nature of thoughts

"It is in the nature of thoughts to follow upon one another." Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I sure hope so. Photo, Gypsy Rose Lee 1941.

three things

Three things I like about Liz: she reads Francesca Lia Block; she reads Angela Carter; and instead of having an imaginary friend, she has imaginary boardshorts.

more mociun

I would wear these everyday. Actually I did (1980).

in the beginning

The new Contemporary Jewish Museum will finally open in June. The SF Public Library is having a series of lectures about the Daniel Libeskind-designed building. Talk about a destination neighborhood. Within a few blocks, we'll have this, the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, Yerba Buena, MOMA, and The Museum of African Diaspora. And did I mention the Samovar Tea Lounge in Yerba Buena Gardens?

the empty bed

“Here's a trick I found for how to finally get some sleep. I sleep in my husband's bed. That way the empty bed I look at is my own.” Amy Hempel, "Nashville Gone to Ashes." I'm carrying around my copy of Hempel's The Collected Stories. Photo by Anne Kristoff on Etsy.

blind date

"A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o'clock, I am not going to answer the door." Amy Hempel "Tonight is a Favor to Holly." Cover from Bon Magazine.

brighton beach 1936

My papa (little boy, left) is in town this weekend. Back soon.

surprised recognition

"You can't show anyone anything he hasn't seen already, on some level - any more than you can tell anyone anything he doesn't already know. It is the function of the artist to evoke the experience of surprised recognition: to show the viewer what he knows but does not know that he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition." William Burroughs.

"Untitled" by Gottfried Helwein, from ZYZZYVA, Spring '06.

borrowed dress

"...like a pretty dress for a party, which, once worn, changes the life of the one who borrows it." Ann Lauterbach, The Night Sky. Found Lauterbach via the pitch-perfect Either the Drapes Go or I Do. Dress from saltwater.

fear of flying

A shirt for flying dreams. y-3 at Oak NYC.

oba

There were many amazing things about Naropa in the late eighties. But magic, real, heart-pounding magic? Don Cherry was magic.

I never stopped loving you

Why so glum, model? It's a lovely suit.

upstair's at eric's

Yaz. Don't tell me you don't remember.

kiss me

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am." Sylvia Plath. Image from Alice in Wonderland, via Loveology.

ligne claire

"I essentially spent two years locked in my garage, hidden from the world, and living the interior life of a teenage girl." Phoebe Glockner wins a Guggenheim award. Via Maude Newton.

cannery row

Two people I'd love to know: Olle Lundberg and his wife, Mary Breuer, live aboard the Maritol, a decommissioned Icelandic car ferry docked at Pier 54 in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. More pictures and article at NYTimes.

fitful morning

"Bruges" 2005, Sally Gall. Via Hollister Hovey.

like lorraine

Found this gorgeous dress via sea lorraine, who I found via bits and bobbins. Gorgeous for any number of reasons, but as my goddaughter says, everyone loves an exposed zipper.

barber shop

From Un Fille Comme Moi.

velvet underground

More bowl cuts, loosely interpreted. From the Swedish label, Lick my label.

the reality of desire

Do I spend a fair bit of time coveting this windbreaker? Yes, yes I do. Via NOTCOUTURE.

snow is falling all the time

I found Snow is Falling all the Time via Joshua Clover's selections on UbuWeb.

paris 1968

"I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires," anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968. Protest in Paris 1968: Photographs by Serge Hanbourg at the UC Berkeley Art Museum through June 1.

Serge Hambourg: Jean-Luc Godard filming, May 13, 1968

bear hug

By kg&ab on Poppytalk Handmade.

everybody is ugly

All I want are cutoffs.Alexander Wang. Probably easy for a designer to make the perfect cutoffs.
This is from Everybody is Ugly. She's a master of the cutoff (and she has amazing clothes. Look at this white Helmut Lang blazer. A white Helmut Lang blazer? Heavenly.).

transient

Evans says of the transience of fashion, "Everything new and beautiful seems to arrive already haunted by its own demise." Someday soon I will stop checking this book out from the library and buy my own copy.

Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness

a place where everyone is famous

My most favorite film that I haven't seen yet. Click here to watch the trailer. Mister Lonely is opening in the US on May 2. Via Starworks.

secret games

"People's conceptions of children are very far from who children actually are..." Wendy Ewald.

One of my heroes, I first saw Ewald's work at the Whitney Biennial in 1997. It wasn't a photo taken by Ewald, but one created -- like the one above -- by a young girl. Ewald is a collaborator as children photograph their dreams.

Denise Dixon, Self-Portrait Reaching for the Red Star Sky, 1977, Wendy Ewald

I like fashion. I like toast.

My goddaughter and I love Fashion Toast.

freaks and geeks

I will never regret the 18 hours I spent watching Freaks and Geeks.

modern friendship

Clara believes that I edited Lopate’s quote too aggressively. Here it is in full: "Still, it was not until the age of thirty that I reluctantly abandoned the Best Friend expectation and took up a more pluralistic model. At present, I cherish a dozen friends for their unique personalities, without asking that any one be my soul-twin." So, instead of a soul twin, it's more like a soul tribe. A cacophony of catastrophic personalities (Modern Friendship).

Image from Janfamily via touchy-feely.

twilight of the superheroes

Looking at a painting takes a certain composure, a certain resolve, but when you really do look at one it can be like a door swinging open, a sensation, however brief, of vaulting freedom. It's as if, for a moment, you were a different person, with different eyes and different capacities and a different history—a sensation, really, that's a lot like hope. From "The Flaw in the Design," by Deborah Eisenberg.

Painting: Seascape (Contrejour), 1969 by Gerhard Richter.

jack and rose

My grandfather's entry in his sister's graduation book, circa 1915.

disparitions

Feeling both expansive and confined this morning.

Sans titre n°89, disparitions series, 2005, by Mathieu Bernard-Reymond.

inheritance

In the 1970s, my friend Holly was the coolest girl who ever left Newark for Tucson. She was wicked-smart, beautiful, and had a library of ironic t-shirts. This weekend, Holly bequeathed three decades worth of the paper thin, rock & roll shirts to her daughter. Emily slipped one on, stuffed the rest in her backpack, and hit the road.

les poppys

Les Poppys. There must be a bowl cut in there somewhere.

une fille comme moi

I had this hairstyle for most of my childhood. We called it the mushroom. It didn't suit me like it does her. From un fille comme moi.

barber shop

The one on the left has a terrific bowl cut, a modern day Fernande Barrey. From The Sartorialist.

bowl cuts

In honor of Milano Chow's t-shirt, I've decided to dedicate the weekend to bowl cuts. Fernande Barrey had a beautiful bowl cut, although when Modigliani painted her it looked more like a bob. Ugly Earring, maybe the best blog ever, has a great post about Barrey's 1917 meeting, love affair and marriage to Tsuguharu Foujita.

blood is the new black

I bought this t-shirtBut I wish I bought this one (click it to view)Milano Chow knows her way around a bowl cut.

soul twin

I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately. That gummy jungle. Maybe I cling without reason to the adolescent ideal that a best friend is a soul twin. As Phillip Lopate says, "Best Friendship promotes such a merging of identities, such seeming boundarylessness..." In his thirties, he writes, he gave up the Best Friend model for a more pluralistic one.

I'm in my thirties. Maybe it's time for me to give up.

(Photo of best friends, origin unknown.)

samurai over serbia

Fishtank Ensemble will be in SF on May 2 at a lovely neighborhood venue: Red Poppy Art House.

down in the cellar

Adolescent love: "At that age my love for her was very intuitive and limitless with total ignorance of her meaning..." Bjork sings "Boho Dance" on A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Photo by Jean-Baptiste Mondino).

seventeen reasons why

sfgirlbybay reminded me how much I miss this sign.

Turns out that local film archivist Stephen Parr rescued the pieces.

who by fire

Conspiracy of Beards, handsome men in ill-fitting suits, sing the songs of Leonard Cohen.

if wishes were horses

Then I would buy this painting by Mark Rothko. White Center, 1950, will be sold by Sotheby's on May 15. Via NYT.