Three Small Cats

Unwavering

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything.

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Ug...Ted Hughes.

Webs

"An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. As a result, the mosquito population seems to have decreased, a small blessing likely caused by these webs. " Huffington Post

Il et Elle

 

 

Newport, July 3, 1819

The morning is the only proper time for me to write to a beautiful Girl whom I love so much; for at night, when the lonely day has closed, and the lonely, silent, unmusical Chamber is waiting to receive me as into a Sepulchre, then believe me my passion gets entirely the sway, then I would not have you see those rhapsodies which I once thought it impossible I should ever give way to, and which I have often laughed at in another; for fear you should think me either too unhappy or perhaps a little mad. I am now at a very pleasant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly country, with a glimpse of the sea; the morning is very fine. I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I might have in living here and breathing and wandering as free as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remembrance of you did not weigh so upon me… Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the letter you must write immediately and do all you can to console me in it - make it right as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me - write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
J.
From John Keats to Fanny Brawne

Elephants

The Forgotten Door

 

This book made my dreams wild.

Elm

 by Sylvia Plath

For Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:   

It is what you fear.

I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,   

Its dissatisfactions?

Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.

How you lie and cry after it

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,

Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,   

Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?   

This is rain now, this big hush.

And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.   

Scorched to the root

My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.   

A wind of such violence

Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me   

Cruelly, being barren.

Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go

Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.   

How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.   

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing   

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?   

Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.   

What is this, this face

So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids kiss.

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults   

That kill, that kill, that kill.

Continuous

 “Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. This includes the physical body, which we perceive and think of as form, but 99.99% of which is actually empty space. This is how vast the space is between the atoms compared to their size, and there is as much space again within each atom. The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space. To give you an idea of how vast the space is between celestial bodies, consider this: Light traveling at a constant speed of 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second takes just over one second to travel between the earth and the moon; light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach the earth. Light from our nearest neighbor in space, a star called Proxima Centauri, which is the sun that is closest to our own sun, travels for 4.5 years before it reaches earth. This is how vast the space is that surrounds us. And then there is the intergalactic space, whose vastness defies all comprehension. Light from the galaxy closest to our own, the Andromeda Galaxy, takes 2.4 million years to reach us. Isn’t it amazing that your body is just as spacious as the universe?”

—	Eckhart Tolle

The collage is from this place.

Sonnet XVII

by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Don't Do It Harry!

Halah

"Maybe nobody else could understand
I guess that you believed you are a woman
And that I am someone else's man."

Love, Ronald Reagan

March 4 1983

Dear First Lady

I know tradition has it that on this morning I place cards   Happy Anniversary cards on your breakfast tray.  But things are somewhat mixed up.  I substituted a gift & delivered it a few weeks ago.

Still this is the day, the day that marks 31 years of such happiness as comes to few men.  I told you once that it was like an adolescent's dream of what marriage should be like.  That hasn't changed.

You know I love the ranch but these last two days made it plain I only love it when you are there.  Come to think of it that's true of every place & every time.  When you aren't there I'm no place, just lost in time & space.

I more than love you, I'm not whole without you.  You are life itself to me.  When you are gone I'm waiting for you to return so I can start living again.

Happy Anniversary & thank you for 31 wonderful years.

I love you

Your Grateful Husband

Oh, Yeah

The Virgin Suicides

 

This album...

Francesca

by Ezra Pound
You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
IN ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

In a Station of the Metro

by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.

A Girl

by Ezra Pound 
The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

Les Scènes de Danse

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Coppelia

Pomme poemm mopem empom

Enfin, j'ai eu le rêve que j'ai été nulle part.

"Mes cheveux sont douces et froid," je me suis pensé.

"Je donnerais cher, pour être quelque part vert," je me suis pensé.

Et cette jour, la neige a été redécouverte

Il n'y a que des pétales,

il n'y a que des levres,

il n'y a que du neige.

Enfin, j'ai eu le rêve que j'ai été quelque part.

"Mes ongles sont beaucoup trop courte," je me suis pensé.

"Je donnerais cher pour être nulle part," je me suis pensé.

Les pistils des fleurs m'embrasse

et il n'y a que la cloche qui me montre que c'est enfin onze heures.

"Qu'est ce qui est arriver avec Marc?" je demande.

Personne ne le lui connais.

Enfin je n'ai pas rêver.

Fatigué, nous achetons un lapin

Et on lui appelons Sapin et lui mis au centre du salon

Quel qu'un mélange les ingredients pour le lait du poule.

Je demande a Marc s'il avait un rêve comparable,

Il me dit de trouver les oeufs. 

"Il n'y a rien a comprendre,

mais je comprend quand-même,"

c'est comme dire,

"je t'aime,

mais je n'aime pas tes joues." 

Reprise

WE ARE WATCHING REPRISE IN FILM CLUB THIS WEEK
I'm so happy. I'm also a little sad that I will have to sit in a room and see every scene of my favorite movie through everyone elses eyes. Woi woi. What if I don't like it as much?







Impossible.

O, R

Max Fischer: I like your nurse's uniform, guy?
Dr. Peter Flynn: These are O.R. scrubs.
Max Fischer: O, R they?

