i leave my rage to the sea and the sun

Liz Clements's illustrations are spectacular. 

This is the kind of girl I'd like to be, if I were brave enough. 

Pictures on my skin and wings in my hair. 

until they forget

by Richard Siken

For Grace, After a Party by Frank O'Hara

Meditations in an Emergency, 1957

shades of

Blake Wright just gets me, you know?

huffs

Marc Johns continues to amaze .

monday links (virginia woolf, finishing books, dancing ballet, racing bikes)

Picture from the Orient Express by the wonderful Hotze Eisma.

Oh goodness, it's been a while. But here they are, a compilation of my online findings. Enjoy.



A brief, beautiful piece on the room in which Virginia Woolf used to write.

Confessions of a Cycle Messenger by Jon Day. 

(Stunning. If there is one link you should click out of all of these, it's this one.) 

Ballet in slow motion. 

If you, like me, are bad at reading books all the way through, try reading Why Finish Books? by Tim Parks for reassurance. (From now on, I might even be able to admit I quit reading a book three-quarters in.)

Laura Brady on her "not a real job" job.  

Also, the third issue of the online quarterly The Junket (also known as my one true online love) is due to appear any moment. (Yes, I have been refreshing the page for a while now.) Make sure you check it out. 

we're all stories in the end

(I don't think you understand how much I love both Nan Lawson and Doctor Who. Combine the two, watch me melt.) 

we sing to bless the morning

listening to shame

Some of you might remember Brené Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability from a year back. Here's a new one, again on shame and vulnerability.


I've had the toughest, longest day at the library and lately it seems my life is made up of books, fear and disappointment. This talk made me cry in the best possible way, the sort of crying that heals all wounds. For the past year I've kept rewatching her first talk, now I have even more to return to, again and again.

I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. 

Lemony Snicket: The Beatrice Letters

skeleton me

(On a completely unrelated note, I might have started another blog for my rants and things. 

Go check it out if you are inclined to enjoy reading, well, rants. And things.) 

still alive for you

Lovers by Jarek Puczel

prufrock

I grow old... I grow old... 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 


Shall  part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 


I do not think they will sing to me. 


I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 


We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. 

T.S. Eliot (from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

The past is always tense and the future, perfect. 

Zadie Smith: White Teeth 

(A bit too clever and punny but oh goodness I love it anyway.)

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. 

Neil Gaiman 

(The weird thing about this new year is that I have absolutely no idea where it'll take me. 

After the coming May, all bets are off.)

to the harbormaster

I wanted to be sure to reach you; 

though my ship was on the way it got caught 

in some moorings. I am always tying up 

and then deciding to depart. In storms and 

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide 

around my fathomless arms, I am unable 

to understand the forms of my vanity 

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder 

in my hand and the sun sinking. To 

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage 

of my will. The terrible channels where 

the wind drives me against the brown lips 

of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet 

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and 

if it sinks, it may well be in answer 

to the reasoning of the eternal voices, 

the waves which have kept me from reaching you. 

To the Harbormaster by Frank O'Hara

let it snow x3

Again, no snow. It's so dark in the mornings I like to imagine it's actually midnight and we've all been tricked to go to school for an impromptu Christmas party or a huge sleepover. (I've yet to be correct in my guesses.)

Fortunately it is dark and damp and cold enough anyway (and viciously windy and endlessly rainy) for enormous scarves and baking.

Nan Lawson is one of my absolute favourite illustrators. 

(Art inspired by Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Sufjan Stevens, 

Pride and Prejudice, Franny and Zooey and Where the Wild Things Are? 

How could I not be arse over tea kettle in love?) 

monday links (street musicians, tears, line breaks, hogwarts)

I must say, my finds this week are spectacular. Honestly though. I'm so excited about all of these.

(Also: I'm on a huge book binge right now, after a self-imposed dry spell due to all that studying. Currently I'm halfway through Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and accompanying that with Vladimir Nabokov's lectures on the novel. Also on my bedside table are Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety and Chuck Palahniuk's Choke. I'm also rereading Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne because they are undoubtedly the greatest love letters ever written. )



And after this geeky display, on we go with the links.


Julie Lansom's photography is simply stunning.

The upcoming documentary about the  making of the final Harry Potter films seems set to make us all cry. 

An amazing article about a street musician, expanding into a meditation of what art really means these days and how it should be presented.

Weekend, a new film by Andrew Haigh.

(This. Just. You know?)

Sometimes a poem comes along that makes me physically ill, the words hitting my lungs like punches. 

So read this. At least for the truly excellent demonstration of a line break, 

so good it would make the most solid prosaist cry and dig out their hidden lyrical endeavours for a review. 

James Franco on Gus Van Sant, youth and death.

let the wild rumpus start

The Stockholm Subway by Chuck Groenink

This drawing is so eerily perfect I can't stop looking at it.
Also it really reminds me of Maurice Sendak's picture book Where the Wild Things Are. 

One day I swear I'll dress up as Max from Where the Wild Things Are for Hallowe'en and I'll throw a wild rumpus on a subway.

Where the Wild Things Are was one of my favourite picture books as a kid, along with everything Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren and Kirsi Kunnas. What were your favourite books when you were little? Also, what's your Hallowe'en costume going to be?

i have nothing to add to this

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(found here)