Tori Amos

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
-Bukowski

Boycott American Apparel

read this:
http://clamormagazine.org/issues/38/aa/savoie.php

It's really not worth the below-par "hipster" fashion statement.

Hotel Chevalier

Where do you go to, my lovely

When you're alone in your bed

Tell me the thoughts that surround you

I want to be inside your head...

Rupert Friend in "Cheri"

Liz and I saw the film "Cheri" today, based upon the classic novel by French feminist writer Colette.  It was poorly acted at times and somewhat misguided, but decadent to watch and a thoroughly enjoyable feast for the eyes.  A lavish period piece full of costumes and drama.  We loved it.

elegy on a toy piano

"I'm working on my vanishing point

I'm practising my zenith.

I used to rely on a piece of glass

to plunge into my heart 

but that's nothing compared to you.

Once my piece of glass

was part of a larger piece of glass

which was part of a larger piece of glass,

As if back there somewhere

was something immense and intact."

-Dean Young

Before Sunset

"If someone were to touch me, I would dissolve into molecules."

Anna Friel channels Holly Golightly in new London stage production of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

“And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.”

I'm sitting on my back porch, watching the rain pour down, perfectly.  You know how some rain falls in spurts and gusts...but this rain is in perfect quick sheets.  It's wonderful, and it smells like how I wish nature always would.  Wet and green.  Yes, those are smells. :)  The trees lining the creek-bed behind where I live are brilliant shades of green.  The brightest green, the green that only comes from the overcast skies and muted hues of rain.

I will miss this apartment. I have such trouble with moving, especially when its from a place that is known by those closest to me as the "haven". :)  It really is a beautiful apartment.  Or rather, I made it beautiful.  I made it my own, more than anywhere else I've lived. But now that I think about it, Ive been more "my own" than any other time before, in my living here.  Direct influence of said apartment as part of the reason is to be determined.  

I am excited to move.  My new apartment is about as close as I am going to get to perfect.  But I had some very special memories here.  Good and bad.  They all flow together anymore....  But I would rather be here than anywhere else.  And unfortunately the anywhere else was taking me further from here.  So I decided that the I would go to the anywhere that is occupying the majority of my time, and make life all the more easy.

It is the right choice to move, but I have been dreading it for months.  The inevitable.  And now, in the last month of my stay here, I would be lying if I said I wasn't anxious to move into the new apartment, I am filled with a slight sorrow each time I am home.  It is a new season, a new home, and I am probably making more out of this that it deserves.  But it is how I feel, and I've been working on acknowledging those pesky feelings more and more.  So please indulge me. :)

Don’t say my name out loud.

I can feel the boring of his eyes through my skull, down turned
I don’t dare look up.
I can feel his hands, always playing as if at a piano, strumming against my own
I can see his mouth
Moving silently, stammering wordlessly on things we can’t bear to say
Fingers pressed to the veins at my wrist
As if I am made of thinnest glass
A touch that reminds me of smoke
I cave inwardly
In a way that helplessness does not give accurate description to
More than being helpless
More than a loss of power
A convalescence of the will
One that we both surrendered to long ago

Lumo

Lumo is a documentary, named after its central character, of an African woman healing from a rape endured by military men that left her with a medical condition called fistula, a tear in the wall between the vagina and bladder caused by violent rape. It left her incontinent and uncertain of her chances to birth children. Like so many women who bear the heaviest and agonizing brutality in war-torn countries, rape is the most barbaric and common war crime committed against African women. While others think of terror in the form of bombs, missiles, and heavy artillery, Lumo recognizes rape as the most treacherous act of war, which claims the lives of so many women and leaves them in unspeakable suffering.

The film follows Lumo as she travels from her village, where she has been rejected by her fiancé, neglected by her family, and ostracized by her community, to Goma, a region in the Democratic Republic of Congo where she will receive treatment from HEAL Africa, an internationally sponsored hospital that provides services for rape survivors. Lumo will stay at the hospital for an unknown period of time until she physically and psychologically recovers from her trauma.