My mom always makes this joke but no one gets it out of context.

I Wish My Hair Looked This Good

Since 1844

That is indeed Patrick Swayze. What a fox.

Looking Your Best

People say that obesity is an epidemic in America, but I’m determined not to become part of the problem. That’s why I’ve spent years perfecting the secret to a trim and attractive physique. My foolproof system involves just nine easy steps.

Step 1: Avoid what psychologists refer to as “emotional eating.” This is hard, because many people have a tendency to experience emotions. To solve this problem, consume increasing dosages of psychotropic medications until you cease to feel emotions of any kind.

Step 2: Visualize yourself as a thin person. This is very important, because the body often takes its signals from the brain. Each time you take a bite of food, imagine that you are a thin person taking a bite of food, chewing the food, then spitting the food into a napkin, then tucking the napkin into your backpack or purse. After you’re done visualizing these things, start doing them.

Step 3: Get rid of your “fat clothes.” Keeping your closet stocked with unflattering garments will only distract you from your quest for a slender body. To complete this step, shred or burn everything in your closet, including any hangers or shelving that a fat person may have touched. Refrain from donating anything to charity, as this could cause underprivileged people to become obese, which would be unsavory and possibly even illegal.

Step 4: Refrain from consuming food.

Step 5: Surround yourself with thin people. This will naturally encourage you to emulate their healthy habits. Weigh your friends on a regular basis, then weigh yourself. Do you have a friend who weighs less than you? If so, consider gastric bypass surgery.

Step 6: Drink plenty of water. As you’ve probably heard, water functions as a natural lubricant in the body, flushing toxins and fat cells from the digestive tract. Water is also a delicious replacement for higher-fat liquids, such as milk. Try pouring water on your cereal or in your coffee. If you’re a baby, try pouring water into your mother’s breasts.

Step 7: Buy a pet. Having a pet will force you to take walks, which are a form of exercise. This is true unless you make the mistake that I made, which was buying an iguana. Iguanas walk very slowly and smell strongly of turds. I really cannot dissuade you strongly enough from buying an iguana.

Step 8: Vigorous sexual intercourse burns up to two hundred calories per hour. Therefore, if you are not currently promiscuous, it is essential that you begin “boning” immediately. Start by having sex with every person you know. Then have sex with numerous people you have never met. Continue doing this until you are thin.

Step 9: Self-confidence is the most attractive trait a person can have. For this reason, strive to love yourself and accept yourself exactly as you are. This will be difficult if you are overweight, on account of your loathsome physical appearance and compromised value system, but do your best. And, if the going gets tough, remind yourself: every person is beautiful on the inside, provided that they are also extremely attractive on the outside.

by Amy Ozols, published in the New Yorker on January 5th 2009

Making Friends

Hello, six-year-old child.

Seeing as how fate has brought us together here, in the crowded coach section of this expensive airplane, I thought I should introduce myself.
My name is Amy, and I’m an adult. I suspect that you’re too young to understand what “adult” means, so let me explain. It means that I’m taller than you, and smarter, and that I get to do lots of awesome things, like smoke cigarettes and ovulate. It also means that I like to take naps on airplanes and read my newspaper in silence. These things seem to be very different from the things that you like to do.
I’ve gleaned from its near-constant utterance by the woman sitting next to you—your mother, I suppose, or perhaps a social worker or a federal prisoner who’s being paid to spend time with you—that your name is Timmy. It’s probably Timothy, actually, but people call you Timmy because it’s cuter. Which is appropriate, Timmy, because you’re very cute, you really are. You’re really very fucking cute.
I’m going to drink this cup of coffee—would you like some? I didn’t think so. You’re more of a juice-box man, from what I gather. The way I gather this is by looking at the stain on my ninety-eight-dollar pants, the one you made when you put your juice box there. If I touched your pants, Timmy, I would probably be sent to jail. There are lots of differences between you and me, but that’s one of the big ones: the quality and the seriousness of what happens when we touch other people’s pants.
You’re not much of a sleeper, are you, Timmy? We’ve just met, but it seems to me like maybe you don’t really enjoy sleeping all that much. In fact, it seems to me that one of your greatest joys in life is wakefulness—and not simply passive wakefulness but the kind of vigorous wakefulness that makes a person like me start to question the very possibility of silence as a condition that can exist in the universe. I can see that I’ve confused you, Timmy, and I apologize; I was only trying to point out that you really seem to enjoy being awake. Let me make it up to you by giving you this modest dose of Ambien. It’s a kind of candy for your soul. Your soul is a kind of mouth that’s inside your brain.
Here comes the nice stewardess lady with a bag for collecting people’s garbage. Would you like me to give her some of the garbage that’s strewn all over your seat—and, if we’re being perfectly honest here, Timmy, all over my seat as well? And, while we’re at it, maybe I could give her this talking doll—the one that sings songs, very loud songs, songs of terrifying and ungodly volume, from that animated movie about adventurous insects. It’s not that I don’t love the doll; it’s just that I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for children to carry such things on airplanes. Have you heard of terrorism, Timothy? That’s why it’s illegal for you to have this doll.
Your whimpering and your dripping facial parts suggest that perhaps this conversation has run its course, so I’ll let you get back to your finger painting, your fidgeting, and your wanton, inexplicable shredding of the in-flight magazine. I’ll be here in my seat, fantasizing about hurtling my childless adult body out of the airplane and into the sky. Enjoy the rest of the flight, Timmy. I’ve really enjoyed sitting next to you. It’s fun to make new friends.

by Amy Ozols, publish in the New Yorker on May 11th 2009

Where I Live

Welcome to my apartment. Can I take your coat? Please make yourself at home. 

