sappy holidays.

i'm not usually a sappy music person. but this cover, used in the current john lewis christmas ads, is really stark in its beauty (& fits my criteria for stunning cover songs). the video makes me miss england, deeply. hope everyone is hanging in--stringing their lives with lights & enjoying the beginning of december's snowglobing.

exchanging traditions

since Z & i come from different religious backgrounds, our holidays have been an amazing exchanging of traditions.* at the moment, amidst one of the most stressful semesters yet, Z has been feeling particularly separated from his family & culture. so, we're trying to plan a rendezvous, a trip to this exhibit sometime before march, & we've been on the lookout for a menorah. it's important to Z to find one that is fitting to us--not something that feels like a going-through-the-motions. for the past few weeks i've been on the hunt for a kind of Z&C heirloom. this morning i found the perfect match--vintage-modern & tied to our love of peacock feathers. what wonder! jonathan adler designed this for the jewish museum & it's perfection. though we know we'll use it for a lifetime, at the moment it's a bit out of our budget. time to start saving pennies.

*i grew up catholic (though my family is not particularly religious) and Z is jewish.

how do you like them apples

scanner connected. polaroids uploaded. apples suspended.

stamps & fishes & words, oh my!

a surprise package containing: the most gorgeous chinese stamps, the perfect-sized pages for recording lines of poetry, a polaroid of the sun & ocean (a polaroid folks!)*, a tiny spoon which will soon be covered in honey, the sparkler of a new book (which looks fantastically fragmented), & the feathered lines of a calligraphy notebook!

oh how the glittering contents were well worth the wait.** it truly amazes me how we come to be connected with strangers (who then become unstrangered), through this virtual space of blogging. and isn't it equally amazing how we can physically connect with people through something so simple as the post? this shimmering package swooped me up into full sunlight in the middle of a dreary and stressful fall. thanks jenna! you are, yourself, quite the light-filled wonder!

*no one has ever gifted me a polaroid. & this one made me a little teary. i love the idea of the bleached sun & salty air that someone else has experienced.

**i get that it is masochistic to receive something in the mail and force yourself not to open it, but a gal needs a carrot sometimes to get through her grading.

valentined mail

while i was away in mythaca this weekend (where i attended a poetry reading, caught up & drank bourbon with this amazing lady) a little package arrived for me. a package sent from my valentine! & though i promised myself no opening until after grading (3 papers left, one 2-hour class to go) i can hardly contain myself. soon soon soon. & then i will post some peaks!

(image via here}

swamp things.

anyone who tells you that your first semester teaching a new class is going to be "fine" should probably be kicked in the shins. numerous times. i'm closing down on week 6 of the quarter. & i'm a complete swamp--sticky with essays & an apartment exposed to the tornado (& subsequent debris) of no-time-to-deal. Z has been a rockstar with cooking & cleaning & i have been...a swamp thing. (albeit a functional teacher swamp!). because we're commuting this semester (Z lives in ithaca three days a week, where he's a student) everything seems so much harder to focus on. when you don't see your man all that often, what is a clean bathroom anyway?! the truth is, next quarter will be better. easier. less numbingly fast! & i will be a better writer. will find less snags to my must-write-more-than-one-night-a-week plans. will remember that there is nothing like the feeling of finishing a piece. not even the feeling of that piece getting accepted. (though they are close! & i have had a sweet streak of acceptances in the past month). our scanner should be up and running soon(ly). then there will be wild apple polaroids & apartment snapshots. i swear. for now, a sneak-peak.

p.s. this shot is not photoshopped.

no alarms no surprises

with a new landslide of papers to grade, manuscript contests to send off to, & fellowship deadlines, i've been looking for music which is little more calming. this cover, one of my favorite songs in its original form, crushes me in the best way. for me, a killer cover must be executed well enough to sound like it could have been written by the covering artist. regina does this one spare. cooled down. beautiful. it's a perfect september weather song--all drizzle & chill. not so much a glooming feeling as it is a slowing down of the whole body. a heartsleep.

