WISH YOU WERE HERE

I wish I were here, wearing this fabulous dress, and licking on this.

amalfi coast//co dress//italian gelato

SONG FOR SUNDAY

alan villiers, sons of sinbad

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it's quiet company, it's quiet company

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it's quiet company, it's quiet company, it's quiet company

and I can't fall asleep without a little help

it takes awhile to settle down my ship of hopes

wait 'til the past leaks out

it takes an ocean not to break

it takes an ocean not to break

it takes an ocean not to break company

it's quite a company, it's quiet company

but I won't follow you into the rabbit hole

I said I would but then I saw the ship of woes

they didn't want me to

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders

it's a terrible love that I'm walking with

it takes an ocean not to break

it takes an ocean not to break

it takes an ocean not to break

(terrible love, birdy) 

JEMMA

Nina Leen, 1949, Ringling Bros. Circus, Life Archives

I open my eyes and for a moment, maybe two, I don't know who I am. I feel weighed down, tethered by a thousand unanswered questions, yet unable to voice the simplest one. I am a ghost, waiting to come into skin and bone, afraid of the faintest flutter as if the slightest movement might erase me forever, never to return. I want to cling to something heavy and solid, to hold myself steadfast despite my unbearable lightness. I fear the fading... into nothingness. Curious, since I have pared myself down into almost nothing at all. In the mirror I see a caricature of everything I despise, the reflection of all my fears and flaws. It can't be smashed even as I break into sharp fragmented pieces, the broken edges slicing into me until I bleed. I do not know what it is to be whole. 

I fear most being exposed, under the magnifying glass of my own censure. I fear the fray that will unravel me, laying me open at the seams, my underbelly laid bare for all. I have enemies disguised as friends, and friends that are strangers. Everyone is interchangeable, puzzle pieces for an undisclosed agenda. Who do you trust when the faces all look the same, including your own? When you can not distinguish yourself among the swarm that buzz around you until you are dizzy. Am I not just another drone working for the promise of honey? It lingers in the air, thick and heavy, but all I ever feel is the sting. I do not know the comfort of a hive, have no shell to protect my soft insides. I break when I should bend, fold when I should expand, and dim when I should shine. Some day, maybe not today or tomorrow, but some day is a promise of things yet to unfurl. I wait to come into my own, when in truth maybe I've already come undone.

OUT OF AFRICA

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song for me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?" - Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)

The women I admire the most are those who despite convention, the times, and restrictions placed upon their sex still managed to defy society and carve out a life on their own terms, passions, and secret longings... lives filled with adventure, exploration, and self-expression. 

Women like Danish author Karen von Blixen who published her account of living in Kenya in the book, Out of Africa, published under the pen name Isak Dinesen in 1937. The book is a recollection of Blixen's life on her beloved coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills, as well as a tribute to  those who touched her life there. After she lost her plantation in 1931, Blixen returned to Denmark and embarked on a writing career that lasted until her death in 1962.

OBSTACLE

ph via flickr, arieth lin

"When I look at the large green iron gate from my window it takes on the air of a prison gate. An unjust feeling, since I know I can leave the place whenever I want to, and since I know that human beings place upon an object, or a person, this responsibility of being the obstacle when the obstacle lies always within one's self." - Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934

THE AVENUE

ph: craig fordham

"Long afterwards, she was to remember the moment when her life changed its direction. It was not predestined; she had a choice. Or it seemed she had. To accept or refuse. To take one turning down the crossroads to the future or another." - Evelyn Anthony, The Avenue of the Dead

A CHALET WITH A VIEW

I'm in the French Alps on a snowboarding trip. We rented a chalet in Méribel Mottaret. Amazing. There's a fantastic view from every angle. Like the one above.