Although the tempo is slow, the documentary absorbs every painful detail of Lumo’s healing process. As if reflecting the pace of healing itself, the arduous and tedious speed of the film unnerves the viewer as the agony of the fistula is unmasked. Leaking urine, one of the symptoms of the fistula, cast Lumo and these other survivors into a world where they are further violated and isolated because of their condition. The cinematography is gripping. The facial portraits of the women are burned into the viewer's memory.

Central to Lumo’s message is the unflinching commentary on the lives of the women who will return to their homes after months, or sometimes years, of treatment. They will return to the world of rejection and rebel-occupied villages where they will live in danger of being raped again.

The film interacts with other components of gender domination and oppression–state violence and government officials who use victim-blaming language–to expose all facets of the cycle which perpetuate the cycle of violence against and degradation of women. In every society, in every part of the world, sexual violence is a crime against humanity. It will transform its face based on language, environment, and culture, but Lumo points out that violence against women remains the greatest commonality among all social sins, and no nation has taken steps toward absolution.

After witnessing the journey of one woman, viewers will be compelled to search for Lumo in their own community, city, town, or village. Lumo can and is everywhere. She is anywhere and everywhere violence against women persists.

-review taken from http://feministreview.blogspot.com/
-link to actual website for LUMO: http://www.gomafilmproject.org/

so I put my arms around you

For you I'd wait, 'til kingdom come

weirdness runs in the family

I want you to help me. Finish it...

Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. 

All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul. 

All these years, all these memories, there was you. 

You pull me through time. 

"I want you to ravish me."

It was as if she had handed me a knife.

My Elizabeth

"I am not your Elizabeth. I am no man’s Elizabeth. And if you seek to rule me you are mistaken. There is one mistress here. And no master."

"I may be a woman, Sir William, but if I choose I have the heart of a man.
I am my father's daughter, and I am not afraid of anything."

"I, too, can command the wind, sir! I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare when you dare to try me."

Twiggy

I was around 9 years old when I first saw Twiggy in my Mom's old fashion magazine's and cut out paste-books from when she was a teenager.  Since then, she has always interested me and her look/style has always appealed to me. These are some of my favorite shots of her.  

I got blood in my eyes for you, baby

I saw Bob Dylan last Friday.

Taedium Vitae, Oscar Wilde

"To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin."

Virginia Woolf's "Lighthouse" sold

From BBC World News: A Cornish beach thought to have inspired Virginia Woolf's novel To The Lighthouse has been sold for £80,000.

A private buyer from London, who is originally from Cornwall, bought Upton Towans beach in Gwithian at auction.

The Hall for Cornwall theatre in Truro will receive the proceeds as previous owner Dennis Arbon said he wanted the sale to benefit the people of Cornwall.

The buyer is understood to be keen to keep the 76-acre area unspoilt. There are also planning curbs on development.

Tim Brinkman of the Hall for Cornwall said: "I'm absolutely delighted. It's a great fillip for the theatre."

As a child, Virginia Woolf spent many holidays in a St Ives guest house from which she could see the lighthouse on Godrevy Island.

Although her 1927 novel is set in the Hebrides, the author used her recollections from childhood as inspiration for her most famous novel.

"It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it reached, say, the letter Q."
-To The Lighthouse

Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose her

Why chicks cry a lot. A study in comics.

“They say that into every life a little rain must fall, especially if you are a female trapped in a romance comic.”

The peril’s and tragedies, endless tirades of crying, and cat-eye eyeliner, define the world of these comic book ladies.

I think we can all agree that women are emotional roller coasters with no compass or gauge on reality. That’s just a given.

