i love lucy...

so basically i'm pretty obsessed with 'i love lucy'. i mean, how good is lucille ball? she's amazing. her and ethel are so absurd and hilarious. they are always sneaking around and goofing things up. they are perfectly wonky. and it's so great how they are supposed to be these pulled together prim housewives but they just can't be that, they have to be out-of-control jokesters...they can't get away from themselves...even though lucy is always making promises to her husband to not get into trouble, there is just no way that is gonna happen. i love these kinds of characters- the bumbler, the trickster, the oddball, the buffoon. they get me every time. this particular clip from 'i love lucy' makes my stomach hurt from cracking up so hard. imagine having a mom like lucy. or a sister or a best friend. how awesome would that be?

lucky charms

necklace by kimberly baker

necklace by max&chloe

necklace by dogeared

i'm most in love with the thorn necklace by kimberly baker. but all of these necklaces are lovely and delicate and interesting. they certainly would be nice things to give or get

writing up to and beyond a single moment

i recently finished reading this overwhelming, difficult, brave and beautiful book for the second time. i am even more impressed and moved and inspired than i was with my initial reading. i think faulkner's writing is gutsy, singular, jarring and breathtaking. not that i think he doesn't slip and fall sometimes. because he does and quite often, but that's the risk of an ambitious and daring writer. but particularly in this novel i find that his footing is surer despite the treacherous terrain of the text-the story of a tragic family, haunted and aching and bruised.

in an interview that took place early in 1956 in new york city, faulkner articulated how a story begins for him- "a writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. with me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. the writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow."

in a 1933 introduction to the sound and the fury, faulkner explicitly discusses his process for the novel, "when i began the book i had no plan at all...one day it suddenly seemed as if a door had clapped silently and forever between me and all the publishers' addresses...and i said to myself, now i can write. now i can just write. whereupon i,...began to write about a little girl...a little doomed girl climbing a blooming pear tree in april to look in the window at the funeral...i saw that peaceful glinting of that branch was to become the dark, harsh flowing of time sweeping her to where she could not return...that just separation, division, would not be enough, not far enough, it must sweep her into dishonor and shame too..."

i am obsessed with how this image, this flashing mental picture of a "little doomed girl climbing a blooming pear tree in april" exploded into the sound and the fury.

room to breathe

the bathroom

i love the dark pink walls. the color is romantic and nostalgic and spirited. and all that white makes everything look crisp and clean. i like that there is a substantial amount of space and that the floors are a darkish moody wood. simple and functional, but incredibly charming. 

from cottage living

the kitchen

this kitchen looks so authentic...as if many many meals have certainly been cooked in it. it's homey, not at all sterile, but still organized and uncluttered. it's so beautifully bright and modest and tidy and wholesome.

from flickr

the writing room

this is very much the kind of space i would like to write in. a large window open and glowing with the world. inspiring, textured details-the floral wallpaper, the lush velvet curtains, the spinning globe... enough space to move about in, to have a large bookshelf, to have the luxury of two! desks. the color contrasts are unexpectedly perfect too. the warm rose and mustard hues and then that cool and vivid dark turquoise.

 from guardian.co.uk (writer's rooms series) this one is Rose Tremain's

the bedroom

it's hard to even talk about this room, i'm so completely taken with it. all that light, the high ceiling, that inviting straightforward bed. the room is actually quite bare, but the essentials are exactly right. i could sleep forever in this room. and read and daydream and love and listen to music and watch the garden and the shifting rays of light all day long.

from flickr, anna linder, tone dale mountain bedroom

style story

all images from garance dore

 these are the kind of looks i like. these are the kind of clothes i like. clean. simple. not too hard, not too soft. good lines, neutral colors. nothing too showy. but still, pieces that when put together right might say a little something.

a parenthetical moment

dance scenes in film are often some of my favorite moments. if, of course, they are done well... if they capture some flighty trembling truth...some heartbreaking flash of humanity. this scene from jean-luc godard's 1964 film 'band of outsiders' does it well. really really well.

i wanna make it a heavyweight fight

 how to be a great writer, charles bukowski

you've got to fuck a great many women

beautiful women

and write a few decent love poems.

and don't worry about age

and/or freshly arrived talents.

just drink more beer

more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a week

and win if possible.

learning to win is hard-

any slob can be a loser.

and don't forget your Brahms

and your Bach and your beer

don't overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid credit cards

or paying for anything on time.

remember that there isn't a piece of ass 

in this world worth more than $50

(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love

love yourself first

but always be aware of the possibility of 

total defeat

whether the reason for that defeat 

seems right or wrong-

an early taste of death is not necessarily 

a bad thing

stay out of churches and bars and museums,

and like the spider 

be patient-

time is everybody's cross,

plus

exile 

defeat

 treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large  typewriter

and as the footsteps go up and down

outside your window

hit that thing

hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you don't think they didn't go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you're doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you're not ready.

