Pick A Door. Any Door.

"... and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place..."
Dr. Seuss Oh, The Places You'll Go

When we were in school they told us "you can do anything you want." But, they left out you can't do everything. That 'anything' happens to be singular - and to pick one path means not picking the others. And, that might mean picking wrong. So I've been standing here, for the last year, in the place Dr. Seuss warned me about. Planted in front of a bank of potential doors like a hotel hallway.

Today I realized that not choosing is still a choice. In fact it's the worst choice. It's a choice where I become powerless and I just wait - for 'a yes or no' or my 'hair to grow' or a 'pair of pants' or 'Another Chance'.

Today I say pick a door. Any door. And, walk through it with conviction. Don't like what you see? Fine. Turn around. You'll only be right back where you started, with one less door to wonder about.

(photos) doorways | San Telmo in Buenos Aires and Palermo Soho in Buenos Aires (p.s) of course this is better put by Liz Gilbert via A Diary of Little Things & Curiosities

Driving Force

"As we roll along this way I am positive beyond a doubt that everything will be taken care of for us - that even you, as you drive - fearful of the wheel."
Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I'm doing some driving today for my internship and I am terrified. Is it weird that I some how feel comforted by the fact that Jack (a man who never said no to adventure) was fearful of the wheel too? There's Dean, just encouraging him. And encouraging me too. Oh, the power of writing.

A Styled Saturday

I styled a shoot with my friend, Paul, this summer and got to spend some time on the other side of the camera when I wasn't being too awkward.

I am wearing ...

• cardigan: filched from Tessa's closet {Nordstrom's}
• belt: I found any excuse to wear it this summer. It was also in my shoot for Urban Weeds. from local boutique {Sloan}.
• linen shirt: filched from Eli's closet - although I can't imagine him in it with out looking like someone from the cast of Miami Vice. {probably goodwill}
• bracelet: Jessica Kagan Cushman. Reads "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" a line from my favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz.
• shorts: J. Crew My hair wasn't usually as well brushed, but besides that, this was pretty much my look this summer. what were your go-to items for sunny days?

(p.s.) an interview I did with the bracelet designer, Jessica Kagan Cushman.

Helmut Lang | On the Relationship with His City

"Over time, though, when you move to a city and work there all day, every day, and you get caught up in daily obligations, it takes away some of the magic of the place. When I decided to sell my company and pursue creating art, I started to travel between Long Island, where I have my art studio, and the city quite frequently which made my relationship with New York magical all over again"

Helmut Lang, Nostalgia. Vogue, September 2010.

Helmut Lang gets the feeling too.

With the Same Wide - Eyed Wonder

Travel has a way of making us see the world differently. Things are felt more fully - because every sight and smell is usually something that we won't ever feel again. Even the most mundane things seem exciting because the opportunity for them is so short.

Walking the downtown farmers market last Saturday, I was reminded of the mercados in Argentina and was filled with the longing for that kind of experience, one punctuated by the new and unique.

And, I had to stop myself because there are things everywhere to be felt for the first time. There is no reason I can't treat Portland with the same wide-eyed wonder I would treat Paris or Prague.

Because I won't be seeing this city again; at least not like this, not for a while.

(images) from my pentax k1000 of greenbeans King's Farmers Market in North Portland

Blogging : A Product of the Broken Hearted

"While still I may, I write for you
the love I lived, the dream I knew."
William Butler Yeats

People say things get easier with time, but in most of my experiences with pain it's been just the opposite. As a hopeful person, I can get through rough days. It's the way they accumulate - each one a measured, constant increment between me and happiness. I started writing this blog during a break up when I began to feel the weight of silence for the first time in my life. I was being crushed by the sound of the phone not ringing from the insignificant back and forth that happens between people in love.

No matter how much I enjoyed my alone time - doing alone things like taking myself out to lunch or walking the beach - I hated not having someone to tell how nice it felt to be alone that evening.

So I began blogging. When my whole being itched with the need to talk to him, I talked here. Like a message in a bottle; unable to share something with the only person I wanted to listen, I sent it out to an ocean of unknown. I shared my day to day with an audience that was non-existent and invisible. I felt that somehow this message, that I put out there in 0's and 1's, would get to where I wanted it. There were no goodnight texts, or love letters, they were all done forever. This was an outlet for me to share things that I felt, or things that interested me, the same way I always had, but in a different way. And then, people started reading it

Rather than using this as a place to talk about how broken hearted I was the majority of the time (no need to humiliate myself on every medium possible) I used this as a place to share my happy moments, and declare, time and time again that I was finally happy. I wasn't lying, but I was only acknowledging the good; the same way anyone would treat seeing an exboyfriend on the street

BOY : oh. hey, so funny seeing you. How have you been?
GIRL : so great! I got a new job, a promotion, and a new dog, a new haircut, everything is just so super-duper!

(translation: I've been doing everything possible to fill the space you left when you went away)

Most of the time though, I wasn't happy. I was depressed, self loathing, and so incredibly lonely. I had no way of seeing how I would ever feel whole or worth while again. But, like all things, that time in my life ended and I look back and I feel a weird kind of empathy for a person that feels wholly removed from the person I am today.

