30 December 2009

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose

How lovely?
These perfumes, from Ineke, have perfectly wonderful names like "After My Own Heart" and "Balmy Days and Sundays" (cue The Carpenters) and notes of raspberry, lilac, heliotrope, plum, angel's trumpet, and cinnamon bark. Cinnamon bark!? It sounds like it has my name written all over it, in big lissome cursive letters. An evening edged in gold...it sounds like a Klimt painting.
Happy almost New Year, dear readers! Usually I find New Years to be an anticlimactic holiday one often filled with disappointment and thoughts of "Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of the year?" But this year, I am hoping for an evening of sparkles and feathers, old friends and possible new ones, and a chance to dress up as quirky and carefree as I want. I will be in Chicago, surrounded by masquerade (paper faces on parade) and hopeful harbingers of good tidings to come...no expectations for anything grander.

27 December 2009

snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes...

Snowed in! To venture out or not? It's quite white outside...and it's still coming down!

I find beauty here

25 December 2009

so come on courage, teach me to be shy



There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
There's still a little bit of you laced with my doubt...
There's still a little bit of your song in my ear
There's still a little bit of your words I long to hear
You step a little closer to me
So close that I can't see what's going on...

My eyelids and curls and deepest thoughts are bubbling with the joy of champagne and apple cinnamon candles and luscious chenille. I wish I had more to write...but the truth is that life is relatively uneventful right now. I'm so thankful for a moment to breathe, and yet I feel guilty that I have yet to do any work over this break. I have, however, read one and a half pleasure-reading books, seen Julie & Julia, The Brothers Bloom, and Invictus, bought a gorgeous antique lamp and a crystal bowl that looks like sunshine and is shaped like a swan, listened to Damien Rice live and unscripted, avoided email like the plague, adored the quirky neighborhoods of Baltimore (Federal Hill) and South Florida (Atlantic Avenue in Del Ray)...

Life is uneventful, but good. Now I just want a sensitive poet-pirate without emotional issues to stumble my way...to make 2010 my year in the sun...

"This was a story about a girl who could find infinite beauty in anything, any little thing, and even love the person she was trapped with. And I told myself this story until it became true. Now, did doing this help me escape a wasted life? Or did it blind me so I didn't want to escape it? I don't know, but either way I was the one telling my own story..."

05 December 2009

sepia-toned loving

Sometimes what you really need is a day of sleep and a night of blog loving, Mexican hot chocolate, Simon & Garfunkel, The Weepies, and Pete Yorn on my itunes Genius mix, and The Merchant of Venice in my lap while curled up on the couch...an old issue of McSweeney's bought for a song at Half-Price books on my wrought-iron table...

04 December 2009

you don't know what I fear

I'm completely lacking in inspiration. I don't know what to write about or where to find beauty. I'm tired and stressed and either imagining or experiencing doubt from my superiors at school. I'm dreaming of sparkly eye dust and twinkle lights and fire pits and hydrangeas and peacock feathers and fur muffs and lovely literature and wings of poetry and satin slippers and sepia tones and rose-colored glasses and words like "nebulous" and "ephemeral" and jazz vocals and full-throated ease and half-light and Bardot curls and British dandies and porcelain keys and key-lime gelato and little princess and chiffon swirls and capelets and raspberry coulis and Audrey and Grace and papercuts and eyelash flutters and soft caresses and zephyrs and snowflake droplets and lavender and hummingbirds...I feel like I haven't seen a hummingbird in ages.
In my dreams I'm bathed in violet light, and I have my pirate by my side, who whispers poetry to me in a voice so soft that it feels like a petal brushing my cheek. I'm light and airy and my insecurities are gone. Popsicle lips. Snow-dusted lashes. A velvet cape.
It's not about the pirate, although his company lends peace and pleasure, that deep-seated swoon from the inside out that I recapture in memories now. It's about me and my poetry, my voice, my crooning of Joni Mitchell ballads that float from mouth to sky like Sebastian's smoke in Brideshead Revisited.
I remember Oxford, stopping by The Grand Cafe for champagne tea and passing by the Botanical Gardens on my way to tutorials. I remember channeling Oscar Wilde and as I sipped tea and slipped into cushioned corners at The Old Parsonage. I want the Oxford of John Fowles, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. I long to fit again, to be certain of my place.
What do you do when you feel blue? Dearest readers, I am filled too much with longing and too little with satisfaction in being.