first snow

(would have been more appropriate a week ago, but since it's still on the ground I can justify it.)

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain—not a single
answer has been found—
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

–Mary Oliver

what the living do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

- Marie Howe

things I like, vol. 44

The Acrobat Sublime.

. . .

Much better than a grandfather clock.

. . .

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

by Adrienne Rich

Either you will

go through this door

or you will not go through.

If you go through

there is always the risk

of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly

and you must look back

and let them happen.

If you do not go through

it is possible

to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes

to hold your position

to die bravely

but much will blind you,

much will evade you,

at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises.

It is only a door.

. . .

Scarves (and other things) with crowdsourced designs. Found one today at Nordstrom's Rack; may not be able to take it off.

. . .

A bedroom like a cocoon, which is what I want. Minus the hydrangeas. I hate hydrangeas.

. . .

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

. . .

A beautiful catch - the mirrored poses, the contrast between them - perfect.

. . .

Long live Wonder Woman.

. . .

I feel like I really ought to go live in France to really master the French Paradox diet, but in the meantime, I'm using it as my excuse to keep drinking a lot of red wine.

. . .

Like looking through a window.

. . .

From here.

. . .

A beautiful article on how they make Hermès silk scarves. That's a hand-rolled hem, above.

. . .

The adorable magnet the shopkeeper at Red Elephant Imports gave J this morning. They had a really nice variety of items - lots of them from Latin America - but had pillows with Beatles portraits on them, too. It's a good place for Christmas presents, as we start approaching that season.

. . .

. . .

I'd always loved "Walk on the Wild Side," but I didn't really start to discover Lou Reed until after he died (the same way I discovered Vonnegut, incidentally). His wife's tribute in Rolling Stone is both heart-wrenching and beautiful:

I guess there are lots of ways to get married. Some people marry someone they hardly know – which can work out, too. When you marry your best friend of many years, there should be another name for it. But the thing that surprised me about getting married was the way it altered time. And also the way it added a tenderness that was somehow completely new. To paraphrase the great Willie Nelson: "Ninety percent of the people in the world end up with the wrong person. And that's what makes the jukebox spin." Lou's jukebox spun for love and many other things, too – beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery.

There's been a lot of death in the world, lately.

birches

[it is good to remember winter in the heat of summer]

. . .

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

- Robert Frost, 1969

things I like this week, vol 42.2

I lied about posting again the day after the last one.

. . .

Sell music on itunes at ReverbNation.com

Apparently I have a thing for trip hop. This is on regular rotation on our blues nights and it's been in my head for weeks.

 . . .

There was a long time where if you asked me to name my "type" of man I couldn't give you any specifics beyond tall. I've narrowed it down quite a bit since then, but this post reaffirms my love of beards.

. . .

Clever.

. . .

I love almost everything this woman wears.

. . .

In case you haven't seen it (though you probably have). Colin and I have been quoting it at each other at least twice a day since we watched it.

. . .

A found bookmark.

. . .

A coworker bought a bunch of these scalp massagers as graduation gifts for our seniors. She had extras, so I got one too. It is awesome.

. . .

I don't like Beyonce, but her hair looks like fire in this picture.

. . .

There is a special place in my heart for stained glass.

. . .

Yes, please.

.

This too.

. . . 

Every once in awhile you could see the wind doing this to the peaks in Flag.

. . . 

Maybe I need to just make a post entitled "Steve McCurry is awesome."

. . .

A really beautiful post on Aldeburg, Suffolk.

. . .

He "document[s] the exact time, angle, latitude and longitude of each exposure and then track[s] the rotation of the earth to locations with clear night skies such as the Mojave, Sahara, and Atacama deserts."

. . . 

And, because I feel like ending with a poem:

Suicide's Note

The calm
cool face of the river
asked me for a kiss. 

- Langston Hughes

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. 

. . .

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. 

. . .

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.

. . .

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.

. . . 

 

 

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.

. . . 

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. 

. . .

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.

. . .

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

. . .

'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

. . . 

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

. . .

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. 

. . .

A man feeding swans in the snow.

. . . 

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

. . .

Made of shards of glass.

. . .