I still blog. The desire to speak to whoever would listen was not a new development in my personality, and it didn't leave when the sadness did. I write for you, readers. But, when I really sit down and ask myself 'who is it that I'm speaking to' - it will always be him. His absence became a kind of mold that I crawled inside and it defined me for almost a year. And, like any mold, the form still holds the shape when it's removed.

Lately I've been feeling disconnected and restless with blogging. I find less and less that I have something to put here. It occurred to me today that perhaps there's nothing left to say to the person I've been writing to all this time. Maybe I'm finally okay with the silence between us.

Can I Have a Word with You?

Beer and coffee are not a joke, New York Times.

Sloane Crosley | Resume

"A basic affinity for office work may appear expendable to most. But I was a good girl from the suburbs, where self-worth was color-coded and bound and crazy-glued into a diorama. "

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

--
* this is me. in a statement. Starting a new internship next week, and bringing my grade A color coding/diorama making skills with me.

Cluck // Cluck

When I was going to private college in Southern California I spent most of the time trying to convince my classmates that no, everyone in Oregon doesn't live on a farm. {It was a time when people saw Portland less as a hub for hipness, and more as a wooded habitat for hicks and hippies.}

It's not helping my case that the neighbors in my apartment building (that's right - apartment building) have chickens. Portland foodies put a lot of importance on local and organic products. It's a good thing for our economy, our bodies, and our environment. It doesn't get any more local than farm patio fresh eggs. But, did I mention they're not just any chickens? They're heritage chickens that have blue skin. And lay blue eggs. Now where, oh where, is that blue ham ...

Falling in Love with Orange

I've never been a big fan of orange, perhaps because it heralds the end of my favorite season. But a few things have given me an attitude adjustment

1. This is Glamorous pointed out, autumn comes in shades of Hermes. Now that is a positive association.
2. Seen all over Paris on Little Brown Pen the perfect tangerine color suddenly seems so french
3. I bought an old book yesterday called Color Design, published in 1972 by Harald Mante, to teach me about using color more effectively in my film photography. It says that Orange

   "combines the brilliance of yellow with the warmth of red. It's luminous ... the absolute pole of warmth."

   It's inspired me to focus on orange to capture the few perfect, warm air and cool breeze, September days.

If you look in the thesaurus for synonyms for Orange one of them is bittersweet.
Much like its appearance in the trees at summers end & my new feelings for this color.

Milan Kundera | On the Vanity of Words

"And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concot sentences ... so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand. And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sounds, a pleasant and happy all encompassing, over powering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all the pain, the futility, the vanity of words"

--
* today I am seeking this too.

Familiar? : Mike Quashie and J. Crew

This article from this Sunday's New York Times talks about my favorite academic aspect of fashion : the impact of subculture on style movements. Max's Kansas City was a club in New York that was a counter-culture party mecca. It was also, ironically, the birth place of many mainstream fashion trends.

Perhaps we can thank Mike Quashie (the man who "ignited the limbo dance craze") for inspiring this winter's J. Crew look book?

portland places | the patio at Produce Row

When I was a kid my mom used to take us for an after-school snack on Fridays to reward us for a week well done. {nothing fancy. usually just a corndog at the grocery store}
I think we still deserve a little end-of-the-week-treat, like the cucumber margarita at Produce Row. Because we do a lot more arduous things than finger painting these days.

treat yourself & happy Friday!

Whistle While You Work

Throughout the course of my week my life tends to get a bit messy. By Wednesday my closet floor is covered in almost identical black pairs of tights, t-shirts, and a layer of espresso grounds. I usually haven't washed my hair since Monday

I like to call it prioritizing but most matters of appearance tend to fall by the wayside when I'm working. Which is why, on my day off, the first thing I do is deep clean my apartment. Tiding up isn't exactly something I consider fun or meaningful. It's a fresh start.

When the hard work is over I like to sit at my kitchen table, the apartment perfectly arranged and smelling like clorox. I pretend that I'm in a PotteryBarn catalog: a place where the dust never settles, and everyone has enough time sweep and shower more regularly.
And I'm hopeful for next week.

-
* pictured are some of my favorite things on my kitchen windowsill.
(1) Seashells from in front of my old home in Mission Beach. Inside a Yogi Tea fortune that reads "where there is love there is no question". (2) My boyfriend contributed the orange shaped candle, which I begrudgingly admit perfects the arrangement. (3) A set of vintage purple medicine bottles from a place I love more than Pottery Barn, Portland's Ink & Peat.

Milan Kundera | What to Want

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come"

portland places | Pix's Bastille Day

a photo from Pix's Bastille Day Block Party.
I told you it was going to be tre fun!
It's like the 4th of July, but French.

On Living Simply

"To me, the idea of 'living simply' means deconstructing and embracing the richness of everyday activities. Everything becomes an 'event' because everything is unique and has never happened before. Valuing these moments in your day without judgement translates into your relationships in a way that you can just simply love someone for their uniqueness and contribution to the moment. "

Casey M. on the post True Words found on N. Mississippi and Failing.
yes. I think so. exactly.

portland places | Sauvie Island

a sunday afternoon at Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland.

these pictures remind me of this song from The Best Coast.
like something from a past summer that's been tucked away and hidden from winter.


(images) I shot them on my first roll of film with Diana F+, which I am not good at using yet. I took 6 frames of solid black.