Before The Snow

The winter weather has officially descended. We had our first snow last night. True, it was mixed with rain and had pretty much turned to slush by this morning... but it was there. It makes me excited.

Have I ever mentioned my deep, irrevocable love for strings of twinkly Christmas lights? Actually, I believe I have. There is something so magical about them.

Speaking of Christmas lights... on Friday night our town kicked off the holiday season with its annual tradition: lighting the Christmas tree in the center of town. My friends and I caroled with our select singing group from school, then ate greasy Chinese food until we felt like we were going to pass out. It was magnificent.

As silly as this may seem, all the Christmas hoopla swirling about makes me wish I were in Paris for the holiday season. True, I am always wishing I were in Paris, but right now especially. I can only imagine how stunning it must be blanketed in snow, with all the trees lit up. And I would think that French Christmas traditions are much more dignified than those of Americans.

I love how dreamy this photograph is. I really want to hang a few strings of white lights around my room. First image found here, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth.

A few months ago I received mail from Smith College regarding a poetry contest for sophomore and junior high school girls residing in New England. Seems like fate, right? A week ago I submitted my poem, and I figured I would show it to you since it somewhat relates to the topic at hand. I hope you don't mind when I post poems on here, but writing is just as important to me as fashion, and probably more so, so I like sharing things.

Before The Snow

hard to recall whether our knees touched
under the cramped table at dinner,
or whether you noticed me noticing.
much later we lay together
among the spare blankets,
clean apartment lush with lamplight,
our cold feet touching under a virginally
white comforter.
it felt like both the safest
and the strangest place to want,
with warm electricity flowing through my marrow,
a surreal sense of peace fluttering
about my eyelids.

I promise some more fashion-related things soon, but the snow had me in the dreamiest mood today. I cannot wait for the first snow day.

Madeleines

I cannot think of a better way to start the weekend than with my favorite iced Starbucks concoction and a packet of imitation French cookies! They might not be true madeleines, but they are too delicious for me to really care.

When I choose to take a break from soy chai lattes, this is my drink of choice: a nonfat vanilla latte. The hot and cold versions are equally delicious!

After waking up feeling totally hideous yesterday morning, and therefore dressing like a complete slob, and therefore feeling even worse, today I needed to sartorially and mentally replenish myself. This ostentatiously pink shirt felt like the right move. And I had a splendid day! It just goes to show how much what you wear changes your attitude.

Eating madeleines reminds me of Paris, and more specifically the creative writing class I took there. In the class we read the famous passage from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust about his involuntary memory triggered by eating madeleines dipped in tea. If you like French literature and yummy things, you should read the excerpt!

Vintage Gap skirt, vintage blouse, Urban Outfitters belt, Hue tights, vintage leather boots via eBay

While I am on the topic of French artistes... I have been listening to "Claire de Lune" by Claude Debussy nonstop for weeks on end, and it's one of the most gorgeous pieces of music I have ever heard. I did a bit of research about it, and the movement is based on the poem "Claire de Lune" by Paul Verlaine. I just have to post the poem here because it is so stunningly beautiful.

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

~

Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masked and costumed figures go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key
Of all-conquering love and careless fortune
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight.

The still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Which gives the birds to dream in the trees
And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy,
The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues.

I am currently enjoying a relaxing evening at home in my pajamas, then celebrating the sixteenth birthday of my darlingest friend tomorrow night! I hope you all have fantastic weekends ahead of you.

The New Love Of My Life

This is the dress Luke most wonderfully gifted me with on Sunday.

It is shapeless and soft and breezy and perfect.

I plan on never taking it off.

This dress is the definition of my ideal summer wardrobe. I took these pictures on Memorial Day, it was the most glorious evening weather.

h&m dress, forever 21 sunnies, random peace sign necklace

view from the hotel window

the lazy bumblebee humming of jets beyond the
iron balcony reminds me that this paradise is
far from secluded - although the palm trees
that sway in a lazy merengue on the sloping
grass, looking oddly like
Marfan sufferers with their spindly trunks
and tufty heads, do make up quite
a picturesque foreground for
the smug silver blurs that smear a pastel
sunset into a glinting, endless stroke of
utopian light.

New love of my life + being barefoot + flowers + long shower + new face wash + cool spring twilight + pastel sky + poem that reminds me of California and spring = a perfect evening.

Here Comes The Rain Again, Falling From The Stars

Each of these capture a little bit of why I love rain so much.
It just blurs the lines, you know? Makes everything kind of like a dream.

EXCITING NEWS...



I GOT MY BRACES OFF!

My teeth feel all funny.
And I have to wear retainers that make me talk like Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy.
But anything is better than braces.
And now I can smile properly without feeling vile.

Had to basically scarf down dinner and race out of the house for Brigadoon rehearsal, but not before I snapped some photos. It was just one of those outfit-you-feel-really-awesome-in-and-really-must-capture-on-film days.





crochet top, mom's ~ tee (underneath), gap ~ jeans, pacsun ~ boots, vintage frye ~ necklace, forever 21

I love, love, love this crochet top that I purloined from my mom.
It's from The Gap! When did The Gap stop being so cool?
The fact that I nabbed these boots at a thrift store for under twenty dollars is pretty much the shining accomplishment of my life.
I hope my feet never grow so I can wear them forever.