This is my cat.
It’s a studio apartment, so there’s not much to see, but let me give you a quick tour anyway. Here’s the kitchen. It’s not very big, but there’s a ton of cabinet space, which is nice. Here’s my desk, where I do most of my writing, and that’s the bathroom over there.
Here is another cat.
This is a picture of my family from last Thanksgiving. Here’s my mom—she’s a real pistol. I think that’s where I get my sense of humor. These are my sisters. My dad’s the tall guy in the back. And that’s my grandmother, with a cat on her lap. And that animal crouched menacingly on top of the picture frame—that’s an actual cat, far more knowledgeable and terrifying than the cat in the picture.
This is my couch, where we can sit and watch a movie later, and then maybe make out awkwardly while three to six cats stare at us.
This cat over here—the one burrowing into your overcoat—belongs to my neighbor. But he comes over a lot, so I feed him and buy him toys and take him to the vet and stuff like that. He’s a pretty great cat, so I sort of just let him live here and systematically destroy my clothing and furniture.
This is an antique gramophone I inherited from my grandmother. It’s worth a lot of money, but I’m never going to sell it, on account of how much it means to my family.
I’m kidding, of course. It’s not really an antique. Or a gramophone. It’s a cat.
Do you want a drink? I think I have some beer, or there’s a pitcher of water in the fridge. It’s tap water, but it’s filtered through one of those Brita things, so it tastes pretty good. I also have some bottled water, which I save for the cats, but you’re totally welcome to one of the bottled waters, if you want to be a dick about it.
You can probably tell that I’m more of a cat person than a dog person. I’m more of an “all animals” person, actually. I like animals way better than people, because they’re friendly and they don’t eat very much, and they don’t tend to fuck twenty-six-year-old flight attendants under adulterous circumstances, the way humans do.
Are you allergic? There’s some stuff coming out of your nose. Don’t be embarrassed; it happens to me all the time. In fact, if I’m being totally honest here—and, let’s face it, I’m being totally honest here, perhaps unsettlingly so—I haven’t breathed freely since the Clinton Administration. But it’s a small price to pay, considering how much joy these cats bring into my life. These watchful, almost eerily numerous cats.
I’m sorry about the smell—that’s sort of a litter-box issue. It’s tough to have eight cats in a studio apartment, but I think while you’re spending the night here—the first of many, many passion-filled nights you’ll undoubtedly wish to spend here—you’ll find that it’s well worth the smell to have the selfless companionship of these seventeen reeking, dander-encrusted animals. I said “eight” before when I meant to say “seventeen.” That’s the number of cats that I have.
I understand that you need to step out for some Claritin, but I’m really looking forward to your coming back. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun, you and I, watching movies and eating popcorn and having workmanlike intercourse on the fold-out sofa—all under the penetrating gaze of the vile feline minions with which I have inexplicably chosen to share my home.
I am begging you: please do not tell them I said that. Should they deem it distasteful, we would have zero chance of survival.
Anyway, I’ll see you soon. And thanks again for coming over. It’s always such a treat to have guests.

by Amy Ozols, published in the New Yorker on March 21st 2011

The Sirens

Eternity

 ”Nothing ceases to exist- there is no example of this in nature.. There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally be explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How foolish to deny the existence of the soul. After all, that a life has begun, as it can be demonstrated that the atoms of life or the spirt of life must continue to exist after the body’s death. But of what does exist, this characteristic of holding a body together, causing matter to change and develop, this spirt of life.

I felt it as a sensual delight that I should become one with- become this earth which is forever radiated by the sun in a constant ferment and which lives- lives and which will grow plants from my decaying body- trees and flowers- and the sun will warm them and I will exist in them- and nothing will perish- and that is eternity”
-Edvard Munch

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus

Take the I Out

by Sharon Olds

But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. I love the I,
frail between its flitches, its hard ground
and hard sky, it soars between them
like the soul that rushes, back and forth,
between the mother and father. What if they had loved each other,
how would it have felt to be the strut
joining the floor and roof of the truss?
I have seen, on his shirt-cardboard, years
in her desk, the night they made me, the penciled
slope of her temperature rising, and on
the peak of the hill, first soldier to reach
the crest, the Roman numeral I--
I, I, I, I,
girders of identity, head on,
embedded in the poem. I love the I
for its premise of existence--our I--when I was
born, part gelid, I lay with you
on the cooling table, we were all there, a 
forest of felled iron. The I is a pine,
resinous, flammable root to crown,
which throws its cones as far as it can in a fire.

