but at least we try

One is prepared for friendship, not for friends. And sometimes not even for friendship, but at least we try: usually we flail in the darkness, a darkness that`s not foreign to us, a darkness that comes from inside us and meshes with a purely external reality, with the darkness of certain gestures, certain shadows that we once thought were familiar and that in fact are as strange as a dinosaur.

Sometimes that`s what a friend is: the distant shape of a dinosaur crossing a swamp, a dinosaur that we can`t grab or call or warn of anything. Friends are strange: they disappear. They`re very strange: sometimes, after many years, they turn up again and although most have nothing to say to us anymore, some do, and they say it. Excerpt from "Friends are strange", in Between Parentheses by Roberto Bolaño. New Directions. 2011.p.135 via Sparks and Kicks

Shirt: Margaret Howell at Creatures of Comfort

or do i want to be you?

First this:

There is this German word,Lohmaunsheit, which describes a certain ambivalent kind of affection one may feel with particular others, be the acquaintanceship friendly or romantic - do I want to be with you, or do I want to be you? At its core it is the instinct that longs for being an entity, a closed circuit, that recognizes oneself in another but the other, whilst almost entirely alike, also possessing just a fractionmore of something unnamable but undeniably real and really lacking in oneself, just the missing bit to being a complete person. Lohmaunsheit is longing with equal force for both togetherness with and the annihilation of someone, because they are the same. That is fine so far, were it not for the appendix - per definitionLohmaunsheit is always unrequited. It is you as the external me and me knowing that to be true because the feeling is just too strong, yet you just not seeing it, and me knowing that this negates our mirroring on a fundamental level, but that impossibility seeming impossible in itself. That is its inherent tragedy.—Karolina Elyse Watson, Everything

And then this:

you guys. i’m sorry to announce that i made this whole thing up. i made up a german-sounding word and ascribed a random melancholic-pretty definition to it, made up a quote from a made up source by a made up author to describe it. i did it after i saw something similar about an icelandic word on my dash, and i thought to myself, “that’s so cool, even though they could have made that word up, how would i know, but what does that matter”, so i decided to try myself to see what happened. a bunch of likes and reblogs happened but nobody called me out on it and now i feel like a jerk because i’m writing this explanation unasked and because i mean i do think myself that it really doesn’t matter if a word or whatever is “real” or not as long as it resonates with you and gives you something, which incidentally is also what i think about authenticity in pop culture, e.g. lana del rey, so in hindsight it makes no sense that i did this in the first place. the end. From Herzschrittmacher

Photo: Chateau Marmont by Gia Coppola for Lula

clara

in the Salty Dirty Water Dress Tent by Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao. They'll be at artMKT this weekend.

if you want to be crazy romantic

tie the ring to a string and propose to her on TOP of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Photos and proposal: my friend Drew of Improv Society

sometimes resting

Amos & Boris via UE

a mercy

"And Florens, poor Florens, she was completely smitten." A Mercy, Toni Morrison (for Clara)

Photo from Kissssing, a Love Blog from Porter Hovey

and today

at Clara's graduation from SJSU, 24 Japanese American students who were forcibly removed from California universities to be interned during World War II were honored with degrees as part of the California State University's Nisei Diploma Project.

Photo Dorothea Lange

the thing about jennifer

is that she thinks I look like Josephine Baker.

woolgathering & miscellany

This from Woolgathering and some others here and here.

1. dancing in the kitchen all night with my friends
2. girls on motorcycles
3. stories that fit on one page and novels so skinny they can be used as bookmarks
4. falling asleep in the tent
5. brazilian girls who want to teach me to samba
6. writing and revising and revising and revising
7. eating bagels and cream cheese and thinly sliced red onions with the goddaughter
8. doing anything at all with the goddaughter
9. when my friends sell their books (vanessa, you're next)
10. and reruns of Nurse Jackie

Visit Woolgathering's 10, they're pretty awesome. And I'll add Look Mom to that list.

Photo: "Michelle" by Jennilee Marigomen in 01 Magazine via Jen

if you were with me

Mom and I went to Heath Ceramics, Afghanistan, and saw the Soul Children of Chicago. There were temari balls and cookies with D's mom. And chapino with Jeff and Silke, Christmas dinner with Kathleen, Slumdog Millionaire with Clara, elephant seals with Ally and Masin...

Edith Heath from Heath Ceramics: The Complexity of Simplicity

for you for me

Headband from PIP-SQUEAK-CHAPEAU for my friend Ally, shoes for me.

yes, I have friends

My friend Kenny came to visit last week. Check out his documentary about Bolivian women wrestlers here.

the bear and the bomb

My friend Ally is reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Here are Eugenides and Jonathan Safran Foer in BOMB Magazine,

JSF: As long as we’re talking about contemporary writing… Who’s your favorite contemporary writer?

JE : Right now my favorite writer is A. A. Milne. Let me give you a sample of why:

Rabbit leant over further than ever, looking for his [stick], and Roo wriggled up and down, calling out, “Come on, stick! Stick, stick stick!” and Piglet got very excited because his was the only one which had been seen, and that meant that he was winning.

“It’s coming!” said Pooh.

“Are you sure it’s mine?” squeaked Piglet excitedly.

“Yes, because it’s grey. A big grey one. Here it comes! A very . . . big . . . grey . . . Oh, no, it isn’t. It’s Eeyore.”

And out Eeyore floated.

“Eeyore!” cried everybody.

Looking very calm, very dignified, with his legs in the air, came Eeyore from beneath the bridge.

“It’s Eeyore!” cried Roo, terribly excited.

“Is that so?” said Eeyore, getting caught up by a little eddy, and turning slowly round three times. “I wondered.”

The Bride and the Bear by Two Sarahs.

friends

Today's inspiration via the terrific Childhood Flames.

needle & use

My friend Holly says, "All the beautiful things, we don't need to own them all." Needle jeans and Use top from Acne.

for holly

Andy Goldsworthy made the fissure
In front of (what we still call) The new de Young Museum.

best friends

Photo by Chiara Romagnoli for Amelia's Magazine via for me, for you.

look book

They're terrific, right? I think, for me, all you need are cool glasses, a striped shirt and a best friend. From New York Magazine Look Book.

scatter joy

Awesome smiles. And their outfits are sort of perfect. From Bored & Beautiful.

scout

Just a quickie today: my childhood friend Joe sent me this lovely bowl cut. Mary Badham played Scout in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird. I just listened to a wonderful recording, the audio book read by Sissy Spacek.