the thankfulness post

I hate what feel like cliched, false thank yous. I have gone so far as to "hide all posts from user" for people who are doing that awful "30 days of thankfulness" bit on facebook.

That said, I am thankful, and moreso for the less-than-obvious things. So you're getting a list in a blog post.

I am thankful for:

• Pillsbury's Roan Red. It is my favorite, favorite wine. 
• Joley being a creative child, even though I spend not nearly enough time with her, and lord knows I need more patience, but she gave an impromptu concert on her guitar at school today, and she wore flowered leggings under a tutu, and she just wrote a story in which she accidentally hitched a ride on a bald eagle when she was trying to hug the ceiling of her house. 
• people listening when I talk about my program. I don't know how or why, but they listen, and I am grateful. 
• Colin's good taste in music. Not my taste, exactly, which I am also thankful for, but good taste.
• the thank you I got from a student today.
• unexpected houseguests.
• turtleneck sweaters, especially in green.  

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.

the world through a wine glass

things I like this week, vol. 39

I have it on good authority that this performance is entirely improv - that these dancers never choreograph a performance (unlike most professional dancers).

. . .

It's the entire text of The Great Gastby on a 20x30 poster.

. . .

My friend Bree, photographed for an article on the local brewery Borderlands. Her fiance is the brewer. Their beer (and I don't like beer) is awesome.

. . .

Angelina Jolie in an interview for Vanity Fair in 2010, talking about her kids becoming teenagers:

“I had some great advice: ‘You’ll know they’re teenagers when they close the door.’ And when they start closing the door, don’t talk to them, listen. Because there’s nothing you could say. You’re not going to be able to tell them you know better. You’re not going to be able to correct them. . . . You have to raise them right before that. Then you need to listen for a good five years, just keep your mouth closed. Just be their friend—don’t try to always tell them they’re wrong.”

. . .

 I would like to spend my entire summer like this - swimsuit, nailpolish, turban, everything. From a blogpost about American designer Claire McCardell.

. . .

There's part of me that read this article and the accompanying NPR interview and wanted to become a street musician.

. . . 

Although pianos are hard to transport and I could never be as fast-fingered as this guy.

. . .

Casey Legler, who is a woman working entirely as a male model. So awesome.

. . . 

Simple and elegant roses from a Slim Paley post . . .

 

. . . which inspired me to get these the following morning . . . 

 

. . . which looked about the way Sauvignon Republic's 2012 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc tasted, which is to say, like grapefruit and sunrise. I highly recommend it with your next brunch - it's $8 at Trader Joe's. 

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?

things I like this week (month), vol. 35, pt. 1

I'm not normally a fan of this woman's work, but something about this keeps drawing me back in. Perhaps I'm just in a water color mood.

. . .

Slim Paley did an entire post on watercolor, but these wallpapers were my favorite.

. . .

Zombie nouns. Ew. 

. . .

An essay about death and my lovely city (how strange to hear about it from an outsider's perspective):

After a few days of searching, I found an explanation in the words of an articulate Mexican woman when I asked her what was with all the comical skeleton drawings. “We do that on purpose,” she said, “dress them up like the rich. Look at you now. Who cares about your clothes? You’re still dead, aren’t you?”

Appropriate, considering that the Day of the Dead parade is just around the corner. I can't wait.

. . .

This guy did 30 portraits of himself on 30 different days doing 30 different drugs (or combos). The results are fascinating.

This is absinthe, and the one below is crystal meth.

. . .

An essay about the idiocy of the locks symbolizing love on Paris' bridges:

“The fools! They haven’t understood a thing about love, have they?” was the conclusion recently of a 23-year-old waiter at Panis, a cafe on the Left Bank with a view over Notre-Dame. At the heart of love à la française lies the idea of freedom. To love truly is to want the other free, and this includes the freedom to walk away. Love is not about possession or property. Love is no prison where two people are each other’s slaves. Love is not a commodity, either. Love is not capitalist, it is revolutionary. If anything, true love shows you the way to selflessness. 