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

. . .

"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

. . . 

Sublime.

. . . 

[I want

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

- from “Honeysuckle,” Lyn Lifshin.

things I like this week, vol. 38

Faux sherling-lined velvet mouse slippers, which I would find a way to wear everywhere.

. . .

Hell yes, Amanda Palmer. Hell yes.

. . .

Could be useful.

. . .

A NY Times article entitled "Battle of the Somm," which explained a good deal of jargon as well as some interesting tidbits, my favorite of which was:

Although the cheapest wines ANCHOR prices on a list, Somms are anxious to offer good wines at every PRICE POINT and often take pride in finding excellent wines for the shallow end of the list. However, many diners are embarrassed to order the cheapest wine on offer and erroneously suppose there is some magic inherent in the second-cheapest bottle.

The bolded, capped vocab words got a bit obnoxious, though.

. . .

Found it while looking for a good stock photo of blues dancers.

. . . 

Ode to Broken Things

Things get broken 
at home 
like they were pushed 
by an invisible, deliberate smasher. 
It's not my hands 
or yours 
It wasn't the girls 
with their hard fingernails 
or the motion of the planet. 
It wasn't anything or anybody 
It wasn't the wind 
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime 
Or night over the earth 
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow 
Or the hips getting bigger 
or the ankle 
or the air. 
The plate broke, the lamp fell 
All the flower pots tumbled over 
one by one. That pot 
which overflowed with scarlet 
in the middle of October, 
it got tired from all the violets 
and another empty one 
rolled round and round and round 
all through winter 
until it was only the powder 
of a flowerpot, 
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock 
whose sound 
was 
the voice of our lives, 
the secret 
thread of our weeks, 
which released 
one by one, so many hours 
for honey and silence 
for so many births and jobs, 
that clock also 
fell 
and its delicate blue guts 
vibrated 
among the broken glass 
its wide heart 
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up 
glass, wearing out clothes 
making fragments 
breaking down 
forms 
and what lasts through time 
is like an island on a ship in the sea, 
perishable 
surrounded by dangerous fragility 
by merciless waters and threats.

Let's put all our treasures together 
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold -- 
into a sack and carry them 
to the sea 
and let our possessions sink 
into one alarming breaker 
that sounds like a river. 
May whatever breaks 
be reconstructed by the sea 
with the long labor of its tides. 
So many useless things 
which nobody broke 
but which got broken anyway.

 - Pablo Neruda (of course), trans. Jodey Bateman

. . .

 

It's not so much to ask for a huge library with vaulted ceilings, is it?

thoughts on the end of the world

On this now apparently post-apocalyptic Friday evening, I thought a poetic reflection on doomsday might be refreshing (especially after all those incessant Facebook memes). 

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

- Robert Frost

I am particularly amused by this poem when you factor in the possible implications of the author's last name.

things I like this week, vol. 36

Literary jokes for the win.

. . .

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”

-Mark Twain

. . .

They're tiny perfume-filled glass bottles. You're supposed to violently throw them on the ground to make the room smell pretty. The website gives no recommendation for how to clean up the shards of glass, which implies a level of decadence I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

. . .

 Indi Apparel in Zocalo magazine. (I am still quite proud of the makeup.)

. . .

Cats. Accompanied by Neruda quotes. (The internet is amazing.)

There is also Calming Manatee.

. . . 

From Gatsby, of course.

. . .

 

Children's books reimagined as minimalist posters.

. . .

An interesting perspective on homosexual marriage: the tradition of "two-spirit" people in Native American tribes.

. . .

A clothing wishlist:

a dress for tango

and a dress for New Year's.

. . .

Bar cart inspiration, and two ideas for drinks:

smoked cocktails (they're apparently a thing. I am intrigued) and . . .

a recipe for apple cider sangria that I will be concocting at the earliest opportunity.

. . .

Lincoln in realistic color.

. . .

Vintage WW2 photographs superimposed on shots taken in the same spot in modern times.

. . .

A river of 10,000 lighted books in Melbourne. At the end of the night they started giving them away to passersby.

. . .

Friends of mine on top of Mt. Lemmon.

. . .

And a poem:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver