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.

a field day

chives
(image via cat's_in_blue's flickr)

prairie blazing star
(image via aok)

lavender
(image via planted at home)

i want to get out of the city. i want to sit in one of these fields under a bright sun, and eat sliced fruit and drink lemonade. i want the hours to move slow, the day to be drowsy. i don't want to think about anything that needs to get done. i want to blink and squint and sigh, and have it feel like forever. if anything happens I want it to be a surprise. but i wouldn't mind if nothing happened. if there was just a field and a day and the sun...that would be enough.

what i'm thinking about

image via my sparrow

"if it's true that depth-of-characterization in fiction is analogous to degree-of-acquaintance in life, then it would be similarly true that the deeper the characterization achieved, then the less clear we'd be about a character's motivation in a story."
—from the "knowing your character" chapter of
writing in general and the short story in particular
by rust hills

"empathy....one might even go so far as to say that the experience is an involuntary projection of ourselves..."
— from the penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory

"i had to try to get the feeling by the use of two or three words..."
—from a 1933 letter written by ernest hemingway to everett r. perry

a confession

image via counterforce

i recently and randomly read a time magazine essay from may 18, 1970 called "violent protest: a debased language"...a key paragraph got me thinking...

The ultimate debasement of language, of course, is violence...—most dissenters turn to violence in a desperate effort to communicate their profound feelings of grievance. Yet surely this is too crude a way to get their message across. A bomb, for example, lacks specificity; its meaning is as scattered as its debris...Violence is, essentially, a confession of ultimate inarticulateness.

and then the words and ideas filtered down, and what really got a hold of me was— violence is, essentially, a confession... of what exactly? of everything that lives inside us but can't get out, of everything that exists but can't be named, of everything we want acknowledged but instead has always been met with disregard, intolerance and neglect. violence then, is a sad confession of our fragility and weakness, our tragic inability to perfectly express our existence...

Read more of the essay at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909175-2,00.html#ixzz0y92NXg2a

the library vault

rijkmusuem library, amsterdam, the netherlands

image via it doesn't get any better than this

new york public library, ny, usa
image via idlethink on flickr

nottebohm library, antwerp, belgium
image via spotted by locals

wren library at trinity college, cambridge, england
image via diary of a dandelion diva

the other day someone who sometimes seems to know me better than myself suggested i look into working at the main branch of our public library. at first i balked at the idea. i imagined myself bored, stunted, and trapped— bloodlessly gathering up misplaced books, tediously putting call numbers on book spines. but then i really thought about it. i have always loved libraries, even the ones lacking grandeur and history, even the ones that are a depressing block of drab concrete from the outside. because on the inside there is always the surprise and triumph of discovery. even if it's a tiny discovery...just one line, from one book that i would have otherwise never come across, that maybe i won't even check out, that maybe i will never come across again in my lifetime, but that one line flaps on and on inside me like bird wings on a windowpane, desperate and relentless, forever remembered. i can spend hours walking the aisles, running my fingers across titles and names i don't know, until something flashes out at me and i stop and take a closer look. i don't get embarrassed to sit on the floor. i like the eerie quiet. i like the smell of paper and metal. i like the feeling that arises when someone else wanders into the aisle that i have been occupying for a long while without anyone else present— it's part irritation, part bewilderment, part relief. i like the stamped due dates, resolute, non-negotiable. i like the lighting, sometimes pale and morbid, sometimes warm and softly yellow. but mostly i guess it's about being surrounded, overwhelmed really, by the hard work of writers... a seemingly endless inventory of writers working out their ideas, obsessing on their characters, their landscapes, their imagined places... fiction, non-fiction, reference, anthologies... it doesn't matter...a writer and a story...everywhere you turn.

