a jersey girl in paris

A ballet of swans in the red-light district of...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:32:29 +0100

A ballet of swans in the red-light district of Amsterdam.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,	 
They paddle in the cold,	 
Companionable streams or climb the air;	 
Their hearts have not grown old;	 
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,	 
Attend upon them still.	 
  
But now they drift on the still water	  
Mysterious, beautiful;	 
Among what rushes will they build,	 
By what lake’s edge or pool	 
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day	 
To find they have flown away?

—from ‘Wild Swans at Coole,’ W.B. Yeats

As a child, he moved so much that it cut off almost all...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:28:54 +0100

As a child, he moved so much that it cut off almost all friendships, and this left a lasting mark on the adult. “I have only a vague address and a heart that is breaking,” he once wrote in an essay of a bicycle trip at 13, when he tried to find boys who had been his closest friends at an earlier residence. He never found them.

— Edward P. Jones

Teen girl to sailor in uniform: Can you do me a huge favor and...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:36:42 +0200

Teen girl to sailor in uniform: Can you do me a huge favor and let me kiss you?
Sailor: Man, you’re really twisting my arm huh?

—Top of Empire State Building
(proposition found at Overheard in New York.)

(photo found at LIFE: `Nautilus’ crewmen sightseeing at top of Empire State building, 1958.)

Soupir, Mallarmé.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:50:44 +0200

Soupir, Mallarmé.

6.10.39

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:12:00 +0200

Some more rain in the night & a little this morning. Some sunny periods, & not cold. Finished the flower garden. Planted two rows cabbage (36 plants). Cleared the place where the gooseberries are to go (it is too early to move them yet). Made experimentally a few briquettes of coal dust & clay. If successful will make a mould & a sieve for making them on a larger scale. Evidently it is important to use only fine dust, also one must have a large metal receptacle for mixing in.

Tonight found a kind of phosphorescent worm or millipede, a thing I have never seen or heard of before. Going out on the lawn I noticed some phosphorescence, & noticed that this made a streak which constantly grew larger. I thought it must be a glowworm, except that I had never seen a glowworm which left its phosphorescence behind. After searching with an electric torch found it was a long very slender wormlike creature with many thin legs down each side & two sort of antennae on the head. The whole length about 11/4”. Managed to catch him in a test-tube & bring him in, but his phosphorescence soon faded.

5 eggs.

Pale yellow, very wriggly. (legs relatively thinner than this.)

—George Orwell’s journal entry for this day, seventy years ago.
(via Orwell Diaries)

Don’t leave the lights on, Rune Guneriussen. Nuit Blanche...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:47:08 +0200

Don’t leave the lights on, Rune Guneriussen.
Nuit Blanche aux Buttes-Chaumont.
Their flashlights were following the advance of the little fishes.

Nathan Coley installation aux Buttes-Chaumont, Nuit Blanche...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:39:27 +0200

Nathan Coley installation aux Buttes-Chaumont, Nuit Blanche 2009.

Previous years taught me to never again leave the house during Nuit Blanche, as the night would, unquestionably, devolve into Nuit Désastre. But as one of the designated zones this year was just around the corner, I felt obligated to check it out. I did just a very quick tour; it’s a completely new experience when sober. I was also excited to get to cross the pont des suicidés, which I’d never before seen open.

La même voix, toujoursYves Bonnefoy I am like the bread you...

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:42:18 +0200

La même voix, toujours
Yves Bonnefoy

I am like the bread you will break,
Like the fire you will make, like the pure water
That will go with you on the earth of the dead.

Like the foam
That ripened the harbor and the light for you.

Like the evening bird that blots the shores.
Like the colder, brusquer, sudden evening wind.

-translation by Paul Auster

La rose de Paracelse, Jorge Luis Borges. [The other man] took...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:22:45 +0200

La rose de Paracelse, Jorge Luis Borges.

[The other man] took out a pouch and, with his right hand, emptied it onto the table : out flowed a stream of gold coins. Paracelsus turned his back to light the lamp. When he turned around again, he noticed, in the man’s left hand, a rose. The rose troubled him.

old-timey toy displayed in La Pedrera This was one of the very...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:56:01 +0200

old-timey toy displayed in La Pedrera

This was one of the very few times I took out the camera during my short holiday in Barcelona, which mostly involved but the sand, the sea, and the drink. (Needless to say, was more than a bit wistful returning home.)

rose et bleu et pomme et gingembre. currently been...

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:28:40 +0200

rose et bleu et pomme et gingembre.

currently been savoring : borges and homemade confiture.

MY AUNTS By Meghan O'Rourke Grew up on the Jersey Shore in...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:19:00 +0200

MY AUNTS
By Meghan O'Rourke

Grew up on the Jersey Shore in the nineteen-seventies.
Always making margaritas in the kitchen,
always laughing and doing their hair up pretty,
sharing lipstick and shoes and new juice diets;
always splitting the bills to the last penny,
stealing each other’s clothes,
loving one another then complaining
as they walked out the door. Each one with her doe eyes,
each one younger than the last,
each older the next year, one year
further from their girlhoods of swimming
at Sandy Hook, doing jackknives off the diving board
after school, all of them
being loved by one boy and then another,
all driving further from the local fair, further from Atlantic City.
They used to smoke in their cars,
rolling the windows down and letting their red nails
hang out, little stoplights:
Stop now, before the green
comes to cover up your tall brown bodies.

from the New Yorker.