i promise an actual post soon, complete with wild apple polaroids. and sun. shine.

p.s. all the proceeds from purchasing this song on itunes go to doctors without borders emergency relief fund.

nova scotia dreaming

Z & i often listen to this song when we're missing nova scotia. or thinking about a slower, quieter life. plus the video is fantastic--i'm a total sucker for whimsy. this week i've been rediscovering older music in my collection & having small fits of something akin to nostalgia. for instance, this morning i drove to give my 8am lecture blasting sleater-kinney. it was better than cake for breakfast. seriously.

eating books

i don't know what has come over me these past few weeks. while it is not unusual at all for me to be reading voraciously, eating books, obessing through & through. it is unusual for me to spend all my time (and i mean every free moment) inside of pages. maybe it's something about the chill of september. about being a commuter couple. about needing to read other, more important things than those i use to prep or teach. maybe it's about remembering what language is, does, can do. i admit, i post single books in the "what i'm reading" sidebar. but the reality is, by the time i remember to change them, i've often read two or three other books. or was always reading them all at once. (for the secret record, i am too scared to post titles of super young contemporary poets i am reading, for fear they will google themselves and find the blog. i write this anonymously, as i don't always want my shoes choices up for grabs amidst my writer peers. the writing blog will come. slow. slow as an author page). today i finished this. what a whirlwinding. a life change. a sea change. a sea. i already loved her language. her world view. her microscope lens. but now, now, now. i find myself listening to the futures. to how things have been, will be, become.

language. my god, what language can do.

year of the paper

Z & i were just-moved-back-from-london poor when our one-year rolled around. so, taking into consideration that the first anniversary material is paper, we made a few explicit rules: neither of us was allowed to spend more than 5 dollars on our gifts & it had, in some way, to be homemade (i admit i broke the cost rule--Z forgave me because the expensive part was technically a preservation technique). over the course of our year in london, i saved every ticket we used to travel--into the city & out, to other countries & back, even the receipts for things like riding the thames clipper to greenwich. since every ticket is paper, and every city/travel method had a distinct color & quality, it seemed perfect for my present. with some rocktastic help from my sister & her husband, i took all the tickets & designed a sort of mosaic/quilting of our travels, pasted all of them individually onto black foam board & then put the board into a 25'' by 37'' frame (it really is a boatload of tickets!). this collecting, this papered timeline, was my way of celebrating & preserving our first year of marriage. (i particularly love the date/time stamps, saying where we were when). amidst a lot of difficult far-awayness that we felt last year, we survived! so here's to first years!

p.s. if you click on the second photo you can see details. & please excuse the terrible glare/bad photos--i swear the frame is level on the wall, i was just standing on something to take the shot!

first weeks

my first week as an adjunct professor: survived. second week: started. we spent this weekend at a wedding in ohio, so i already feel a little behind. the northeast weather is fully falling, cooler. the air smells like chilled grass, the wet peels of potatoes. a wind is constantly tangling my hair. it's a perfect kind of dreary. all this rain & a sudden urge for tights. beds. boots & hikes through slow-turning leaves, their colors flickering on like florescent bulbs. it's hard to imagine that a little over a week ago it was 98, blazing. i am dreaming of apples, cinnamon, mugs of hot drinks for warming one's hands.

{picture from our rooftop. can you believe the trees? the moody light? yes, we live in the city.}

stop. hammer time.

first morning of teaching. in fact, by the time this goes up i'll already be half way through class one (oh yes, it's sunshine classes at 8am). let's hope my day goes a little like this: unexpected hammer dance in shiny-gold hammer pants? hell. yes.