Alessandra Ferri

Retort

Ferris and Sloane

 ♡

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
- Stephen King

Isadora Duncan Dancer

Pete Sweet

Tu Mere Samne

Marie-Thérèse Walter

" In 1927 Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977), a 17 year old who Picasso then lived with in a flat across the street from his marital home (while still married to Olga).  Marie-Thérèse and  Picasso had a daughter, Maya (Maria de la Concepcion) on October 5, 1935.  (Picasso and Olga later separated although they remained married so Olga would not receive half of Picasso's wealth -- until she died in 1955. ) Picasso's relation with Marie was kept from Olga until Olga was told of Marie's pregnancy.   Marie understandably became jealous when Picasso started to fall in love with Dora Maar in 1936, a year after Maya was born.  It was Marie-Thérèse who was the inspiration for many of Picasso's famous Vollard Suite etchings.  Marie-Thérèse died by hanging herself in 1977, four years after Picasso died. "

From here

My Apology

Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around a Swedish airline stewardess and some handcuffs. No, the great appeal for me of this wisest of all Greeks was his courage in the face of death. His decision was not to abandon his principles, but rather to give his life to prove a point. I personally am not quite as fearless about dying and will, after any untoward noise such as a car backfiring, leap directly into the arms of the person I am conversing with. In the end Socrates' brave death gave his life authentic meaning; something my existence lacks totally, although it does possess a minimal relevance to the Internal Revenue Department. I must confess I have tried putting myself in this great philospher's sandals many times and no matter how often I do, I immediately wind up dozing off and having the following dream.
(The scene is my prison cell. I am usually sitting alone, working out some deep problem of rational thought like: Can an object be called a work of art if it can also be used to clean the stove? Presently I am visited by Agathon and Simmias.)
Agathon: Ah, my good friend and wise old sage. how go your days of confinement?
Allen: What can one say of confinement, Agathon? Only the body may be circumscribed. My mind roams freely, unfettered by the four walls and therefore in truth I ask, does confinement exist?
Agathon: Well, what if you want to take a walk?
Allen: Good question. I can't.
(The three of us sit in classical poses, not unlike a frieze. Finally, Agathon speaks.)
Agathon: I'm afraid the world is bad. You have been condemned to death.
Allen: Ah, it saddens me that I should cause debate in the senate.
Agathon: No debate. Unanimous.
Allen: Really?
Agathon: First ballot.
Allen: Hmmm. I had counted on a little more support.
Simmias: The senate is furious over your ideas for a Utopian state.
Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.
Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
Allen: And yet I do not regard my executioners as evil.
Agathon: Nor do I.
Allen: Er, yeah, well for what is evil but merely good in excess?
Agathon: How so?
Allen: Look at it this way. If a man sings a lovely song it is beautiful. If he keeps singing, one begins to get a headache.
Agathon: True.
Allen: And if he definitely won't stop singing, eventually you want to stuff socks down his throat.
Agathon: Yes. Very true.
Allen: When is the sentence to be carried out?
Agathon: What time is it now?
Allen: Today!?
Agathon: They need the jail cell.
Allen: Then let it be! Let them take my life. Let it be recorded that I died rather than abandon the principles of truth and free inquiry. Weep not, Agathon.
Agathon: I'm not weeping. This is an allergy.
Allen: For to the man of the mind, death is not an end but a beginning.
Simmias: How so?
Allen: Well, now give me a minute.
Simmias: Take your time.
Allen: It is true, Simmias, that man does not exist before he is born, is it not?
Simmias: Very true.
Allen: Nor does he exist after his death.
Simmias: Yes, I agree.
Allen: Hmmm.
Simmias: So?
Allen: Now, wait a minute. I'm a little confused. You know they only feed me lamb and it's never well-cooked.
Simmias: Most men regard death as the final end. Consequently they fear it.
Allen: Death is a state of non-being. That which is not does not exist. Therefore does not exist. Truth and beauty. Each is interchangeable, but are aspects of themselves. Er, what specifically did they say they had in mind for me?
Agathon: Hemlock.
Allen: (Puzzled) Hemlock?
Agathon: You remember that black liquid that ate through your marble table?
Allen: Really?
Agathon: Just one cupful. Though they do have a back-up chalice should you spill anything.
Allen: I wonder if it's painful?
Agathon: They asked if you would try not to make a scene. It disturbs the other prisoners.
Allen: Hmmm
Agathon: I told everyone you would die bravely rather than renounce your principles.
Allen: Right, right er, did the concept of 'exile' ever come up?
Agathon: They stopped exiling last year. Too much red tape.
Allen: Right yeah (Troubled and distracted but trying to remain self-possessed) I er so er so - what else is new?
Agathon: Oh, I ran into Isosoles. He has a great idea for a new triangle.
Allen: Right right (Suddenly dropping all pretense of courage) Look, I'm going to level with you - I don't want to go! I'm too young!
Agathon: But this is your chance to die for truth!
Allen: Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for truth. On the other hand I have a lunch date in Sparta next week and I'd hate to miss it. It's my turn to buy. You know those Spartans, they fight so easily.
Simmias: Is our wisest philosopher a coward?
Allen: I'm not a coward, and I'm not a hero. I'm somewhere in the middle.
Simmias: An cringing vermin.
Allen: That's approximately the spot.
Agathon: But it was you who proved that death doesn't exist.
Allen: Hey, listen - I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.
Agathon: But you have proved many times that the soul is immortal.
Allen: And it is! On paper. See, that's the thing about philosophy - it's not all that functional once you get out of class.
Simmias: And the eternal 'forms'? You said each thing always did exist and always will exist.
Allen: I was talking mostly about heavy objects. A statue or something. With people it's a lot different.
Agathon: But all that talk about death being the same as sleep.
Allen: Yes, but the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, 'Everybody up, it's morning,' it's very hard to find your slippers.
(The executioner arrives with a cup of hemlock. He bears a close facial resemblance to the Irish comedian Spike Milligan.)
Executioner: Ah - here we are. Who gets the poison?
Agathon: (Pointing to me) He does.
Allen: Gee, it's a big cup. Should it be smoking like that?
Executioner: Yes. And drink it all because a lot of times the poison's at the bottom.
Allen: (Usually here my behaviour is totally different from Socrates' and I am told I scream in my sleep.) No - I won't! I don't want to die! Help! No! Please!
(He hands me the bubbling brew amidst my disgusting pleading and all seems lost. Then because of some innate survival instinct the dream always takes an upturn and a messenger arrives.)
Messenger: Hold everything! The senate has re-voted! The charges are dropped. Your value has been reassessed and it is decided you should be honored instead.
Allen: At last! At last! They came to their senses! I'm a free man! Free! And to be honored yet! Quick, Agathon and Simmias, get my bags. I must be going. Praxiteles will want to get an early start on my bust. But before I leave, I give a little parable.
Simmias: Gee, that really was a sharp reversal. I wonder if they know what they're doing?
Allen: A group of men live in a dark cave. They are unaware that outside the sun shines. The only light they know is the flickering flame of a few small candles which they use to move around.
Agathon: Where'd they get the candles?
Allen: Well, let's just say they have them.
Agathon: They live in a cave and have candles? It doesn't ring true.
Allen: Can't you just buy it for now?
Agathon: O.K., O.K., but get to the point.
Allen: And then one day, one of the cave dwellers wanders out of the cave and sees the outside world.
Simmias: In all its clarity.
Allen: Precisely. In all its clarity.
Agathon: When he tries to tell the others they don't believe him.
Allen: Well, no. He doesn't tell the others.
Agathon: He doesn't?
Allen: No, he opens a meat market, he marries a dancer and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at forty-two.
(They grab me and force the hemlock down. Here I usually wake up in a sweat and only some eggs and smoked salmon calm me down.)