But a handy guide like this can further explain the intricate workings of a female heart and it’s cause for so much damn crying. The reasons for these meltdowns? Well, it should be obvious now shouldn't it? Just look at what we, as delicate women the world over, have to deal with:



misplaced maternal expectation



Glaringly suspicious tendency of boyfriend to prefer African elephants over you.


hearts breaking like twigs at any emotional infraction. Example: breaking a nail, boyfriend not opening car door with a big enough smile.

further spiral into depression because her favorite dress was worn by sworn enemy, Ruthie MgGiggins at school function.

girlish dreams of being eternally wrinkle-free are dashed to the rocks by eminent future through viewing of mother.


always being a bridesmaid and possessing a propensity for rash generalizations

guilt from end of relationship due to obvious personal flaws. Example: lipstick occasionally smudged, laugh not resembling silver bells ringing, desire to spend more time reading than ironing

Being rejected by a man, in the rain, after you've tripped. That's just awful.

wishing you didn't have hideous "my little brother burnt my Barbie" hair and unusually squiggly eyebrows; in comparison to the dashing, seductive, Elvira-type lady in green.



Images extracted from The Easily Mused blog

T.Rex + chickens = dino-chicken-hybrid = freaking awesome

Flip the right genetic switches in a chicken embryo and you just might hatch a baby dino. Paleontologist Jack Horner intends to do it. He explains his scheme to rewind evolution in a new book, How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever. We asked him if there is anything—anything at all—that could possibly go wrong.

Wired: Dinochicken—walk me through the concept.

Jack Horner: Birds are descendants of dinosaurs. They carry their DNA. So in its early stages, a chicken embryo will develop dinosaur traits like a long tail, teeth, and three-fingered hands. If you can find the genes that cancel the tail and fuse the fingers to build a wing—and turn those genes off—you can grow animals with dinosaur characteristics.

Wired: It's a romantic idea, that dinosaurs can live on in bird form.

Horner: Dinosaurs are not extinct; they're still with us in this sense. Birds look different, but it's all cosmetic. By tweaking some genes, we can bring out the underlying similarities. Yes, it's a wild plan, but I like to think about things backwards.

Wired: You were a consultant on Jurrasic Park.... Should we be worried here?

Horner: Look, it's not like dinochicken will overrun the world. If he mates with a chicken, you still get a chicken. Eventually we might make animals that look more like dinosaurs, but we won't have velociraptors on the loose.

Wired: Thorny ethical issues?

Horner: If you think we're playing God, maybe. But we're already modifying plants and mice. I don't see a lot of people jumping up and down complaining about better tomatoes.

Wired: Are you getting flak from other researchers?

Horner: Scientists who play by someone else's rules don't have much chance of making discoveries.

Wired: The initial funding came out of your own pocket. Is money an issue?

Horner: It shouldn't cost more than a couple million dollars. That isn't a heck of a lot of money when it comes to big science.

Wired: What's the upside? What do you hope to gain from this?

Horner: Ultimately, we hope it can lead to a cure for genetic defects. Once we understand just how to control genes, we have the potential for spinal cord regeneration, bone regeneration, and so on. It might also give us plumper chickens.

Wired: It would certainly prove the creationists dead wrong.

Horner: Religion is about faith, not evidence. Comparing science and religion isn't like comparing apples and oranges—it's more like apples and sewing machines.

Wired: In your book, you envision getting dinochicken a spot on Oprah. Why?

Horner: The creature would be its own sound bite. It'll go a long way toward convincing people that we can learn a lot from this sort of experimentation—about biology, development, evolution. Otherwise we're just a bunch of wild scientists building monsters in our laboratories.

-taken from Wired magazine

Potentially the greatest photo ever taken

photo credits: Makaela Martin, age 4

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,

When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;

I'm martyr to a motion not my own;


What's freedom for? 

To know eternity.


I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.


But who would count eternity in days?


These old bones live to learn her wanton ways


(I measure time by how a body sways.)

-Roethke

Ann Blyth

My boyfriend Karan and I discovered Ann while having a Twilight Zone marathon (she had a cameo in the "Queen of the Nile" episode) and we were both struck by her.  Her most noted film role was along side Paul Newman in "The Helen Morgan Story".  She is officially my latest old-Hollywood obsession.  

Breathless

Jean-Luc Godard was a genius.