Happy New Years, to a friend.

I know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.
-Sylvia Plath

Lucy throws a pie at William Holden

I'm pretty sure this is what would happen to Lindsey and I if we ran into Taylor Lautner.
Or Leonardo DiCaprio. Or Daniel Day Lewis.

The 4:25 mark when Ethel pulls out the scissors, I scream laughing.

Winter all over the world

St. Petersburg

Paris

Istanbul

Prague

Switzerland

Cormac McCarthy’s Typewriter Dies After 50 Years and 5 Million Words

Cormac McCarthy, author of cheery favorites such as The Road and Blood Meridian, is about to trade in the typewriter he used to write them. The Olivetti Lettera 32 has been in his care for 46 years, since 1963, and it wasn’t even new then — McCarthy picked it up for $50 from a pawn shop in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Lately, though, the machine has started to falter, and McCarthy is looking to upgrade. It’s no surprise. The author reckons he has put around 5 million words on its clock, and maintenance consisted of “blowing out the dust with a service station hose.” The typewriter will be auctioned this Friday, and the auction house Christie’s estimates it will fetch between $15,000 and $20,000.

McCarthy already has his new writing machine. Can you guess what it might be? A new MacBook Pro, perhaps, or maybe a nice, easy-to-carry netbook (the Olivetti is a portable model)? As you probably figured, McCarthy isn’t one for such modern frivolities. The Olivetti’s replacement is another Olivetti, bought by McCarthy’s friend John Miller for $11.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/cormac-mccarthys-typewriter-dies-after-50-years-and-five-million-words/

Pale, they were

"He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, preforming a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does." -Neil Gaiman, Stardust

Noteriety for the date-less

Love is a battlefield.

Benatar.


They published my "bad date story" on the "My Very Worst Date" website.

hahaha!

http://myveryworstdate.com/2009/12/30/emailtale/

Audrey Tautou

Reading: Colum McCann, Dancer

Dorian Gray

Does anyone have the slightest clue to when this movie in coming out for American release? It premiered in London in September! I am getting impatient.

Life Lessons from Conchords

In the marmalade forest
Between the make believe trees
In a cottage cheese cottage
Lives Albi, Albi, Albi, Albi
Albi the racist dragon

Part 6

And so all of the villagers
Chased Albi the racist dragon
Into a very cold very scary cave,
And it was so cold and so scary in their,
That Albi began to cry dragon tears:
Which as we all know turn into jelly beans!

Anyway, at that moment, he felt a tiny little hand
Rest upon his tale and he turned around
And who should that hand belong to,
But the badly burned Albanian boy from the day before.

"What are you doing here, I thought I killed you yesterday!"
Grumbled Albi quite racistly.
"No Albi you didn't kill me with your dragon flames.
I crawled to safety, but you did leave me very badly disfigured."
Laughed the boy.

"Why are you crying so?"
"I'm crying because all of those horrible people
Chased me into this scary cave."
"I think it's because I'm so racist.
Get your hand off my tail you'll make it dirty."

"No Albi, it's not because of your racism that they chased you here,
They chased me here to, when I became all disfigured like this.
They just don't like you and I, because, well,
Because we're different to them"

And that made Albi cry a single tear,
All the colors of the rainbow,
And suddenly, he wasn't racist anymore.

So they sat in the cave,
And ate bubblegum pie, YUM!
Albi the racist... well not anymore,
Dragon... !

The Flesh and the Devil

A lovely friend of mine gave me three silent films, all featuring Greta Garbo, for Christmas this past week.  I watched "The Flesh and the Devil" last night, and let me tell you, my love for silent films has been revived, stronger than ever.  The passion and intensity to which each moment of the film is given, by over-acting at times, is exquisite.  

A favorite of mine is a scene when the two main character first meet, in a garden after dark, and he puts a cigarette in his mouth to light.  Greta slowly takes it out of his lips, never breaking eye contact.  She puts it in her mouth, her black/red lipstick smearing obviously on the cigarette.  She keeps it there for a few minutes (this scene is long :)) before handing it back to him, putting her lipstick on his lips.  He sighs and is elated simultaneously by this action.  Looking intoxicated, he finally goes to light the cigarette and she blows out the match. Ardent silent-movie kissing ensues.  It's so deeply passionate, with such little effort.  Modern films, take note.

Hell is empty. All the devils are here.

-Shakespeare

Rufus Wainwright, Agnus Dei

it takes your breath away.

The Fall of the House of Ushers. A review.