From Side Effects by Woody Allen 

Un Chien Andalou

 'I wish Bunuel was still alive. He made this film about nothing in particular. The title itself is a nonsense. With my stupid, pseudo-scholar, naive, enthusiast, avant-garde-ish, amateurish way to watch 'Un Chien Andalou' (twice), I thought: 'Yeah, I will make a song about it,' he sings: "un chien andalou"...It sounds too French, so I will sing "un chien andalusia", it sounds good, no?'
(Black Francis, translated from a Spanish interview)

Salut Les Filles

picture from KayaNature

"If Sylvia Plath Sang"

What is happening question mark.

Gilded Gold, Painted Lily

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

from Shakespeare's King John

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

Mirrors

Mirrors I Written by David Eagleman I Narrated by Noel Fielding

I don't think I could have ever wished for a more perfect combination. I love Noel Fielding. I love David Eagleman.  This is awesome.

La Femme Nikita

"There are two things that are infinite: femininity and means to take advantage of it."

I Have Four Tumblrs

http://beigetheneige.tumblr.com/

http://camillebijoux.tumblr.com/

http://cbacl.tumblr.com/

The Bus Driver Song

A Flight of the Conchords song I had never heard

Art Critics

from MaryRobinson

Thomas Edison’s “Annabelle Serpentine Dance”

Authors and Their Favorite Snacks

from here

8 1/2 Dream

Every So Often, Sometimes, At Times

Interior, Strandgade 30, (1908)
by Vilhelm Hammershøi

Subtitles

Happy Birthday Maman

Little Otik A.K.A the Evil Root Baby de Mon Enfance

This movie horrified me as a child.

Confessions of a Pilgrim Shopaholic

I am Rebecca, the wife of Mister Jonathan Harnsill. We arrived in the New World in 1626 and took up residence in a small cabin in the Plymouth Colony. Toward the end of our first January, I travelled to Boston to purchase a thimbleful of salt. And now, five years later, I have travelled to Boston for a second thimbleful. I am out of control.

During our first winter, I sewed two simple black woollen dresses, which I have alternated wearing in the years since. And yet this morning I find myself thinking about patching the frayed collar on one of the dresses. Have I no shame?