underdogs

photo found on malluworld.org

photo found on autoblog green

photo found on impact lab

so basically, i'm forever amazed by dogs— and these rawboned stray dog hustlers of moscow have taken my amazement to a whole new level. apparently when the soviet union collapsed in the 1990's, industrial complexes were moved from the city center to the suburbs, and this shift forced the stray dogs to change their survival strategies. they had always used the industrial complexes as safe shelters to sleep in at night, but during the day they foraged for food in the city streets where scraps were more accessible and plentiful. but once their shelters were moved to the suburbs, they had to start commuting to the city center to still get to that easy food. so guess what?— they figured out how to use the subway. can it get any more wonderful than that? can it get any more absurd and astonishing? can it get any more real, any simpler? i mean, of course they figured it out, they had to. these are the kind of dogs i'd want to hang out with— duck in and out of shadows with, weave through streets and legs and noise with, learn a few tricks from. these guys have it down, they travel to the city to eat, and then in the evenings they go back to the suburbs. they are like businessmen going to the city to make shit happen, to earn what they need to live. just for a minute i want to let myself imagine them in suits and ties, holding briefcases, serious and tired, preparing themselves for the day ahead. oh yeah, you know what else? they like to just chill out in the subway in the winter to stay warm (enduring a moscow winter can't be fun), and they know what's up in traffic (when to cross, when not to), and they know how to get the last bite of whatever you're eating out of your hand.
check out this video of a little scrapper waiting for his train

the ballerina bus

photo by ernesto bazan

photo from kira craft, style editor of huffington post

photo from the film "ballerina", directed by bertrand normand

photo found on ffffound

my brother loves ballerinas. i think he likes that they look like small deer or foxes— delicate, wide-eyed, lithe-limbed. i think he likes that they are dedicated, structured, and obsessed. i think he likes that they are in some way a throw-back to a different time— symbols of classic training, traditional arts, and the legacy and honor of working hard at what you love.
in the summer-time ballerinas come here from all over the nation to train. and one summer my brother lived with me for a few months. the bus he and i rode to get to work downtown in the mornings was the same bus that all the ballerinas would ride from their dormitories to their ballet school. they would get onto the bus a few stops after ours. they all had hair pulled up into tight buns, eyes exaggerated with make-up, arched backs, long necks, and feet that pivoted outwards. they were always in a big group, and all of a sudden the bus was full of 8 or 10 or 12 magnificent ballerinas. they were like a different species—gorgeous and slight and poised. even in their sweatpants that they pulled over their leotards they made the rest of us look sloppy, like a bunch of slouches just trying to make it through the day.
at the stop where they waited to get on, before the doors of the bus even opened, my brother and i would smile at each other. and then we would stare at them, one by one, as they filed down the aisle of the bus.

bruises & scrapes

in a small town in france i learned how to ride a bicycle that looked very much like this bike. it was a town in the middle of nowhere— surrounded by forest, it was a place of thin roads, vegetable gardens, and quaint cottages. we lived there for about four months. my mother's boyfriend grew up in this town. we lived with his parents— always in an apron, his mother cooked rabbit stews and his father spent all day with his back bent in the garden. i was 7 years old, or maybe 8. it was summertime and my brother quickly made friends with the other children that lived on that same road, and together they wildly roamed through the forest— picking blackberries, lighting firecrackers, chasing after deer and foxes and squirrels. they would come back with berry-juice stained lips and tired limbs and secret smiles. we didn't speak french and they knew very little english, but somehow that didn't matter with my brother and his friends. and because i hadn't made my own friends, sometimes i would follow them, and they would let me. the only girl, and younger— they let me struggle to keep up and laughed when i stumbled and took turns jumping out from behind trees and bushes to scare me. if i wasn't panting after them, i walked the quiet roads with my mother or followed my almost-grandfather around his garden, helping him pick snails off his lettuce. and then one day i found that bicycle in the shed in the back of the garden. it belonged to my almost-grandmother, it was much too big, a bit battered and rusty. but i thought it was magnificent. i didn't ask anyone, i didn't tell anyone. i just took it out of the garden and wheeled it to the road. our road wasn't flat, there was a slight incline and so once i figured out how to balance and pedal (without sitting on the seat), i would just let the bike coast down the little hill (now sitting down on the seat) and stick my legs out and up to avoid the spinning pedals. then i would walk the bicycle up the hill and do it over and over again. i spent days and days like this. nobody asked me to stop or be careful. but when my mother saw the bruises and scrapes up and down my shins and knees from the banging pedals that were somtimes just too fast, she ran her hands down my legs and laughed and said—"i hope they don't leave scars, because some day that will matter. some day, you will care about that."

