There is Less to Say

"I drink good coffee every morning. Comes from a place that's far away. And when I'm done I feel like talking - with out you here there is less to say."

At my coffeeshop, there is an older man who comes in everyday and sits at a table for two. Since I started working there nobody has ever joined him. I often consider the longing he must feel. He is alone, not just for his morning coffee, but in life.

I think about the way it feels to sit with someone you love, the same someone, every morning. And I think about the silence that must follow when that conversation stops for eternity.

Every day he leaves behind a stack of newspapers with huge rectangular holes cut out of them, carefully, from front to back. I had no idea what these holes were for, and vaguely entertained the idea that it was an interesting symptom of dementia.

Yesterday, he asked me for a pair of scissors since he forgot his. After I got them from behind the counter, I asked him what he did with the newspaper every morning.

He smiled and said "I cut out the articles my wife will like, so she can read them with out being bothered with this other nonsense." He gestured to a front page covered in stories about emotional and economic deperession. In his hand two articles: one about foreign aid, and another about Earth Day.

I have never seen true love so exemplified. To care for someone so much you can't bare to see them hurt; even by a sad story about a whale trapped in the San Diego harbor.

[ image from house of milk]

Happy Birthday, Katy!

Cheers to your 22 years!

The Word Butterfly

"The word 'butterfly' made him blush, though he didn't know why."
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer"Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?"
On the Heights of Despair by Emile M. Cioran, existentialist philosopher

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* I took these photos back in January. I really love them but I waited to post them until a day like today.

Yesterday a guy came into my coffee shop reading a book by Dave Eggers. We talked and talked and i told him that Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was on my book list but that i already connected with the title so much that i was afraid the book would let me down. He laughed and said he felt the same way about Everything is Illuminated but that he wasn't disappointed. That just so happens to be my favorite book of all time. b u t t e r f l i e s .

Recent Writing: Why I'll Never Write a Column on Fashion Don'ts

a piece on Style & Subculture"Aside from the obvious rudeness, there is something rudamentally wrong in terms of Fashion Theory when it comes to the pages' sartorial shame. Fashion, as an art form, not only benefits from "Fashion Don'ts" but requires them"

Here is a recent column of mine from The Vista on the impact of subculture on fashion trends. I have been studying this a lot for my honor's thesis, and its a potential area of focus for when I go to grad school. Isn't finally having a little direction wonderful? I think yes.

Familiar? : Audrey Hepburn & Candic Stringham

Audrey Hepburn and Rockstar Diaries

also from the Rockstar Diaries photoshoot by Candice Stringham on the Brooklyn Bridge. I've never given the Brooklyn Bridge much notice until recently, and now i am a bit smitten with this piece of architecture.

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* how is it only Wednesday? this has been the week from hell, and i would have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge if i hadn't had my sister here with me.

do you ever have those weeks where you can't seem to do anything right? After a little Perspective i have realized: its okay. i can try again next week.

Edna St. Vincent MIllay | On Losing with Grace

"Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;In my own way, and with my full consent.

Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less, or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you."

On Falling Down

"the trick in life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times." 
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

"I just had to tell you that you made my day indirectly today. I was having a truly terrible morning today, and I checked your blog. And there you were: happy, optimistic, and strong even though sometimes you fall down. So I gathered myself together to face the day."
- My beautiful friend, Kat

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* here's to hoping all it takes is eight.

[image f: Xaliaz]

My Best Friend, SJP

The March 2009 Cover of Harper's Bazaar features my very favorite, Sarah Jessica Parker.

I once passed on an opportunity I had to meet Ms. Parker on her perfume promotional tour. I knew that I wouldn't understand when she didn't know who I was. I truly feel like I know her. We call that a 'parasympathetic relationship' in the communications studies world. I've got the sickness bad.

[The Brooklyn Bridge in cornflower blues and gray by Peter Lindberg 
(p.s. more Peter Lindberg here) ]

Yah right, Yale.