the last day of summer

dear summer,

you were much too short for me--between moving & job hunting & then scrambling to prepare a syllabus. i forgive you, of course. because there will be another one of you next year. & at that, hopefully one where Z & i are elatedly celebrating heading off to yet a new place, but this time for a more permanent time. meaning, there will be extra room for camping & bike riding & lazing about on rooftops. for letter-writing & poetry. in the end, i admit that you were a bit hot for my taste. this was a year where i was forced into shorts & a bathing suit. a little unwillingly. (though i really adore swimming, so thanks). i'll admit i'm super glad it's sleeve weather again. i love sleeves. & layerings. & not having to sweat to death every time i open a window. also, the grey skies make me feel cozy. i'm an eastcoaster, summer. & i actually like snow. don't worry though, i'm sure i'll miss you come march. but, by then, you'll already be on your way back.

love,

c

{image via slate}

horses of course

me & these pony prix tights need each other. unfortunately, i just don't know if i can pull these off as teaching attire. & teaching attire is all that's in the tiny budget these days. yesterday, while searching for my classrooms after a department meeting, someone asked me if i was a freshman. yikes! i've been trying to figure out how to feel professionally dressed while still looking like myself (not like some weirdo in business clothes). apparently, even all gussied up i look like a student when i'm lost (which is sad, again, for the pony tights & their youthfulness).* it was easier to feel like i could get away with dressy dark jeans at cornell since i was hired to teach after being a grad student there. not so much with the new job. so people--any suggestions?!

* i once jumped off a very high bridge to avoid being called a "skirt"--obviously there's nothing worse to a tomboy than being called a lady! if my fifteen-year-old self could have seen me coveting tights & with a closet-full of 50s party dresses, she would surely have fainted.

renewing our vow(el)s

after five months of careful setting aside, we finally replaced my lost wedding band. on sunday night we sat down to look through the wedding photos & imagine the day over. & when we were filled up by, brimming over with, on the edges of all that light all over again, we went to the rooftop of our new place & performed a small ritual for the ring renewal. we exchanged vows & made new promises to each other; we blessed our first year & the years to come. while it kills me a little that at the end of our lives Z's ring will have the wear of a full marriage & i will be minus a year--really, it's the kick ass marriage that matters.

the vows we exchanged & exchanged again:

I am committed to this joining together of two as two—to the complex connection of tissue and light, which comes with a marriage. I am committed to maintaining the intense, vast, & sometimes-secret universes that we found in each other when we met. I am committed to protecting your solitude in order for our passions to be fulfilled & particularly to protecting the ambition that sparked us into ignition. I am committed to you in moments of disrepair & sorrow, stress & sickness, but especially to making sure there is even more laughter and light in these moments. I am committed to the delicacy & lacing of your heart and its many-leveled chambers. I am committed to loving you through these bright cells of our beginning & into the brighter cells of our growing old together. I am committed to you as memory, as now, & as an unfolding lifetime. I am committed to your more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

bullfighter jacket

can't get enough of this poppy tune. seriously. how can you not dig these lines: "you've got your bullfighter's jacket on, with nothing beneath. i had to take my mask off to kiss you in the street"? for me, there's nothing like bizarre love songs.

(every semester i assign my students the task of writing a bizzare/odd love poem. it's a great way to get them using more interesting metaphors. as in, no you cannot describe someone's eyes as being like the sky. unless it's another planet's sky? then maybe.)

teen angst

occasionally i feel a bit sad that i didn't meet Z sooner (my parents met at 19 & 21 and my sister & her husband met at 19& 20). i wonder if we would have hit it off as more immature versions of ourselves? here were are, both around 17 or 18. keep in mind, i actually have sort of strawberry dirty blonde curly hair (oh 90s straightening fads). whereas Z's hair is naturally that jet black. (lucky guy--he never had a bad-goth-dye moment). the photo of me was taken just before prom. my friend gloria made the dress & i'm wearing elbow-length white gloves. over my shoulder you can see my high school boyfriend's little brother. the photo of Z was taken while he was recovering from a wild mugging where he was punched while holding a sheet pizza (long story). he ducked under the first swing and was hit by the second. the doctors had to put two metal plates in his face. (his girlfriend at the time didn't visit him in the hospital. which crushes me. obviously, my louis brooks self would have brought him silent films & cookies). on the positive side--while recovering those long hours in bed, Z taught himself sleight of hand magic tricks. like how to pull an egg from his future wife's ear.

not quite back into my computer yet. thought it's becoming long sleeve weather. as soon as i'm done syllabusting, i may have time for normal people things--like phone calls & blogging.

patio games

backyard scrabble = genius. also, did you know tonight there is this? get to your rooftops. watch.