drink more beer.

there's time.

and if there's not

that's all right too.

this poem cracks me up and makes my heart squeeze tight. it's daunting and hopeful at the same time. it makes me want to live in loud fits and bursts and then tender oozing whimpers-back and forth between those two states, relentlessly. this poem makes me worry about time even more than i already do. i definitely don't think that not having enough time is "all right too". i've got too much to fit in this life, too much to touch and feel and taste...too much writing to do. writing needs so much time...i just want slow motion time and a quiet room with a huge desk beneath a bright window. but i want my fingers fast and breathless, tirelessly wanting to "hit that thing, hit it hard," to "make it a heavyweight fight"

sweet home

i'm interested in town names. i imagine that in some way the name of where we live imbues our daily existence with a very real but perhaps unexplainable sensibility... that just like the color of the dirt and the shape of the roads and the pitch of the winds, a name creates an exact scenery that has unexamined (maybe) but deep implications on who we are and what we might become.

here are some USA town names i found and appreciated, or just wondered about:

 marrowbone, tennessee

valentine, nebraska

little heaven, delaware

defiance, arkansas

colts neck, new jersey

romance, w. virginia

cat elbow corner, new york

sweet home, oregon

truth or consequences, new mexico

last chance, california

dime box, texas

i think my favorite might be sweet home, oregon. you kinda can't beat a name like that to belong to. interestingly, i discovered in my little investigation that there are quite a few towns across the USA called defiance and dogtown. 

puff-puff-blow

priscilla 1969 by joseph szabo

candy cigarette, 1989 by sally mann

mary ellen mark 

i used to 'smoke' candy cigarettes when i was a kid. and yes i will admit i thought i was cool for doing it. i liked the puff-puff-blow action. i liked the way the thing looked in between my little fingers. i did it privately. away from the other kids and definitely away from my older brother. i knew they weren't real. i knew they were made from sugar. but i liked keeping to myself when i did my 'smoking'. i never did turn into a real smoker. i like these photos simply as images. i am not looking at them through a moral lens. everyone knows smoking is bad for you. especially for growing, developing kids. i just find photos of very young girls smoking real or unreal cigarettes visually captivating, particularly these ones. i like the grotesqueness and the absurdity. i like the mix of innocence and defiance. i like damaged pretty things. i like thinking that there might be a tiny 'fuck you' in the puff-puff-blowing breath of each girl. 

my kind of smut... lingerie shots

photo by juergen teller

unknown

photo from modfetish

11 songs i can't stop listening to

1. thunder meadow-pomegranates

2. a forest-bat for lashes (covering the cure)

3. twenty four hours-joy division

4. open heart surgery-the brian jonestown massacre

5. rocket-albert hammond jr.

6. emma's house-the field mice

7. i wanna be adored-the stone roses

8. i'm good, i'm gone-lykke li

9. the chills-peter bjorn and john

10. kissing families-silversun pickups

11. raging bull blues-beat the devil

paper dolls

i want to know more kids, so i can give booklets and booklets of paper dolls away. i want a wall covered in tiny framed paper doll outfits. i want to make a very very short film of a mob of paper dolls walking stiffly, tragically across my hardwood floors. and maybe i will play some terribly sad music in the background. i want paper doll clothes of my own.

if you like paper dolls too you can buy them here...

stone cold fox

i found this photo here, don't know where it's from originally

from Vogue Paris

from IMG comp card

LARA STONE. i just kinda love her. the gap teeth. the peroxided eyebrows. she can be hyper feminine or quite masculine... sensual and soft and then steely and sharp. a kind of ideal post-modern looking woman... indefinable, glaringly sexual, complex, imperfect, and completely compelling. she just has the kind of face i wanna keep on looking at. 

pretty bones

this is a skeleton of a horse. i've always been fascinated by animal bones. as a little kid i used to save them if i came across them. and in high school my best friend and i would hunt for them in the valleys and ditches of our adolescent landscape, hoping to find the jackpot-an intact skull. my best friend would paint on any and all of the bones we found. i did nothing with them. I just liked looking for them. i think it's because i'm preoccupied with what is existent but unseen. bones lie underneath- alive, mobile, and necessary beneath layers of skin and muscle, but it's only in death that we can see them whole and exposed, gloriously bleached and naked. they are somehow emblematic to me of all the quiet revelations that are constantly occurring, day to day, minute to minute, straightforward and ordinary, but still profound and overwhelming.