Helplessly hoping.

1940s, 18 k bracelet, $4,800

1970s, 14k with 1.2 ct diamonds, $2200 (rather reasonable)

Buccellati, 18k and silver, $5000

1940s Seaman Schepps, gold, dia, sapphire, $50,000

1980s David Webb, 18k and 80 diamonds, $17,500

1970s Van Cleef and Arpels, 18k yellow and white gold, dia, pearl, $28,500

1950s Universal Geneve, 18k, $2550

1960s Pierre Sterle, 18k, sapphire, turquoise, dia, $19,500

20th century, silver and 18k, $4800

In these tough economic times, rather than long for that which is nearly, or nearly was attainable, I suggest you shoot for the stars, and dream of that which is simply absurd. Thanks to 1st Dibs for launching a jewelry component to their site, and helping me lust for insanity.

Ghost town, better than Vampire town, I suppose.

image frm tobequitefrank.com

A flu outbreak at my mother's home has sent me scurrying back to an empty Williamsburg. Being here during holiday break times feel like being on an abandoned film set. I've been watching lots of True Blood online. As a devotee of Six Feet Under, it seems only right to stop in.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

"I am bothered, when I get up in the morning- my real concern is to discover whether or not I'm in a state of grace."

Thanks giving for Leonard Cohen.

Take this longing from my tongue.

1900s green paste necklace frm Erie Basin

for green eyes, leonard and leonard disposed of cigarettes

Space madness.

After watching The Tenant, I wonder what it is with the Roman Polanski and people losing their marbles in their apartments? Never houses, mind you, always apartments.

Topshop, stay home.

The arrival of Topshop on our fair shores makes me nervous and even slightly unhappy. It all feels too easy, this fashion thing, and Topshop will up the ante enormously, in a hysterical sort of way. That being said, please someone retrieve Susie Bubble's feather skirt for me. Please!

Check out my ear, yo!

A genius and affordable gift from the genius (and affordable?) Rony at Catbird- alphabet studs! The best part is that they're sold individually so you can spell out whatever warms your heart. Despite the fact that she is currently trying her hardest to rip apart a special pillow (a challenge when you're approximately zucchini sized), I'd go with T(ee)P(ee). Gold for me ($40 per), but silver's available, too ($28 per).

En pointe.

I slipped into the Target with my brother and mother over the weekend, where I spied this perfect plaid shirt in the little boys section for $9.99. I'm going to recover it over Thanksgiving break (it's nice to be of a certain age, nearly, and still refer to it as a break), and pair it with high-waisted jeans, my beloved Svens boots, and my imaginary Tom Binns cutlery cuff. Shirah and I were talking the other day about how despite my love of Mad Men, it has yet to inspire me aesthetically, in that I can appreciate, I just have no, no, no desire to re-create sartorially, with the exception of Betty Draper's equestrian look, which I think is just perfect. Oh, and of course Midge and Bobbie Barrett satisfy the black-clad bohemian and dishabille-throaty-kook thing I so admire.

I may be knitting a ranch house.

I admit it, I do. Though totally pedestrian, I totally love Breakfast at Tiffany's. Norman Mailer helps me justify myself:

He (Truman Capote) had a lovely poetic ear. He did not have a good mind. I don't know if there was ever a large idea that bothered him for one minute. While he wrote poetically, he didn't think like a poet. He didn't have that concentrated sense of metaphor that a poet works toward. But he had a sense of time and place. Breakfast at Tiffany's, for example, is on the one hand a slight book. Looking at it with a hard Marxist eye, it's a charlotte russe. On the other hand, if you want to capture a period in New York, no other book has done it so well...He could capture period and place like few others.

I must say, that after spending so many warm hours with Tru, I feel awfully guilty sending him out to sea like that.

Silhouetted by the sea

I'm quite excited to be the winner of Mon Petit Fantome's custom silhouette contest. I can't wait to see my likeness, rendered in shadow and line, by the darling, little ghost-mastermind, Chad.

Ev'ry thing's all right

Doesn't this 2004 photo feel like it was lifted straight out of I'm Not There?

My castle, my books.

Colette by Irvin Penn

I can't get enough of Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career by George Plimpton. It's the kind of not being able to get enough which is hazardous to general productivity. I love this description of Colette, offered by Eugene Walter:

She sat on one of the four sofas preening like a great pussycat. I'm certain she flung her mascara on with a tablespoon, then took a toothpick to pry out a peephole.

Mayle mourning.

Elizabeth Street just won't be the same without Mayle. If you really love me, you'll buy me the Justinian dress from Mayle's final collection.

Alias- the Logic Man.

Don't even try and win an argument with my friend Andrew. Hitherto, we were all quite excited that the New York Times had dubbed him "a musician." Well, now the New York Post informs us that Andrew's got an army- an army of logic soldiers.

Will you be my girlfriend?

Mon Petit Fantome reminded me the I really do want to watch Let the Right One In, the highly- lauded Swedish vampire film, despite my general dislike of blood. I appreciate the good work that blood does, I'd just rather not know about it.

I would normally share the trailer with you, but trailers for foreign films always feel full of strange noises and silences- rather than reminding viewers that foreign films are in a foreign tongue, they just omit dialogue all together and replace with quiet, tense moments or raucous laughter.