I am working on my column for the newspaper right now (Kaitlin, I promise.) It's a connection between American Apparel and the Utilitarianist Fashion Movement. There is absolutely no literature connecting these two things. But, in my pursuit, I did come across THIS regarding American Apparel's advertising strategies from another college newspaper

"The girls aren’t sculpted and dressed to satisfy a male onlooker, as they are in every single Victoria’s Secret advertisement, nor are they stylized to be high-end fashion. These girls were probably shot in their homes, in hallways with doors and windows in plain sight. They didn’t have to try hard to pose — they’re lying comfortably in beds, maybe playing dress-up with sunglasses or playfully hiding behind curtains."

This girl CANNOT be serious.
 
No, American Apparel's fashion scheme isn't anything like high-end fashion layouts because of 1. their target market 2. their brands over all indie intentions.
 
But "they're lying comfortably in bed."? puh-lease. American Apparels ad campaigns are designed intentionally to look like 70's pornography. Sometimes the models themselves actually are pornstars (as was the case with Lauren Phoenix).

American Apparel deserves to be commended, to some extent, for its portrayal of diverse, and non-siliconed women. But I think that article is a bit of a stretch.

On the bright side the article is actually really well written even though i don't agree at all with the content.

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*Hi Darlings! I promise i'm not dead. So sorry i haven't posted since thursday. Dear lawd, its been a while since it's been a while. I've just been super busy with my 50 page honors thesis & raising 20 thousand dollars for my sorority's philanthropy. Just two little things.

Making Headlines

An announcement about my Honors Thesis presentation went out to the entire comm. department over the weekend! 

Is this what Warhol meant by his 15 minutes of fame?

Flavia Weedn | On Beginning Again

"if one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again." 

Flavia Weedn

--

*this is what i've been doing with my heart lately!
sweeping up the pieces. 

[image f: Toast via Peonies & Polaroids]

Familiar? : Peter Lindbergh & Gemma Booth

A photo from Gemma Booth [via A Little Sussy] and the photo that's said to have started narrative fashion photography, from Peter Lindbergh [via The Olson Influence]

I have been looking for the Lindberg photo in poster form forever, i just adore it. I can't find it anywhere!

Familiar? : Hunter Thompson Inspired

Is it just me, or is the styling on this photoshoot straight out of Fear and Loathing? Fashion & Literature. Only my two favorite things. Especially together.  

[image f: Candy Hearts]

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* i'm feeling both silly and anxious! Giggle fits may be a symptom of a manic episode. Or maybe its just a sunshine high crossed with the mood of monday.

100 Mix Cds for Love | Tile 2

from Death Cab for Cutie - Passenger Seat

100 Mix Cds for Love | Tile 3

The Smiths - There is a Light That Never Goes Out

Song & Snapshot : Cheer Up California & Brand New Day

"It’s a brand new day
The sun is shinning
For the first time
In such a long long time
I know
I’ll be ok

Most kind of stories

Save the best part for last"
- Joshua Radin, Brand New Day

[images f: Neon Gray's Cheer Up California]

Benjamin Button | On Starting Again

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

--

*It is a story about timing, and about figuring out who you are, and mostly about the finite forever we experience when we love someone.

100 Mix Cds for Love | Tile 1

from Mike Doughty - Madeline and Nine

100 Mix Cds for Love | explained

"This is a love song to the person i haven't even met yet. He's out there, she's out there. They're just learning what to contrast you against" - John Mayer

I have been so  focused on the past lately; thinking about it & romanticizing it. When I let my mind wander it instinctively goes back to old thoughts and memories.

In turn, it's impossible for me to attract anything new to my life when I am constantly focusing on, and thus attracting, my past. I need to break the habit of finding comfort in what is gone.

So, I started a new project. It's inspired by Simon Evan's art piece called 100 Mix Cds to New York.


I think a mix CD is one of those wonderful things that someone does for someone else in an effort to explain the unexplainable, kind of like art.

I'm going to do 100 6x6in panels as Mix CDs to My Future Love. I know it sounds a little nutty, but I can't think of anything more productive towards changing my mental patterns than actually producing something.

I'm doing each tile in mostly blue  and using my favorite love song lyrics as titles on the cover. These song lyrics don't remind me of anyone (the opposite point of the project) but rather embody all the ways i want to feel when i do meet that person.