This is my favorite of all Edgar Allen Poe's stories. (Which considering my love for him, was not an easy choice to make.) I have read it several times over, numerous times out-loud and in scary voices to entertain my little brother when we were small :). It's incredible how Poe can write in this helter skelter fashion so that you really don't know exactly what's going on-- and then in one final paragraph, or even the final sentence, he brings it all together and has you so thoroughly creeped out and simultaneously blown your mind, you need to go back and re-read it immediately. He was an opium induced genius and no one can ever compare to his rhythmic, sing-song, and deliriously fluid writing.  Even within the cliched "The Raven", made less impacting by over-use-- the poem is brilliance.  Read aloud it's shiver inducing.

All my wings

This quote is how I feel today:

"Everyone in me is a bird. I am beating all my wings"

any guess on who said it? :)

Bath time

When I was younger, and had loads of time to devote to bathing extravagances, my favorite part of the evening was bath time. I would stay in the bath for hours, pretending to be a mermaid. When I got older, it was pretending to be a character in The Great Gatsby. (Lots of pretending in my childhood it seems :). Analyze what you will. I just read a lot.) Bath time was always romanticized to me. It always involved candles, music, and poetry.

I took a pink bath last night. (Thank you eternally, Elizabeth, for my "gift of good skin" that was my birthday present.) At Lush, where Liz works, they have these "bath bombs" that fizz up and fill the bath with bubbles and turn your bathwater different shades of water (if you prefer). Well, the one I used last night turned the steaming bath pink and melted away to little rose petals in the water. Divinity! I promise myself, at least one bath a week. I do rather adore them.


buy it here: http://www.lushusa.com/shop/products/bath-shower/bath-bombs/sex-bomb

Turn of the screw

Potentially the creepiest looking children ever.

"I caught him, yes, I held him — it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped."
-Henry James, Turn of the Screw (an old favorite)

I'm safe up high

The missing starts already. And my head races to catch up with what my heart has known for so long. It's a dead weight. Flopping and messy, unable to predict where its head will roll. I can carry it no longer. I've forged a life inside its cage. And I can't breathe anymore.

In poem:

The missing starts already.

my head races

to catch up with what

 my heart has known

 so long.

 It's a dead weight.

Flopping and messy,

 unable to predict where its head will roll.

 I can carry it

no longer.

 I've forged a life inside its cage.

I no longer breathe alone.

Merry Christmas, ya wonderful!

Nine

Luisa: Thank you.

Guido: What for?

Luisa: Thank you for reminding me I'm not special. You don't even see what you do to me. Even the moments I think are ours, it's just... you working to get what you want.

"All you are is an appetite.  If you aren't greedy, you'll die."

We bear our souls and tell the most appalling secrets.

"Jo. Such a little name for... such a person. "

"Oh, Jo. Jo, you have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to lead an ordinary life? You're ready to go out and - and find a good use for your talent. Tho' I don't know what I shall do without my Jo. Go, and embrace your liberty. And see what wonderful things come of it. "

I am watching Little Women right now. I used to watch this movie about once a week for what feels like years. I used to make Micah watch it with me, over and over, on our lunch breaks from school. I've read the book more than any other. I think it's 4 times now. I am so deeply connected to the characters. Growing up, I WAS Jo March. When I read the chapter, you know the one, that breaks you in half with its sorrow-- I would cry every time. I started writing with calligraphy pens and feather pens to feel more "authentic" in my Josephine channeling. "I don't think I could be like Marmee. I rather crave violence." Laurie was my dream. That book influenced me to the point that if I fell down or made a mistake I would call out, "Christopher Columbus!"

I had my own version of the Pickwick Papers. I wrote all the articles and found all the art and illustrations to match. I wrote poetry, short stories, quotes/excerpts from books I loved, movie reviews, wrote advise columns, had reader interviews, had panel discussions, and printed, bound, and paid for the copies with my allowance money. My mom would drive me to the printers each month and help me. It was over 20-25 pages (double sided) thick. I promoted myself in local and similarly ran homespun publishing. Within a year of printing this little magazine, I had over 30 subscribers, some international. I was a born editor. I finally had to stop it because the cost became more than I could afford and I received donations, but I didn't charge for a subscription so funds eventually dwindled. I did it for over 4 years. It was heaven to me.

Anyway. I just love Little Women a whole lot. You should watch it. It's the perfect beginning to the eve of my birthday. It makes me feel warm and Christmas-y.

"I want to stand up to the lions of injustice. I want to do something different.

I don't know what it is yet, but I'm on the watch for it."

Lucy, dancing.

I watched White Christmas last night...

Phil: When what's left of you gets around to what's left to be gotten, what's left to be gotten won't be worth getting, whatever it is you've got left.

Bob: when I figure out what that means I'll come up with a crushing reply.



It never, ever, gets old.

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am."

We Kill, Tyler Shields

Ain't that a kick in the head.