a heroic age

ernest shackleton
(image via wikipedia)

tom crean, 1915

(image via 10 downing)

carsten borchgrevink, about 1898

(image via national archives of australia)

"heroic age of antarctic exploration"— a period of about 25 years from the end of the 19th century to the early 1920's when the exploration of the antarctic became an international focus. i love the the sound of it...heroic age of antarctic exploration...the syllables roll off the tongue and the words are leaden with meaning— all the implications of bravery and fortitude, adventure and endeavor, and grave grave danger. i'm reading a book right now about ernest shakleton's 1914 expedition and the failures and challenges him and his men encountered, and the heavy duty struggle to survive that they endured. it's practically unfathomable what they had to go through, and that they somehow managed to make it out alive. i've always obsessed over adventurers, explorers, wanderers, pioneers— the push, the drive, the madness, the totality of commitment, and the balls to have a daily dialogue with death.

a private affair

brigitte bardot in vie privee, 1962.

easy pieces

(image via the sartorialist)

this is my kinda outfit. about as perfect as it gets.

wild ideas let loose

(image via grab the wheel if you love me)

bunny dressing by michael sowa.

this piece throws me right back into childhood. all that adventure time— the forts, the wilderness walks, the games with my brother...but mostly the time alone, just me and the family animals, who to me were like people... the hours spent in their company, the stories i created for them, about them... all those wild ideas i let loose around them, as they silently and patiently put up with me.

a kind of fever

(image via samalamaropey)

i have this feeling inside— a kind of fever. a spring fever, i guess. nostalgia is mixed in there too, not for something i've ever had, but for something i haven't. i keep getting flashes of my mother's youth... the 60's, the 70's... i see her so vividly, my imagination and memory hard at work. i'm scared i'm not living as full as she did. i'm scared all the good stuff just goes away, so quickly, so easily. but there is this wild little fever beginning to burn inside of me, reminding me i'm still young and there is still so much up ahead.