I'm not in any hurry to meet them either. I have 98 pannels left to go.

Elizabethtown | Deep Down

"I want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that's happened."

--

* Everything that it means to truly love someone: to be able to sit, and listen, and just be.

Song & Snapshot : San Francisco & Brett Dennen

"I'm going to rent an old victorian down in the Lower Haight
play for the tourists on the Golden Gate
Go if you want to go, but I won't follow
Just so you know
I wont be here when you come home"

 Brett Dennen

[image f: SF Girl By the Bay]

Morrison, Thomspon and Kerouac | On Madness

Like watching a film and hitting pause, freezing a single frame and exclaiming "here!". There, there was the problem that I needed to fix. I could fix it, I would fix it. I would eliminate the erraticism that dots the course of my life with high low marks like a Richter scale.

But this part of me, the one that feels both happy and sad so deeply that balance eludes me, doesn't it contribute something? Doesn't it produce the deepest kind of understanding, the deepest kind of love? Depth of emotion is not something to be faulted for. It is the epicenter of my creativity and my compassion. It is the product of my introspection.

I wouldn't trade these things for a life of consistency. I would much rather live a life punctuated by low blacks and high whites than one of gray, at least for now. I have a lot of experiencing and a lot of feeling left to do in this lifetime, and I'm not going to limit myself in lieu of madness.

Maybe I just need someone who loves even the madness in me too.

like Jack Kerouac

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars"

or Jim Morrison

"How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you."

or Hunter Thompson

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

I think I'm going to like being over the edge. The company is really amazing.

Paulo Coehlo | The Power of Love (and Hot Water)

"Live from your heart and you will be absolutely effective."

Yogi Tea tag

"Love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who geuniely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey."

The Alchemist

Lotte Geeven | Words in Flight

"Thousands of bird species cut out from the New York Times move as a coloured swarm cloud through small alleyways and over the pavement. With New York City as a decor on the background, they map the route of the wind." Lotte Geeven, the artist

News and experiences captured with words, in mid-air over the place that inspired them.

Song & Snapshot : Electric Feel

"You still look at me with well acquainted eyes, as the memories come flooding back in a field of butterflies. It's electric. I can't forget it."

Tristan Prettyman, Electric

"You can feel it in your mind, you can do it all the time. Plug it in. Change the world. You are my Electric Girl."

MGMT, Electric Feel

Published: LDtuttle

"A pair of shoes can change your life; just ask Cinderella, or that Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Ziadi. Footwear is a favorite of fairy-godmothers and the foreign press when it comes to leaving a mark on the past. So it makes sense that the industry's hottest shoe line, LDtuttle, is designed by a Princeton graduate with a degree in history. "

I was so lucky to do an interview with Tiffany Tuttle of LDtuttle. Her shoes have been featured in Vogue and she just got a huge write up in LAconfidential.

Read the full article here!

the vista | Veiling

"Both forced veiling and forced unveiling lack the fundamental component of human liberty and freewill: choice. If women are true equals government bodies should treat them as functioning rational individuals, fully capable of making decisions. If women are to achieve equality they should have access to what one woman calls "the most basic human right: to dress the way you want to dress." "

The full column can be read here at the University of San Diego newspaper website. 

Lenten Resolutions

I'm not from a religious family, but we always give something up for lent. One year I gave up my gameboy, another year I gave up caffeine (longest 40 days of my life.)

This year I gave up straightening my hair.

I'm not a big fan of giving things up with motives that are the exact opposite of what we are going for here - and on the surface mine falls pretty close to "vanity" (as does giving up certain foods because bikini season is around the corner - Thats not lent. Thats called a Diet for Jesus)

But let me explain. Having incredibly uncontrollable, big, dread-lock prone hair for my whole life has been kind of an issue. I've hated it - and when I came to San Diego I would have paid any amount of money to be have hair the color and texture of cornsilk.

My lenten resolution is about self acceptance. 

Oh, and the fact that guys seem to love curly hair and I get to say goodbye to split ends? Well, that will be nice too.