hotel chelsea

hotel chelsea

i used to live in this hotel with my father and my big mastiff puppy. we lived in room 505. we lived there from early spring to the very end of the summer, maybe we even moved out in september. a hotel full of oddballs and originals, hustlers and auteurs, misfits and luminaries. a hotel of long marble corridors and slow-motion elevators. my father and i became best friends in that hotel room, in that room number 505. we liked to read in the afternoons, each one of us on our own bed, not talking, just staying quiet and reading, and the big baby dog sleeping in a patch of sun on the floor...and then my father would fall asleep too and i would listen to both him and the puppy snoring away like cartoon characters. that summer we did everything together. we played backgammon, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, drinking iced coffees, shit-talking and rubbing the dice for luck. we hailed cabs, took walks, and rode bicycles. we went to the movies and ate candy and popcorn and mostly always left halfway through because he could never sit still in movie theaters— they bored him, made him antsy. and we would sit out on the balcony and he would smoke his dunhills and i would listen to him tell stories about all the things he had seen and done, before i was born, before he was my father. in the middle of that summer a girl committed suicide. she jumped from the 9th or 10th floor, i can't remember which. i was sitting by the window and even amid all the noise and bustle of w. 23rd, i heard her hit the pavement. i didn't know what had happened though. i just heard a sound. and then the sirens came and by the time i looked out our window, her body had a blanket over it. but her shoes had been neatly placed by her side and blood was still moving on the pavement. my father wasn't with me in the room when it happened, he was walking home. but he saw what i saw, from the corner he had just rounded, a half a block away. even though he wasn't with me, looking down from the window, he still saw that same moment. together we watched the same thing happen, him from the corner, me from the window.

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.

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. 

river run

when i was a kid i lived for a while in a desert town with a wide river that ran through it. in the summer months the water level would drop and long soft hilly stretches of sand would appear in the middle of the river. but along the banks the water would still remain deep and cool, shaded in part by the thick clumps of grass and the occasional cottonwood tree. my best friend and i would ride our horses, along with my two dogs trotting close behind, down to the river to spend our long hot endless summer days. days of no school. days of abandon. days of running around and doing exactly what we wanted. we would swim the horses along the banks and then come up onto the stretches of sand, and then we would wildly race each other. there was nothing to hear in those moments except the heaving legs of our horses and their hard breathing and the urgent dull thumping of sand. our faces in their whipping manes, our eyes squinting, our small tough hands steady on the reins. and then the stretch of sand would finally run out and we would crash straight into the shallow water, still in a dead gallop, until it began to gradually get deeper and then the horses would slow down and ease themselves into the water...that cool green water that came up to our thighs, surrounding our horses so completely, and everything seemed to go soft again, only the blowing of the horses' nostrils and the panting dogs paddling behind us, and that high ballooning sun. 

bright & brazen

photo by cass bird for sophomore's lookbook

maybe because the weather has been so unusually warm these days... i am preoccupied with the look and feel of summertime... i can't help thinking of youth and bare legs and primary colors and dirty fingernails and secret hard kisses and slurpees and random touch-and-go adventures and bright glaring brazenness. and days that go so long you don't know how to fill them, and nights that are so warm you can never shake the heat from the nape of your neck or the back of your knees. and i love this photo because it manages to capture exactly all of that with such insolence and honesty.

the swing of things

cane garden bay tire swing, british virgin islands photo from sseana1

tire swing, riegelsville bridge from a walk through durham township, pennsylvania

adirondacks tire swing from comma?

western landscapes tire swing, from phil nelson imaging llc

there is something so devastatingly lonesome about the tire swing. out there in big landscapes under big skies it hangs still, waiting. or unobserved, it swings with quiet breezes or shakes with heavy winds or sags with thick snow. dangling and swaying alone. of course someone will come every once in a while and swing or sit. a band of hollering, jumping children or a soft-stepping solitary old man or a pair of ladies with their summer skirts and brown ankles and bending necks...of course they come, with all their nostalgia and hope and laughter and awe and sorrow— and they swing for a while, pumping the air with their legs, letting their hair stream and flutter, closing their eyes against the heat or cold. but they go away eventually, feeling a little lighter maybe, a little more alive or relevant or enchanted, or maybe just hungry and flushed. but they walk away, or run or skip or amble, and leave the tire swing to drift for a bit in the air, underneath the creaking branches and the humming leaves and the hopping bird feet and those immense startling skies. and then it slows to an almost standstill, just barely pulling at the rope or chain it hangs on, but still softly thumping the air without anyone watching or knowing or wondering.  

she-wolves & pussycats

masked women... they are like gifts still unwrapped, waiting for the ribbon to be pulled and the paper torn open... they are hot-blooded half-truths, sudden super-heroes, cinematic pauses, glinting hints of hazard, cryptic codes, slowly swelling silences, she-wolves and pussycats... and i think there is nothing hotter than the heat of the eyes and the mystery of the mask, and that everything on the face grows bigger because of the mask—especially the mouth and the teeth... that soft pouting pink, that sharp bright white. everything at once becomes delicate and dangerous, dreamy and dark...

all the right words

kenzo minami posing near his print at the second annual live art auction 

benefiting stoked mentoring held at milk gallery on april 5, 2008 in new york

photo by astrid stawiarz/getty images

so this guy, kenzo minami, had the best new year's resolution i've ever heard. usually they suck and sound worn-out and silly. but his resolution is simple and composed, thoughtful and alive. maybe his statement is what we are all actually thinking and trying to say, what we all actually want, but we just don't quite know how to articulate it right—that maybe we all want to live bigger and deeper and wider lives... and that what we've got to remember is that even the little choices we make every day have force and value in determining the possibilities of our experience. 

mr. kenzo minami has got all the right words:

this year if i have two choices between something familiar and something new (something i have never done, chosen, or tasted), i would like to choose the latter and step out of my comfort zone as much and as often as possible next year. something foreign over familiar, something unknown over known, and something new over something old and comfortable.

kid cool

asterix, dogmatix, and obelix from the adventures of asterix comic book series

tintin and snowy from the adventures of tintin comic book series

lucky luke and jolly jumper from a lucky luke adventure comic book series

these are the guys i grew up on—the comic book characters that captivated my brother and i all through childhood. we read them on trains. in hotel rooms. on buses. on planes. in shared new bedrooms. in family friend's living rooms. we moved around a lot. new schools. new towns. new countries. new languages. but we always had these comics and the characters that lived and moved and adventured in them. and i still am utterly captivated— i still think they are the coolest, funniest, truth-seeking, life-risking, wayfaring dudes... ever. and the fact that all of them have an animal cohort/friend/sidekick makes them even more wonderful and brilliant...they are just so goddamn cool.

lists and list-makers

i really like lists. i like writing them out. i like the way they look. item after item down a piece of paper. i like putting a thick sharp line through the things i've accomplished- methodically, triumphantly. i hate not crossing off things. i feel little flashes of love for my lists, but mostly i'm competitive with them. it's other people's lists that i can love more readily. particularly when i find them... those lost bits of someone's life—in grocery store aisles, school hallways, taxicabs... and i wonder about those people. i examine the paper and the handwriting. pen or pencil. what to buy. who to call. what to get done. and i think perhaps i know a little something about them just by what's on their lists...a professor of mine always has a million lists on his desk, in varying styles of handwriting, on various scraps of paper. the funny thing is, he always seems a bit unorganized, ruffled, disheveled...a bit caught off guard... but he is obviously a dedicated list maker, i like that. i like the incongruity of it. anyway i have the feeling his lists are more 'idea' lists and less 'getting stuff done' lists. and those are the coolest kind of lists. 

like two ships passing in the night

ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;

only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

so on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,

only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

-from Tales of a Wayside Inn. Part iii. The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth. iv.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

lately i've become more interested in expressions and idioms. i think they often manage to capture a feeling more accurately than a one word description. of course they can often sound terribly cheesy or cliche. but still, i'm anxious to discover ones i've never heard before. there a few though that i already know that for some reason seem to consistently resonate with me... 'like two ships passing in the night' has always made my heart sink. it makes me ache with the knowledge that there is so much that my life will briefly touch and brush past, and never truly experience-a flash of something and then nothing. it makes me ache with loss...a feeling of loss for what i've never actually had, but still i can feel the lack

tiny secret lives

i have little animals living on my kitchen windowsill. all of them were found...mostly in the park by my house, but also on sidewalks and in gutters along street corners. i have a trio of galloping white horses, a lone wolf that i found on a rainy day drowning in a puddle, a lumbering black bear i discovered half hidden in the dirt, a hissing cat, a wobbly penguin, and quite a few others...and actually i have a soldier and an astronaut too. i watch them when i do the dishes. still and quiet, forever motionless in time and space. and somehow i am amazed by them. these tiny plastic replicas of life. so strange and real and unreal at the same time. and my imagination can't help itself, it is compelled to think of them as secret and alive, roaming the windowsill when i've gone to bed or left the house, stealthily living on accidental crumbs and drops of water that fall from the faucet. these tiny secret beings with tiny secret lives of their own... noiseless, covert and completely unknowable. how irresistible and heartbreaking to imagine them this way.

someone on etsy seems to want to imagine the same thing, creating eerie and beautiful polaroid photos that i am absolutely in love with. the photo boxes are my favorite and this one might be the one i love the most