My mind has been consumed with nothing but thoughts of spending, purchasing, and the wanton enjoyment of unnecessary goods. On many nights I dream of acquiring a tin milk pail, like our neighbor’s. I picture myself strolling through the town as strangers whisper, “There she goes, the proud lady with the pail.” I imagine myself attending a fancy-dress ball with the pail on my arm, filled with pinecones and soil. I fear that I shall speak these dreams aloud, and beg my husband to bludgeon me.

I have heard tales of another woman, much like myself, in the Virginia colony. It is said that she bartered her second child to a local tradesman for a wooden button. The following Sunday, the preacher railed against the need for additional buttons, calling the woman a spendthrift and a profligate. She then stood and raised her arm high, opening her hand to reveal the button. It is said that the other women surrounded her, staring at the button in adoration, and then they ripped her limbs from her torso and ate them.

I tremble for my influence upon my children. Just this morning, young Abigail came to me and said, “Mother, look. I have made a doll from a small rock. I will call my doll Rockelle.” Of course, I struck her and grabbed the rock from her hand, saying, “Be ye the Queen of the Nile, with such gilded pleasures?” I will confess only to this diary that I have kept the rock for myself, and married it to an acorn, which I have named Mister Joseph Elmsford. Has my evil no limits?

Today I entered the lion’s den, as I went to market. I was dazzled, as if dancing before the Golden Calf! To one side, there was a tray of one-inch straight pins, and beside them a spool of pale-white thread! I was drowning! I turned away, only to see a cart piled with at least three wilted leeks, along with a rusted spoon! Was I at the French court? My mind reeled—I wanted everything! The box of damp matches; the single moth-eaten stocking, removed from a corpse; the tiny empty vial that had once held extract of vanilla! In my mind, I was naked, demanding to be draped in finery, in brittle cornhusks and crumbling bark and the splintering nub of a pencil!

My fever has broken. When I awoke, I was in our minister’s home, surrounded by all the women of our village, who were on their knees in fervent prayer at my bedside. It seems that I have been possessed by the Devil himself, and that I was found in the apothecary shop, speaking in tongues and babbling about something which no colonist has ever heard of: “guest soaps.” Pastor Witherspoon has suggested that I might be hosting a demon from some future century, and he has arranged for an exorcism. I am so grateful, as I was told that, in my frenzy, I had also approached our blacksmith and demanded to know which horseshoes were on sale. I am an abomination.

At the exorcism, I was taken to the barn and placed upon a rough blanket; various plasters and poultices were applied to my flesh. Pastor Witherspoon raised his Bible high over my head and demanded, “Satan, leave this good woman! She is a simple, pious soul, with no wont for luxury goods!” At first, I responded by shrieking in an unearthly wail, “Shoes! More buckled shoes!” As all the villagers began to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, I howled, “Tallow! Scented tallow and beeswax! Tied with a decorative ribbon!” Then, as the people laid their hands upon me, my demon cackled and swore: “A bonnet! Bring me another bonnet! A peaked black bonnet as fine as any widow’s!”

“Satan, begone!” Pastor Witherspoon shouted, and then I lost consciousness.

Now, a day later, as I return to life, I know that my demon is vanished, gone back into his fetid underworld. I am able to walk through the village, with my head bowed modestly, without even a thought of a turnip or the cobbler’s wares. This morning, I almost picked up a pretty yellow leaf from the ground, to press in my hymnal, but then I thought, I have so many leaves, and I returned it to the tall grass.

While I am wholly myself again, I am concerned for my dear husband, who I fear has been o’ertaken by his own demon. Last March, we had intimate relations, and now, although it is only November, he desires them again.

by Paul Rudnick, published in the New Yorker on March 16th 2009

Always Faithfull

Mourning Brooch

Mourning brooch, circa 1846, in memory of a deceased child. The brooch is done in black enamel (which is uncommon in a child’s memorial piece), with the centre featuring tresses of the child’s hair woven into a braid.
from here.

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Cover)

Hello Operator (Live)

Intuition (Live)

Walking

"He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."
- an excerpt from the Great Gatsby

Pegge

Hopper

Non Plus One

Seveighteen

Yesterday was my half birthday. This scene was so lovely but it should have been more ironic.

Here We Aren't, So Quickly

I was not good at drawing faces. I was just joking most of the time. I was not decisive in changing rooms or anywhere. I was so late because I was looking for flowers. I was just going through a tunnel whenever my mother called. I was not able to make toast without the radio. I was not able to tell if compliments were back-handed. I was not as tired as I said.

You were not able to ignore furniture imperfections. You were too light to arm the airbag. You were not able to open most jars. You were not sure how you should wear your hair, and so, ten minutes late and halfway down the stairs, you would examine your reflection in a framed picture of a dead family. You were not angry, just protecting your dignity.

I was not able to run long distances. You were so kind to my sister when I didn’t know how to be kind. I was just trying to remove a stain; I made a bigger stain. You were just asking a simple question. I was almost always at home, but I was not always at home at home. You were not able to cope with a stack of more than three books on my bedside table, or mixed currencies in the change dish, or plastic. I was not afraid of being alone; I just hated it. You were just admiring the progress of someone else’s garden. I was so tired of food.