(photo via LIFE archive: “A view of the beach at Atlantic City, the site of the Atlantic City Beauty Contest,” 1944.)

petit tuyau pour les parisiens : Cinéma en plein air...

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:12:35 +0200

petit tuyau pour les parisiens : Cinéma en plein air started tonight.

This year’s theme — Traversées :

…Mais ces voyages qui ont écrit l’Histoire étaient aussi des voyages intérieurs, réponse à l’éternelle question de la découverte de soi à travers celle du monde, comme dans la fameuse Chanson des Gardes suisses - “Notre vie est un voyage/ Dans l’hiver et dans la nuit/ Nous cherchons notre passage/ Dans un ciel où rien ne luit”…

Lucien Logette, Conseiller artistique du Cinéma en plein air

I will most likely be there for Into the Wild, Brokeback Mountain, Golden Door, and Fitzcarraldo.

Bal populaire du 14 juillet 1912 (Paris) —Fête nationale...

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:29:07 +0200

Bal populaire du 14 juillet 1912 (Paris) —Fête nationale française - Wikipédia

How I wish my tomorrow would look more like this..

You can’t fool me into thinking this film is steamy, sexy...

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:14:00 +0200

You can’t fool me into thinking this film is steamy, sexy times. I’ve seen that nightmare-demon show of a trailer.

Happy Fourth of July, folks, from a Jersey girl named...

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:40:00 +0200

Happy Fourth of July, folks, from a Jersey girl named Sandy.

(Bruce is singing to me, and me alone, by the bye.
Us down the shore on this warm July, our carnival life forever.)

ironstring: shutupinternet:

4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy) - Bruce Springsteen

(The Sounds of Summer)

It might be unhealthy of me to automatically follow anyone who posts a song from The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, but it hasn’t hurt me yet.

“Sandy” was the last song from WIESS, my favorite album forever and always, that I fell in love with. Immediately it sounds like the epitome of a song that has aged badly, something that can only exist in the end credits of a soapy 70s romance, what with Bruce’s whispers and the acoustic guitar and tunnel-of-love accordion and a girl named Sandy of all things. But then you realize that these lyrics (especially these verses) are the most beautiful lyrics to any song that has ever been written, and I don’t even think I can explain why.

And you know that tilt-a-whirl down by the south beach drag?

I got on it last night and my shirt got caught.

And they kept me spinning, didn’t think I’d ever get off.

Pilot: Before we start our ascent, an important question: Anyone...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:03:54 +0200

Pilot: Before we start our ascent, an important question: Anyone here from the North Allegheny high school class of ‘68?
-Silence.-
I always ask. I’m hoping at some point I’ll find my old girlfriend.

JetBlue flight
Pittsburgh, PA
(via Overheard Everywhere)

(Photo from LIFE : ROTC cadet Lieutenant William Ackenhauser snuggling in front seat of car with his date Joanne Warren..Kansas City, MO, 1945)

I once answered an ad looking for a nude model (one of the more...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:34:35 +0200

I once answered an ad looking for a nude model (one of the more audacious things I’ve ever done). The artists’ studio was located near the Place des Vosges, and it was filled with not-half-bad oil paintings, and sketches from the figure drawing class they taught. My interview consisted mostly of wine, cheese, discussions of my new Parisian life, being undressed for a bit, and a mouse that noisily scuttled about in his home underneath the floorboards. We tried to feed him some of the cheese to coax him out and join us, but he didn’t oblige. At the end, I never replied to the messages they left afterward, because I realized I am just not made of that much moxie.

(Photo from LIFE : Painter Fabius Gugel using nude model, partially covered with checked cloth, to sketch figure for center panel of his elevator mural seen in background behind model. Rome, 1950.)

All he needs is a good stone.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:48:00 +0200

This episode, during which a small part of me died, was a revelation: It was the first time anyone had asked me to prove that I could do the job I was applying for. All the answers and explanations, all the words about what I could do, were irrelevant. It was put up or shut up, and as I packed up my things to leave, Lloyd said the damnedest thing. He was a jeweler, he said. He could recognize a gem even when everyone else saw a stone. All he needs is a good stone, he said, and he could do the rest. An impressive and poignant metaphor, particularly for a man who apparently learned English by watching Dynasty, and it may explain why he never called again.

—Esquire article ‘Help Wanted’ by Richard Dorment,
who applied for 300 jobs & heard back from eight (via thedailywhat.)

The No Smoking Orchestra at Solidays 2009, Paris.Violinist is...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:11:48 +0200

The No Smoking Orchestra at Solidays 2009, Paris.
Violinist is keepin’ his eyes on you, man.

Can you spot me? I’m way in the back there,
to the right of that hulking black-walled structure in the crowd.

photo via their website.