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.
. . .
I love the internet.
. . .
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.
. . .
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.
. . .
Ben Folds choosing pianos in his studio.
. . .
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.
. . .
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."
. . .
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.
. . .
It's the light and shadow under her shoulder, and her vulnerability.
. . .
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.
. . .
And speaking of Fitzgerald, here's the villa where he supposedly wrote Tender is the Night:
. . .
More to come tomorrow, I think. I've been saving up awhile (as you might have guessed from the dearth of posts lately).




























