, quoted from mildly-famous-but-only-in-niches people, and not really spiritual in the least. I even took a class on Hinduism! How dare I . . .

Quotes, and how they relate to my life presently.

On these past days, weeks:

I am convinced that there are times in everybody's existence when there is so much to be done, that the only way to do it is to sit down and do nothing.

Fanny Fern 

On adulthood:

Grown-up people seem to be busy by clockwork . . . . They run their unswerving course from object to object, directed by some mysterious inner needle that points all the time to what they must do next. You can only marvel at such misuse of time.

Elizabeth Bowen

On living in New York City:

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.

George Carlin

On growing:

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Will Rogers

On current times: 

Leisure is gone — gone where the spinning wheels are gone, and the packhorses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.

George Eliot

On my love for my canine companion, Madison:

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.

Milan Kundera

On yoga, both the textbook definition and the practice:

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

On smelling the roses:

Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.

Alan Watts

On taking it as it comes: 

What am I doing? Nothing. I am letting life rain upon me.

Rahel Varnhagen

All of the above is taken from the October issue of The Sun, my all time favorite literary publication. Ultimate goal: a photograph of mine on the cover.

Lately on my mind

 

 

• Charles Burchfield sunflower wallpaper
• Mrs. Warren's Profession on Broadway
• the new Iron & Wine (!!!!)
• Kate Winslet in Little Children 
• knitting with beautiful yarn
• Brian Ferry, photographer, and his amazing site the blue hour
• the fact that my life revolves around picking which French book/ book about France to read next
• "Racing Like a Pro", the fact that The National is a great band to listen to while in transit, and the apparent youtube trend to make videos on this theme.
• a dream I had a few nights ago. I was hiding from a sudden rain storm under a massive elephant ear/ banana leaf. I felt so safe and childish, like when you hide under the dinner table or in the rack of clothing while shopping with your mom. When I woke up, I tried to pull the sheets over my head to recreate the feeling of being under that leaf, but it didn't work. THEN I googled images of the plant, because this is what google is for, and found the most adorable picture of a dog possibly ever.
• estimating the amount of snearing glances I would get wearing this shirt in Paris.
• and updating my flickr. how I held out on having one for this long, I do not know.