snakebite

calvin klein passion

dkny footwear agatha

charles david zip

kors michael kors poppi

pelle moda joleen

i think a single snakeskin item works like a magic trick—it can turn a simple outfit into a sleek one so easily, so coolly. i love all of these shoes. they are intense and overt and daring, but simultaneously sly and seductive. i like that they convey strength and confidence, and a bit of mischief...like some kind of rabble-rouser or agent provocateur... my favorite are the dkny agatha booties, perhaps because they are subtler, less trouble making...and these days i definitely don't want no trouble...no sir, no trouble.

why i will always love ferris wheels

(image via kleiobird's flickr)

It must have been October and I was still just thirteen and I hadn't seen my father since the heat of that August that had just passed, when we seemed to have lost everything, when everything changed forever. I was living apart from him, he was traveling and wandering, trying to get his shit together, I guess. We talked on the phone, but it was sporadic, and I think maybe I was just trying to make things work with where I was, the best way I knew how. I didn't think I missed him, I didn't think he mattered too much, I thought I could get along just fine without him. And then that October he unexpectedly came to town to visit. The relatives I was living with were upset, agitated. They didn't like him, didn't understand him, didn't trust him. He had to ask their permission to take his daughter out. Just a few hours, he promised. I didn't even know if I wanted to go. We got in his car and drove. I don't think he knew where to take me, I don't think we talked about it. But we just drove, and without knowing it was going on, we passed the county fair, and he turned to me and said quietly, let's go. It was dusk and the sky was a pulpy red and pink and purple. People and voices and music and lights were everywhere. We walked around. He tried to say things and just seemed unable to, I tried to say things back and just couldn't. We stood in front of the ferris wheel and watched it, all lit up against the slowly darkening sky. We stayed quiet, and then he said, lets ride it. I said okay, even though I was nervous. We sat close together but I felt so far away from him. But then we went around and around, and maybe because we were far up and away from everything, maybe because it was just him and I sitting so close, maybe because I looked at him and saw my own chin, my own eyes, my own mouth...but we started to talk and couldn't seem to stop. He said so many things that mattered and so did I. The wheel went round and round, and the sky darkened and the air cooled and the stars came out. It was time to go, time to get me back. He drove slowly, and I watched the sidewalks and the treetops and the stoplights, and in his old beat up car, with the windows rolled down, I knew I couldn't get along without him.

junkyard riches

tango of death. postcard of diorama @ milan's museum of natural science

pitbull postcard

found on flickr

time square postcard

found postcard by greenwood100 on flickr 

these are the kind of postcards i would love to find in crumbling boxes at flea markets or yard sales or even in used bookstores, or maybe lost or forgotten on sidewalks or alleyways, along gutters, in the shade of parked cars, near bus stops or crosswalks. that would be a lucky day. that would be a big time score.

quiet little leaves

fern. photo from dougalug on flickr

autumn leaves. julie juratic photo

rainforest leaf

clover leaf patterns. eric knapp photo

it's been raining a lot lately and  i've been so busy, but before the rain and the days of not enough time, i was going for walks with my dog a couple days a week in a park up a hill close to my house. there are lots of paths and it's forested and there are squirrels everywhere and dog-walkers and small black-headed birds with feet that look like tatty matchsticks. i like those walks very much. it was up there, in these woods in the city, that i started noticing the leaves of different plants and how intricate and ornate and complex and poetic they can be... their colors and shapes and patterns— so shyly, so softly brilliant and gorgeous. it is a little heartbreaking that leaves so easily are forgotten—flowers always get all the attention, they seem to trump everything else, they are obvious and devastating and theatrical, like gushing glittery bright clowns, drooping and swaying, hamming it up for the crowds... but leaves are oh-so quiet and discreet... but, i think,  just as dazzling and magical. 

halcyon days

all photos found on weheartit.com

i love what a little bit of white can do for a room...and big windows full of light.

zipped

michael by michael kors berkley sandal

bless 4 zipper wallet

wynona zipper bag

dereka fleece jacket

alexander wang zip front skirt

there is something tough and raw about zippers. i like that. i like the way they sound too... as they go up and down, up and down. 

what big teeth you have!...the better to eat you with

the story of little red riding hood inspires fear, imagination and awe...a flinch, a shudder, a flutter, an ache. the story writhes with terror and innocence, duplicity and corruption, savagery and simplicity. there are shadows of sex and violence, bloodlust and carnality. and guess what?—it's a kids story... the story has many tellings and re-tellings, but the tension between a chaste little girl, lamb-like in her pale winter skin, and a big sly bristling wolf is always at the core. soft little girl and grisly big wolf...round and round they go... there are so many stories in the story of little red riding hood. 

angela carter reworks the story of little red riding hood in her short story "the werewolf"... she makes little red riding hood a different sort of little girl and she plays around with what that means for the story... 

it is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts... winter and cold weather. go and visit your grandmother, who has been sick. take her the oatcakes i've baked for her... the good child does as her mother bids—five miles' trudge through the forest; do not leave the path because of the bears, the wild boar, the starving wolves. here, take your father's hunting knife; you know how to use it... when she heard that freezing howl of a wolf, she dropped her gifts, seized her knife and turned on the beast. it was a huge one, with red eyes and running grizzled chops; any but a mountaineer's child would have died of fright at the sight of it. it went for her throat, as wolves do, but she made a great swipe at it with her father's knife... the wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob... the child wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron...

the lover

originally published in france as l'amant by les editions de minuit. copyright 1984

this is one of my favorite books. it's short— at once rushing and quiet. it's repetitive and aching and indulgent and obsessive. but i think it deals with nostalgia and memory and the re-telling of an experience without apologies...duras does not ask her readers to forgive her for not adhering to the facts, instead she is desperate and desirous to manipulate her story, in moments flagrant and blatant, and at other times cagey, slinking. memory moves and contorts and mutates everything—duras knows this and allows for it, pushing her story further and further into some kind of no-man's land, outside of fact, outside of fiction. 

here's an excerpt:

the girl in the felt hat is in the muddy light of the river, alone on the deck of the ferry, leaning on the rails. the hat makes the whole scene pink. it's the only color. in the misty sun of the river, the sun of the hot season, the banks have faded away, the river seems to reach to the horizon. it flows quietly, without a sound, like the blood in the body. no wind but that in the water... all around the ferry is the river, it's brimful, its moving waters sweep through, never mixing with, the stagnant waters of the rice fields. the river has picked up all it's met... it carries everything along, straw huts, forests, burned-out fires, dead birds, dead dogs, drowned tigers and buffalos, drowned men...

just passing through

photo from ffffound.com via weheartit.com

...like some cinematic dream...