Of course, what would the perfect drizzly day be without a drizzly day poem?
I wrote this ages ago, in exactly this kind of weather.

written in the aftermath of a rain storm

there is something inexplicably romantic
about the aftermath of an autumn rain storm.
the air is chilly and steely and smells of
damp moss, but it holds a stillness so rarely
seen here, and the only sound for miles is
the slip-crack-drip of meandering drizzle.
how i would love to dance in the mud with you -
or better yet, kiss passionately under a
soggy tree until the sun dazzles again.

(photographs by me are unedited, all other images from weheartit, post title from "wake me up when september ends" by green day)

The Flash Of A Neon Light That Split The Night

(Camilla Åkrans for Numeró)

Have you ever just felt like there was so much rushing around inside of you, and that no amount of shouting or singing or crying or writing could possibly begin to empty it all out? That you could talk for ten years and write a hundred poems and everything you felt would still be trapped in the little corners of your brain and your heart?

I feel that way now. A little stuck.

But anyways, Passover festivities commenced tonight. Relatively (actually, completely) uneventful. Wine makes family gatherings so much more lovely.

This bag is hilarious and perfect. Thoroughly cheeky, wonderfully unexpected from a brand like Longchamp, and basically the thing that has been missing from my wardrobe all my life.

I really, really want a bright pair of Converse for the spring. These are pretty much my favorite footwear ever created. As much as I love to salivate over exquisite heels and delicate flats, and even wear them often enough, Converse end up on my feet most of the time. They're just so wonderfully dependable.

In the car on the way home tonight, I was listening to my iPod and right then and there compiled a very important list.

My Top Ten Favorite Lyricists Of All Time, In No Specific Order
John Lennon
Ben Gibbard
Sufjan Stevens
Conor Oberst
Ben Kweller
Colin Meloy
Paul Simon
James Mercer
Elliott Smith
Billy Joel

In close contest for number eleven: Sam Beam, Andrew Bird, Justin Vernon.

Tell me your favorites! I like to learn about you all.


from ansel olson on flickr

About a year ago, I started writing a lot of poems about nature and how it felt around me. Just looking in my backyard at dusk brought all these ideas gushing out. Here are two I wrote last spring; I think of them like two halves of the same poem.

a kind of renaissance

the enormous forsythia plant is
in bloom again below my window, a
sinuous tangle of yellow tails like
a crisp greek wreath. above it
the slick orange ball of sun glows
against charred trees, a watercolor of
fire and branches about to burst to life.

a monet twilight

by now the sky has paled to mauve
and lavender, traces of celestial lipstick
wiped across the atmosphere. above
the purple melting pot, a sheet
of milky blue bedecks the heavens
like a cool basin turned upside down,
emptying its viscera in a current of
stars and air scented with honeysuckle.

Posting will be spotty for the next week or so, as I'm going away until next Thursday and have no idea what my internet availability will be like. I'll try desperately to post before then!

"Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy."
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

P.S. Post title from one of the most beautiful songs ever written, "The Sound Of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel.

As Promised...

(February 1933, October 1935, December 1960, October 1967)

Vintage Vogue covers are retro and fantastic.

~

And now... poems! First three will be featured in Clockwise Cat, last one in Apt. Let me know what you think!

sleeping in socks

sleeping in my socks: a rare,
almost scientific occurrence
perhaps solely explainable by
my fierce concentration
upon this new, beautiful being
and complete disregard for
all things regular, shedding
my usual stoicism for
a perpetually foolish smile.

a debacle of the vernacular

i rather like the word fiasco.
you like the word fiasco? what word fiasco?
what do you mean? i like the word fiasco!
a word fiasco? like a verbal disaster?
a debacle of the vernacular? a
distressing situation involving the english language?
what kind of person would think to enjoy a
language calamity?
well, i suppose this is a language calamity, and i am quite enjoying myself.
jesus, you take everything so literally. that's the problem with you poets.

mutiny

we let fly with formulas and theorems
slurring the ancient tongues of euclid and
pythagoras into a heady shout of battle.
our arrows are taut with number lines,
compasses drawn, protractor blades flashing.
cartesian planes swoop overhead,
overseeing the warfare in calculated silence
as we count the dead in imaginary numbers.

san luis obispo

it felt like nowhere at first step, but the
sun worked quickly... melted our car stiff
bones into sparkling new structures
fizzy with the feeling of a new town.
the light came in colors and shapes
that might have been invented for us
in a little well of west coast magic,
the soft bronze blobs on squashy
bright buildings, velvet grey beams
along each pacific cobblestone
under our atlantic feet.
we ate falafel at a wooden table and felt
like we belonged...
a dream catcher hung
at the door, dancing with each opening.

Comments and questions are always appreciated! And a million thanks for all of the congratulations! You guys make my days brighter.

WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULE POSTING WITH SOME VERY EXCITING NEWS!

I GOT PUBLISHED!

AGAIN!

AND I AM SO HAPPY!

IT REALLY COULD NOT WAIT UNTIL MY NEXT ACTUAL POST!

The publication is called apt and I sent in a poem about six weeks ago and forgot all about it and now they are publishing me in their upcoming twentieth issue, due online in late April!

And right after that, three more of my poems will be published in Clockwise Cat!

HURRAH HURRAH HURRAH! I AM MOST NEARLY A PUBLISHED POET!

Now I suppose I really have to share some poems with you...
but that can wait until next time.