We went to the Atacamama. We went to Sarajevo. We went to Tobey Pond every year until we didn’t. We braved thirteen inches of snow to attend a lecture in a planetarium. We tried having dinner parties. We tried owning nothing. We left handprints in a moss garden in Kyoto, and got each other off under a towel in Jaffa. We braved my parents’ for Thanksgiving and yours for the rest, and how did it happen that we were suddenly at my father’s side while he drowned in his own body? I lay beside him on the bed, observed my hand reaching for his brow, said, “Despite everything -” “What everything?” he asked, so I said, “Nothing,” or nothing.

I was always destroying my passport in the wash. You were always awful at estimating. You were never willing to think of my habits as charming. I was just insisting that it was already too late to master an instrument or anything. You were never one to mention physical pain. I couldn’t explain the cycles of the moon without pen and paper, or with. You didn’t know where e-mails were. I wouldn’t congratulate a woman until she explicitly said she was pregnant. You spent a few minutes every day secretly regretting your laziness that didn’t exist. I should have forgiven you for all that wasn’t your fault.

You were terrible in emergencies. You were wonderful in “The Cherry Orchard.” I was always never complaining, because confrontation was death to me, and because everything was pretty much always pretty much O.K. with me. You were not able to approach the ocean at night. I didn’t know where my voice was between my phone and yours. You were never standing by the window at parties, but you were always by the window. I was so paranoid about kind words. I was just not watching the news in the basement. You were just making a heroic effort to make things look easy. I was terrible about acknowledging anyone else’s efforts. You were not green-thumbed, but you were not content to be not content. I was always in need of just one good dress shirt, or just one something that I never had. You were too injured by things that happened in the distant past for anything to be effortless in the present. I was always struggling to be natural with my hands. You were never immune to unexpected gifts. I was mostly just joking.

I was not neurotic, just apocalyptic. You were always copying keys and looking up words. I was not afraid of quiet; I just hated it. So my hand was always in my pocket, around a phone I never answered. You were not cheap or handy with tools, just hurt by my distance. I was never indifferent to the children of strangers, just frustrated by my own unrelenting optimism. You were not unsurprised when, that last night in Norfolk, I drove you to Tobey Pond, led you by the hand down the slope of the brambles and across the rotting planks to the constellations in the water. Sharing our happiness diminished your happiness. I was not going to dance at our wedding, and you were not going to speak. No part of me was nervous that morning.

When you screamed at no one, I sang to you. When you finally fell asleep, the nurse took him to bathe him, and, still sleeping, you reached out your arms.

He was not a terrible sleeper. I acknowledged to no one my inability to be still with him or anyone. You were not overwhelmed but overtired. I was never afraid of rolling over onto him in my sleep, but I awoke many nights sure that he was underwater on the floor. I loved collapsing things. You loved tiny socks. You were not depressed, but you were unhappy. Your unhappiness didn’t make me defensive; I just hated it. He was never happy unless held. I love hammering things into walls. You hated having no inner life. I secretly wondered if he was deaf. I hated the gnawing longing that accompanied having everything. We were learning to see each other’s blindnesses. I Googled questions that I couldn’t ask our doctors or you.

They encouraged us to buy insurance. We had sex to have orgasms. You loved reupholstering. I went to the gym to go somewhere, and looked in the mirror when there was something I was hoping not to see. You hated our bed. He could stand himself up, but not get himself down. They fined us for our neighbor’s garbage. We couldn’t wait for the beginnings and ends of vacations. I was not able to look at a blueprint and see a renovated kitchen, so I stayed out of it. They came to our door during meals, but I talked to them and gave. I counted the seconds backward until he fell asleep, and then started counting the seconds backward until he woke up. We took the same walks again and again, and again and again ate at the same easy restaurants. They said he looked like them. I was always watching movie trailers on my computer. You were always wiping surfaces. I was always hearing my father’s laugh and never remembering his face. You broke everyone’s heart until you suddenly couldn’t. He suddenly drew, suddenly spoke, suddenly wrote, suddenly reasoned. One night I couldn’t help him with his math. He got married.

We went to London to see a play. We tried putting aside time to do nothing but read, but we did nothing but sleep. We were always never mentioning it, because we didn’t know what it was. I did nothing but look for you for twenty-seven years. I didn’t even know how electricity worked. We tried spending more time not together. I was not defensive about your boredom, but my happiness had nothing to do with happiness. I loved it when people who worked for me genuinely liked me. We were always moving furniture and never making eye contact. I hated my inability to visit a foreign city without fantasizing about real estate. And then your father was dead. I often wasn’t reading the book that I was holding. You were never not in someone’s garden. Our mothers were dying to talk about nothing.

At a certain point you became convinced that you were always reading yesterday’s newspaper. At a certain point I stopped agonizing over being understood, and became over-reliant on my car’s G.P.S. You couldn’t tolerate trace amounts of jelly in the peanut-butter jar. I couldn’t tolerate gratuitously boisterous laughter. At a certain point I could stare without pretext or apology. Isn’t it funny that if God were to reveal and explain Himself, the majority of the world would necessarily be disappointed? At a certain point you stopped wearing sunscreen.