Though I fear fish, I long for the detritus of seaside living.

publicity stills from Million Dollar Mermaid, 1952, a seminal film in my early development, which doesn't really account for my dislike of opening my eyes underwater

Word on the street is that Coney Island will be hosting it's very own Flea by the Sea, beginning in April, running through December. The thought of the treasures to be had has me somewhat in a frenzy; I'm wondering if I could recover my great-grandmother's lost gold-gilded settee, or at the very least, bring home an underwater vase of my own.

Tete a tete.

I can't wait to dine at the new Vinegar Hill House.

Women in the Forest

I had an idea for a play a few years ago, a confluence of love and ancestors. I never (or better still, have not yet) wrote said play, but this 1920 painting by Marie Laurencin, is strikingly similar to what I had envisioned. There's a photo, too, of Jean Rhys that is the aesthetic, though not emotional, crucible of it all, but darned if I just can't find it anywhere.

Jezebel holiday cards, for one, and preferably, all.

eliot's ghost treads the phosphorescent snow (letterpress)

the darlings glowed in the violet hour (letterpress)

royal missed the quiet, mirrored museum of childhood

rupert the shy retirer, ate chestnuts and violet crumbles

monkeys made plans on a bench inlaid with rubies and pearls

ada's faded revolutionaries all in gleaming furs

ruby knew the mild, wild luminosity of deep december

Dear Friends-

As regular readers here, I'm sure you had no intention of using anything but Jezebel holiday cards this season. To facilitate, I've gathered together here all Jezebel holiday specific cards, though I'm sure you creatives could make one of our many other cards work for your particular needs. All cards are available at www.ilovejezebel.com, at a reasonable cost of $15 for a box of 7 or $18 for a box of 6 letterpress cards. Sure, you can buy them individually too, but you are all so dear that I'm sure your list of beloveds is very, very long.

yours very truly, Jezebel

Far into the cosmos.

I will be toiling away this evening, but you should go hear what the fuss at the Village Voice is about. Monuments plays Union Pool tonight.

Tis the season?

I just got home from installing a holiday window. On my walk to the subway I saw this dress. It's much nicer in person. Or, at least in nicer in the window, walking by after working 11 hours overnight. I want it. I'm not sure where I'd wear it; I'm not sure where I wouldn't wear it. I'm depending on my favorite secret discount store to summon it up for me on my next visit.

It was the 90s, and I wore vintage Levi's and Eternity.

I once owned these flowered Doc Martens. I loved them so, I couldn't bear to wait for the proper size 8 or 8.5 to arrive, so I allowed my sweet father to buy me the size 9 that was in the store. I wore them with 2 pairs of socks. A girl in Japan now owns my too-big boots; I think that big-footed girls are very charming.

(images frm the new-to-me Cherry Blossom Girl)

A sense of place/Eudora Welty, revisited.

William Faulkner's desk

Flannery O'Connor's bedroom

Eudora Welty's library

I've been slowly adding the entirety of Jezebel's stationery onto Etsy, just on the off chance that the same people who troll Etsy for treasures aren't visiting www.ilovejezebel.com on a daily basis. I'm sure it couldn't be true, but I wouldn't want to take a chance, so I'm making buying bales of Jezebel wares easy for all parties: eventually the full line will be available on my website and in my Etsy store. This morning while adding daphne swooning in her garden I stumbled across the Susana Graph series of photos, A Sense of Place. I like how clean and orderly her work is, she doesn't obscure the weight of her subjects with a thick sepia tinge of unnecessary nostalgia.

Gone East, to meet Eudora Welty.

a note from David Foster Wallace, found here

David Foster Wallace always meant to me my friend C. going off to rehab, and coming home 28 days later, dubiously improved with the exception of having digested Infinite Jest whole. Gabe sent me a Rolling Stone profile yesterday of DFW, which is one of the more striking pieces I've read in quite a while. The thing of non-fiction, is how to mesh the current language, the language of the writer, with the world inhabited by the subject. David Lipsky has captured an echo of a man, brought to life by the precision of the love of his family and his best friend, Jonathan Franzen.

Despite his struggle, Wallace managed to keep teaching. He was dedicated to his students: He would write six pages of comments to a short story, joke with his class, fight them to try harder. During office hours, if there was a grammar question he couldn't answer, he'd phone his mother. "He would call me and say, 'Mom, I've got this student right here. Explain to me one more time why this is wrong.' You could hear the student sort of laughing in the background. 'Here's David Foster Wallace calling his mother.' "

And they did, abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

Michelle and Sasha Obama Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention August 2008
by Elizabeth Peyton for W Magazine

Last night, I was thinking about the bookends- those who fought the Civil Rights battle, and those so small, whose first memories will include President Obama, and who might not have the chance to be inculcated with muck and mire. It was a hard night to not be wildly hopeful and long for an Americana that has only existed in dreamscapes to spring forth into reality. I was thinking of the poets, too. Of Dylan, whose acute sense of injustice denies him the need for didacticism, and Toni Morrison, who wrote this, in an open letter of endorsement to Barack Obama nearly a year ago:

In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.

Bestill my beating heart.

I own an extremely battered leather couch. I long to own a clatch of battered sequined pillows.

Treasure and pleasure.

the borrowed glamour of jenny the pirate bride

Bawdy, ridiculous, highly effective.
Helena Christensen, pirate queen? Yes, please.
See Pirate Provocateur in it's entirety here.