February 2012
5 posts
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Drinking cabernet sauvignon and reading Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and the Damned.
I learned last week that my great-grandmother commited suicide. She traveled Europe as a dancer, fell in love with an Italian comedian, had my grandmother, and fled back to England during WWII. Then one day she took sleeping pills, stepped into a bath, and fell asleep. How could I not know such a thing about one...
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Collection of beautiful things #002
Early morning rain, a cup of coffee to warm your hands, the soft light of the lamp, and heart-string music. Eventually the day will have to begin, and you’ll be whisked away from yourself—but not yet. You are all yours for a few more gentle minutes.
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Oh Virginia by The Head and the Heart
January 2012
38 posts
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“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope...”
– Neil Gaiman
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Saturdays are both the happiest and saddest day of my week. Morning is a very simple joy: waking slowly, not having to work, sipping coffee in my pajamas in the sunshine. There’s so much possibility in morning. Even the middle of the day has a sense of goodness to it, but I always get a sinking feeling when the sun goes down. I suppose I’m lonely or bored or lacking purpose. And...
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“Oh, but you mustn’t stop there—just at the most interesting part. Go...”
– Agatha Christie, The Thirteen Problems
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On certain evenings when there is snow on the ground and the sky has nearly cleared, the sunset turns the whole world this astonishing shade of purplish-rose that I can never seem to capture on film.
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Collection of beautiful things #001
Falling into deep, cozy conversation with a familiar old friend such that time and space temporarily slip away. Perhaps it’s late at night. Perhaps you’ve both had a little something to drink. Likely, you are reminiscing together about times so long ago that they seem like another life. And perhaps you say so, feeling that in a quarter century (or so) you have lived several lives....
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“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and...”
– Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
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I love my days off. I spent this one relaxing, cleaning & cooking, categorizing whale calls, mapping craters on the moon, and scouring dozens of star graphs for undiscovered planets (found some fascinating eclipsing binary stars). Things aren’t bad. Really, they’re not, but I do find myself feeling a bit lonely & blue at the end of it all. I think it’s time I plan a trip...
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Fake Real by First Aid Kit
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“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she...”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
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I drove past the guard in the cold, dark, early hours with a serious expression, two glow-in-the-dark necklaces and a variety of glowing bracelets. I greeted him with a curt nod and went on my way. Goodness knows what he must have thought! Ha! Fell into bed exhausted and glowing to the high heavens.
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I’ve been so very very foolish.
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Good evening. I will tell you right now that I am drunk. Quite on purpose. The Malbec era ends tonight, or at least I intend it to. I walk as if on the moon. Slow and far away and rapturous.
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AM Every morning I sit by the window, cup of coffee and Rilke in hand, and watch the brilliant clockwork sun appear over the rooftops and trees. I had a particularly heart-wrenching nightmare last night: the kind that doesn’t really offer the comfort of “it was just a dream.” Nearby, three little birds sit on a rooftop, watching the sun and pondering their dreams. We all do our...
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Lately I’ve been wondering whether it’s more favorable to have a good memory or a good forgetory. I’m leaning towards the latter.
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I truly don’t want to feel sad anymore. I don’t want to spend another night lonely, another morning hollow, or write another sad thing. And I have no idea how to do this. Suggestions most welcome.
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“the snow doesn’t give a soft white
damn Whom it touches”
– E.E. Cummings
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“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
– Fernando Pessoa
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The end of our relationship and everything after was a question. Being in the language of the heart, it bears no English equivalent but translates roughly to “how could you?” It will never be answered, and no answer could ever suffice.
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“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been...”
– Willa Cather, The Professor’s House
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“And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered...”
– Donna Tartt, The Secret History
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I accidentally locked myself out tonight in a snow squall. There was the moon all foggy-luminous, trees creaking like old rocking chairs, and those lovely big cotton-puff snowflakes. One really shouldn’t go wandering in the woods at night, but then there was a fox, and it stopped suddenly in its tracks. We stared at each other for a second, caught, and then he slipped into the trees. How...
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Inside the Golden Egg by El Perro Del Mar
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December 2011
22 posts
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“Somewhere the flower of farewell is blooming.
Endlessly it yields its pollen,...”
–
Rainer Maria Rilke from A Year With Rilke, Dec 31
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2011
Winter of deer and foxes, fog and snow, frozen-in-time hours by the window to the woods. The Secret History, new work, New York.
Spring of loss. First blossoms and a bitter flight across the Pacific. Lonely, nervous weeks in Australia. Rainbows, crystals, fish&chips, and books in bed.
Summer of storms, of the Virginian heat, of wind whipping through hair. Lightning, thunder, crash-pangs of...
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What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey...
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“For the sake of one line of poetry, one must see many cities, people, and...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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Cleaning out old things and making space for the new, I was caught off-guard by the heartache of it. Grieving over lost times, people, dreams. All gone forever. Forever.