To understand love in the French style, you need to go back to the 16th century and the emergence of the libertines. If today the word means “dissolute person,” in France it has also retained its 16th-century flavor, carrying with it an air of much-envied audacity and liberty. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir famously never married and never lived together and, although a couple in the absolute sense of the term, they had lasting and meaningful relationships with strings of brilliant minds and pretty faces. They deemed jealousy bourgeois and banal. 

. . .

Neil Gaiman, as a child, climbing a drainpipe. From his facebook.

. . .

Here, here, and here.

. . .

11 songs inspired by literature.

. . . 

Real working tents (so the site boasts [I know nothing about tents]), but in awesome designs. This one is the best. I want it desperately.

. . .

Maynard, in a Playboy interview, about Arizona wine being awesome:

I have a blend that’s basically a Cab/Syrah/Petite Syrah blend with a dash of Mavasia in it — Anubis — that’s pretty solid; it just won a silver medal in the San Francisco International Wine Competition. This is the first year that an Arizona wine won not only a gold medal but a double gold medal. Three different A.Z. winemakers got medals this year: I got two medals, Tim White from Arizona Stronghold won a double gold for their Cabernet, and Page Springs Cellars got two silvers and a bronze. In a situation like that when you have three completely separate winemakers from different places in Arizona, for them to medal at all in a blind competition certainly speaks volumes.

. . .

(more to come)

things I like this week, vol. 28

Amanda Fucking Palmer. With a keytar. And here's a lovely write-up of what she called a "ninja gig" at a record store.

. . .

Speaks for itself.

. . . 

I refuse to pay $200 for something I could make myself if my sewing machine worked, but her designs are lovely. Michelle is wearing an outfit of hers in the video above.

. . . 

A map of the wind.

. . . 

A friend linked me to these. They would be perfect for tango shoes, if they had a leather sole (which you could actually get a cobbler to put on) and if one could afford the absurd price tag.

. . . 

It's so much better because it's in French.

. . . 

A craft. 

. . . 

Bukowski.

. . . 

It's Stonehenge as a bouncing castle, and it's called Sacrilege.

. . .

Lines from the Princess Bride that double as comments on Freshman Composition papers. 

. . . 

I hate covers that sound just like the original. It has to innovate, somehow.

. . . 

Totally remarkable testament to the perseverance of literacy. (via my lovely aunt)

. . . 

The new Norah Jones album is fucking awesome. And the mp3 download is five bucks on Amazon.

. . . 

Also in the interest of bargains, this is a 10 year Tempranillo. It was given 90 points by Wine Advocate. It tastes like a dream. And Costco is selling it for eight bucks.

a sunday dinner

Insalata Caprese; prosciutto, salame, and capocollo; kalamata olives; garlic and thyme bread. Accompanied by the Arizona Stronghold Site Archive '09 Sangiovese (only 99 cases made).

joy

joy is:

• sleeping in until noon after seeing the dawn break through the blinds
• breakfast of eggs fried in toast and fresh blackberries in a clean kitchen
• a leisurely shower
• tangled limbs in fresh sheets
• spoiling oneself from the proceeds of the first acting gig one has ever gotten paid for
• hanging framed pictures
• the mountains turning red from the sunset, watched from an open-air balcony
  
• mushrooms and red peppers sauteed in white wine
• drinking the crispness of the white wine
  
• a small child cavorting in his white tshirt, which she is using for a nightgown
  
• playing records with a friend through turntable.fm
• "mommy, can you make me land gracefully on the lake?" by which she means the couch, flapping her hands as she flies
• and later singing along quite seriously to the music played on turntable.fm
• papers graded slowly and steadily, with no expectation of anything but industriousness
• plum dahlias given just because
  

rainy saturday: a photo essay

I think this is the day I finished it. Gatsby is better, but Tender is beautiful, too.


The flowers left over from fourth of July.





A fantastic Sauvignon Blanc we originally tried at Macaroni Grill, couldn't find, and now is suddenly everywhere. Including Walmart.





Like exploding suns.





My favorite colors.


<3





It's an ashtray.