things I like this week, vol. 42.1

If you haven't seen this yet - I've had it sent to me by two dear people who apparently know my taste - it's incredible: a Paris apartment sealed up just before WW2 and opened just recently. The woman paid the rent until she died and never returned, and when they opened it up, they found a painting of her grandmother, actress-muse-mistress to Giovanni Boldini.

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I love the internet.

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This woman's photographs are incredible.

My favorite thing about this shot is the pinky-red blood trail behind her, and the way the color is echoed in the gradation of her lips.

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I love this post about the sound in tango music that's named after a cicada - a chicharra. I've heard it, but I'd never known what it was.

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Ben Folds choosing pianos in his studio.

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An absurdly detailed map of North American dialects. For the record, I say "pin" and "pen" differently, despite being born in Georgia and living for the past decade and a half in Tucson.

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A fascinating article in Smithsonian magazine about how artists in Egypt are using graffiti as a form of protest against the government. 

A pawn uprising.

It's an excerpt from Neruda translated into Arabic: "You can step on the flowers but you can never delay the Spring."

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Heartbreakingly beautiful photography by a teenage trainhopper. They published a book of his photos, but he's working as a mechanic now and doesn't think of himself as a photographer.

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It's the light and shadow under her shoulder, and her vulnerability.

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I am suffering quite heavily from this at the moment. I'm partway through To Have and Have Another (making drinks as I go); I'm two chapters in to editing Colin's next novel; I have started but not finished The Wyrd Sisters and Jitterbug Perfume; Colin gave me The Paris Wife for Mother's Day, which I have read before and loved and want to read again, especially after To Have; seeing Gastby made me want to read my copy of Jazz Age Stories, which was returned to me by a student the day after I remembered owning it (but not that I'd lent it out); I downloaded American Gods to my phone and haven't opened it; and the trailer for Ender's Game makes me itch to read it again, for probably the tenth time. 

Of the paper copies, only Ender's Game is actually in the bookshelf - the rest are stacked around the house, mostly in the nightstand.

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And speaking of Fitzgerald, here's the villa where he supposedly wrote Tender is the Night: 

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More to come tomorrow, I think. I've been saving up awhile (as you might have guessed from the dearth of posts lately).

coffee break

I often make the Starbucks runs at work. Not necessarily because I need the caffeine (though that is a secondary impetus), but more often because I need the break from the office, where I rarely take the time to breathe. I usually even work straight through my lunch.

Going for coffee means heading west into the foothills to the Starr Pass Marriott. The desert surrounds the resort, all picturesque saguaros and blooming palo verdes this time of year.

My car door is opened by a valet who knows and calls me by my last name, and the marble underfoot is perpetually shiny and cool. The view out the two-story wall of windows is partially desert, partially the city so dimmed by distance as to be only a curiosity. Twenty-foot-high sheer curtains whisper slightly in the breeze made by the opening and shutting of the massive glass front doors.

I pretend for about five minutes that I am someone whose life moves slowly enough that I could waste several hours doing nothing beyond laying in a deck chair by an impossibly blue pool on a weekday in April.

And by then the coffee is made and I make my way back to the car, down the winding road and back into my job's perpetual crises, breathing slightly easier for the next few hours.

weekend inspiration

Every weekend, Garance Doré posts an inspirational picture. It's along the lines of a shoe, or a piece of art, or jewelry.

My perpetual weekend inspiration is our calico, whose luxurious naps are a constant source of envy.

things I like this week, vol. 41

From the selby's Nina Pohl shoot, which was lovely and mid-century modern - though I preferred the flowers. 

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Einstein's desk, which I saw two pictures of in a week, one accompanied by this quote: "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" And even though I spent two and a half days cleaning up my office over spring break, at least I felt somewhat validated about it having been very much like Albert's in the first place. 

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Bookshelves in the bathroom . . . 

 . . . bookshelves in the kitchen . . .

. . . bookshelves in the bedroom. These make me conclude that we need more bookshelves in our apartment, preferably built-ins. Hardwood floors wouldn't hurt, either.

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Neil Gaiman did a collaboration with BlackBerry called A Calendar of Tales. He twitter-sourced ideas by asking questions about each month ("What would you burn in November, if you could?"), picking a tweet that inspired him ("My medical records, but only if that would make it all go away.") and then wrote a story for each month. And then they posted all the stories, and asked people to create art based on those stories, and they're going to pick an art piece for each month and turn the whole damn thing into a calendar. 

The stories are quite good, and the art that people submitted is incredible. You can see/read/watch the whole thing here. What it all has to do with BlackBerry I don't know, but it's beautiful despite that.

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Dimitry Tsykalov, whose works make me think of these lines from Eliot's Wasteland:

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

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This is from a photoshoot done with disposable cameras, by two models who are dating, as an ad for Gucci Guilty Black. I am fascinated by the contrast of the apparent intimacy of the photos and the obviously advertorial nature of the whole enterprise. 

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This house is downtown, just behind the Stillwell house, and is quite gorgeous. And for sale for an absurd $1.5mil, because apparently it was the home to some Senator I've never heard of.

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Morocco is quickly climbing the list of "places I need to visit soon."

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'Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Ulysses

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The irony of Courtney Love discussing makeup amuses me. She seems surprisingly coherent. 

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It was in my head for a week or two before I actually listened to the lyrics and fell in love with itfor that reason, too.

things I love this week, vol. 40

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart.

- from "Love is a Parallax," Sylvia Plath. 

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A man feeding swans in the snow.

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It came up on one of my tango Pandora stations. The Google translation of the lyrics is as beautiful as the melody.

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Made of shards of glass.

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A fascinating NYTimes article about Linsday Lohan and a micro-budget film shot last summer.

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"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." 

- To Kill a Mockingbird

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Sublime.

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[I want

to eat that
light.] Every
thing that grows
does.

- from “Honeysuckle,” Lyn Lifshin.