How can I explain the way I shrugged off nuclear annihilation but mortally feared a small fall? You couldn’t tolerate people who couldn’t tolerate babies on planes. I couldn’t tolerate people who insisted that having a coffee after lunch would keep them up all night. At a certain point I could hear my knees and felt no need to correct other people’s grammar. How can I explain why foreign cities came to mean so much to me? At a certain point you stopped trying. I couldn’t tolerate magicians who did things that someone who actually had magical powers would never do.

We were all doing well. I was still in love with the Olympics. The smaller the matter, the more I allowed your approval to mean to me. They kept producing new things that we didn’t need that we needed. I needed your approval more than I needed anything. My sister died at a restaurant. My mother promised anyone who would listen that she was fine. They changed our filters. I wanted to learn a dead language. You were in the garden, not planting, but standing there. You dropped two handfuls of soil.

And here we aren’t, so quickly: I’m not twenty-six and you’re not sixty. I’m not forty-five or eighty-three, not being hoisted onto the shoulders of anybody wading into any sea. I’m not learning chess, and you’re not losing your virginity. You’re not stacking pebbles on gravestones; I’m not being stolen from my resting mother’s arms. Why didn’t you lose your virginity to me? Why didn’t we enter the intersection one thousandth of a second sooner, and die instead of die laughing? Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?

I am not unrealistic anymore. You are not unemotional. I am not interested in the news anymore, but I was never interested in the news. What’s more, I am probably ambidextrous. I was probably meant to be effortless. You look like yourself right now. I was so slow to change, but I changed. I was probably a natural tennis player, just like my father used to say over and over and over.

I changed and changed, and with more time I will change more. I’m not disappointed, just quiet. Not unthinking, just reckless. Not willfully unclear, just trying to say it as it wasn’t. The more I remember, the more distant I feel. We reached the middle so quickly. After everything it’s like nothing. I have always never been here. What a shame it wasn’t easy. What a waste of what? What a joke. But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere: on the split stools of this bar, by the edge of this cliff, in the seats of this borrowed car, at the prow of this ship, on the all-forgiving cushions of this thread-bare sofa in the one-story copper-crying fixer-upper whose windows we once squinted through for hours before coming to our sense: “What would we even do with such a house?”

Jonathan Safran Foer, published in The New Yorker, June 14, 2010, p.72.

What Devotion Looks Like

Wednesday

Wednesday by camille94 featuring a bow tie blouse

Hope short sleeve t shirt
$90 - lagarconne.com

Modstrom bow tie blouse
€60 - welikefashion.com

J brand jeans
$270 - stylebop.com

J Brand dark wash skinny jeans
$167 - amrag.com

Michael kors sandals
$195 - bluefly.com

Sam Edelman brown flat sandals
$90 - nordstrom.com

How to be Happy

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is but able to experience supreme happiness. What is happiness? It is a feeling of inner peace and satisfaction. It is usually experienced when there are no worries, fears or obsessing thoughts and this usually happens, when we do something we love to do or when we get, gain or achieve something that we value. If somebody says good about us we feel great and if somebody says bad about us our day is ruined. Why we are dependent on external force to be happy? Why we let our happiness be determined by outer forces. We ourselves should take charge of our happiness and well-being of our mental-state. Can it be done? Yes training our mind for it. Many people make the mistake of believing that they don’t deserve happiness and accept their unhappy state as their destiny. The truth of the matter is that happiness, like anything else in life, needs to be nurtured.

1. Don’t think about trivial issues.
   
   You are too precious to be stressed. It is not what happens to you, but it is how you perceive it and how you react or respond to it that makes the difference. We have to understand that happiness and distress is a constant flow in material life. We are affected by it only if we identify with it.
   
   
2. Think good and feel good about yourself.
   
   You happiness is your responsibility. All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within. Take the life as it comes. One of the best ways to keep it is by gaining inner peace through daily meditation. As the mind becomes more peaceful, it becomes easier to choose the happiness habit.
   
   
3. Nothing is permanent.
   
   Happiness is nothing more than good health and bad memory. Actually, what people need to be happy is right inside them, at all times, regardless of whatever trials and challenges may happen outside and around them. We need to focus not on the future but on what is happening right now. Trying to change things beyond your control will only frustrate you. Recognize what you can and can’t control, and focus solely on things you can control.
   
   
4. Don’t compare yourself to others.
   
   This is hard to do, but it can be great way to accept who you are and what you have. Whenever you find yourself comparing yourself to a co-worker, a friend, or someone famous, stop and realize that you are different, with different strength. You have to compete with yourself Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations. Jealousy and anger will breed only unhappiness. Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
   
   
5. Count your blessing.
   
   Look at the person who is less privileged. There are so many things we should be grateful for, but we often forget them. When you realize how blessed you are, you will certainly be happier.
   
   
6. Giving is getting.
   
   Giving is an essential key to happiness. While we often think we will be happier when we receive, the truth is we are happier when we give. Happiness is like a kiss…you must share it to enjoy it.
   
   
7. Surround yourself with happy people.
   
   It is easy to begin think negatively when you are surrounded by people who think that way. Conversely, if you are around the people who are happy their emotional state will be infectious.

Supriya Jha