Life, long.

Paris Exposition: Pont Alexandre III, Paris, France, 1900

Waiting for a new Leo to arrive and my best girl should be cooled with gold-tipped palm fronds, her feet massaged with fresh rosewater, flown in straight from Damascus. But girl of mine, being the sort who wears Bittersweets hoops with a perfect rope of pearls, is at work. After all, why else do yellow taxi cabs exist, if not to spirit a lady in early labor way uptown, to husband and hospital.

My castle, my books.

the third gatehouse of Oheka, model for Gatsby estate

Revisiting the incomparably gorgeous prose contained within the flyleaves of The Great Gatsby and I rediscover: I've got a touch of Nick Carraway's "provincial squeamishness." The beautiful people are not the good people.

Loose Affiliations

The Cosmological Eye, Henry Miller, 1939

I bought myself a tiny diamond-choked evil eye from India yesterday, which will hang, daily, from my neck. If carbon was my currency I would've come home with at least 4, if not more, for my band of beautifuls - 2 pregnant, 1 painting, some singing, all in love.

It's love, inclusions, surface scratches and all

Off to treasure hunt with Rony. We'll be blinded by the diamond-loving lights, but I'll feel positively Egyptian in my new Bittersweets neck ring.

Sick little furhead, we love you

Photo of my love by John Durgee, soon to be found at durgee.com.
"Sorry Julia," says John.

Modern moment, or what I did on Saturday night. I listened, and I loved Adam's Castle, too, but I must confess: I was dreaming of running home to Daisy Fay and James Gatz. Or less than running, strolling, maybe with a sneaky, late-night treat.

Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!

It's true: I'll have to brush up on my Norwegian

Odalisque by Howard Chandler Christy, 1933

Ravished by innovation. I might just peep all weekend.

I think I'm making it otherworldly

Marella Agnelli by Marina Cicogna

Last night was the last night with M. Swann. I'll keep groping around in the dark, mangling pansies, animating statues, mourning. Look! Marina Cicogna! It's never too late for an Act II.

Noir epices floating

frm W Magazine's blog

Looking for a little levity: looks like I've gotten myself lost.

Daisy chains

Ecstasy

Summer cold: quiet for today.

What did Edith say?

It seems as though I'm planning a holiday, stopping there, now here. While staying put this weekend, I got 4 dresses (black, lace, pale, & fringed), watched 3 French films (Bluebeard, A Girl Cut in Two, A Christmas Tale), twice ate Parmigiano-Reggiano with a balsamic reduction, and more than once had a tantrum. Je suis désolée.

As for Monet, turns out he smoked 40 cigarettes a day, & had a taste for fast cars and beautiful ladies.

"Their false shimmering marbles"

The heat shakes the insides: J. witnessed a flash-of-light robbery & then there was a man in cuffs. Handcuffs say to me a wild beast has been tamed, a spout of flames subdued and shackled. Deserved? Sure. Probably. But don't show me.

Let's go where terrible children play.

My, my, Mr. Wolf, how long your nose has grown

The Last Mistress: mildly debauched, tragic, gorgeous. Catherine Breillat, how tame you were!

My castle, my books.

Martha Graham

Liberating myself with Martha Graham: A Biography, by Don McDonagh. Watch out.

Lobsters in the kitchen

Ari Dein charmeuse short

It's all gone so feminine and floral. I want to make you nourishing trees and stone-fruit mountains. Come to my house, we'll listen to swinging records by the light of a million tea lights.

"You look like holiday"

Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin

We watched Slogan, and the World Cup at Rose. Spain won, he tells me. I didn't know, you see. I was too busy loving him, through rosé-colored lenses.

Dear Hillary, pt. II

"appartment figue tree" by Ensuite

I'll watch Wild Grass, you watch Hiroshima, Mon Amour. We'll have Resnais, old and new.

Drink Me

Bianca Jagger & The Secret Garden both from ?

I'm going to wade it out today, in a world of fantasy, and milk-and-honey lies.

My castle, my books.

Karl Lagerfeld's funeral flowers for Yves Saint Laurent

Devouring The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris. The sort of devouring whereby I had to wrench myself from the subway this morning on a too brief ride to Made Her Think.

"On and ever onwards"

Hiroshima Mon Amour Alain Renais, 1959

Towards the end of the book (the time is 1914) Demian says to his friend Sinclair: "There will be war...But you will see, Sinclair, that this is just the beginning. Perhaps it will become a great war, a very great war. But even that is just the beginning. The new is beginning and for those who cling to the old the new will be horrible. What will you do?"

The right answer would be: "Assist the new without sacrificing the old." The best servitors of the new - Hesse is an example - may be those who know and love the old and carry it into the new.
- from Thomas Mann's 1947 introduction to Demian by Herman Hesse

3-2-1

photo by Alison Scarpula, via TeenAngster

Some mornings, I think I have it, and then I must dismantle, knock precision from a pedestal. I start from the marble ground up until Cassandra confirms: I have it, or close enough.

A short wind

L'objet Invisible by Giacometti

Had a dream last night about 18' tall basketball players, loping around the grocery store where I was. They were horrifying, especially the woman, the equally looming paramour of one of the players, whose enormous breasts swayed violently, pendulously, exposed from the bottom of her too-short shirt. These giants were literally nightmarish Giacomettis, a revisiting of the Tripods who've haunted me since childhood. Turns out, we both dreamed of giants.

To set right this day: J. & 68 F.