(via designcrush}

bench marks

i have a real thing for brightly painted old wood. & vintage buoys. i mean, who doesn't love a word which simultaneously means a warning or navigational mark & to keep things afloat, a mood lifted. i don't know why, but outside of niece/sister/husband/general people-related goodness, the last couple of days sucked. seriously. stress + heat + unpacking books + having no place to unpack books has meant a lot of crankiness. so we bit the bullet & purchased a blue vintage bench we spotted a few weeks ago. it's not only rocktastic but 100 inches of book-holding (on & under) goodness. i'd buy a buoy to buoy, but that is just not in the budget. (maybe as future book ends?!).

soon there will be pictures of the new apartment & our wedding & some more regular postings. but for now--it's summer. & summer is not for computers on your off time when yourwork time is also for the computers. computers are not for the birds.

oh august

the perfect hot august-afternoon tune. (& can you believe it's august? yow.)

miles of papers to go before i sleep

i am psyched to say that i was hired to teach in the english department at a kicking university! job search = over. finally. while the class times are not great, i'm still thrilled!* teaching is something that affords me time to write on the side & keeps me thinking about language. classes start the first week of september--which is just enough time to pull together a course & read all the materials. yow! no more job search means i'll have mornings for writing, afternoons for prep, and evenings to blog & finally return the dozens of phone calls to people i love that i have missed due to the festival of wild job-hunting/moving/visitations that has been this summer. what a relief!

*update: i took the tues/thurs time slots. because really, i like to stay up late too much to be in bed at 10pm four nights a week. two nights i can handle. here we go!

art imitates life imitates

yes, madmen returns: danish modern. perfect suit lines. fifties confectionary dresses. & poetry.

from Frank O'Hara's "Mayakovsky"

4

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and

brown and white in trees,

snows and skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

back in black

i'm trying to get a bunch of work done this morning despite the fact that there are nighttime-feeling skies & it's 11am. Z's family is up for the week & in the afternoons we are adventuring around with them on a bit of a staycation. it's wonderful to have guests to kick you out into your own city & see new things (for us, in some ways, for the first time). i might have wished for drier skies--but this city gets more rain than london or seattle. i've learned to have an almost affection for an-evening-kind-of-light at the wrong hours.

(two snapshots from our romantically neon trip to niagara falls)

reloping

tomorrow marks one year of marriage. & what a wild-ride-of-a-year it was. i would be lying if i said it was easy--to get hitched, move out, fly across an ocean, flat hunt & find, settle in, work like crazy, & move out again in under twelve months. in fact, Z & i struggled quite a bit this first year--being off away from our family & friends, in a new country, in a matchbox flat. in the end, the lonelinesses were helped by the adventurings. the fights by the figuring things out. & we met some incredible poets & bloggers (in person) . but we both feel ready for a year with less boxes & airplanes & adjustments. since we're a little traveled out, we decided to keep our anniversary easy. tomorrow we're amtraking up to the canadian side of niagara falls (it's under two hours from here). we plan to head to one of those amazing 24-hour chapels to relope, & then off to bad wax museums, ripleys & ferris wheels before we return tuesday. what better way to ring in a new, more grounded year with my canadian husband than the cheesiest place in canada?! (i may have even got myself a sweet little key dress for the occasion).

p.s. did i mention that Z's been off teaching at a princeton summer program. & we haven't seen in each other in three & a half weeks?! hell yes to anniversary reunions.

music for cooling off

i have been listening to this song on repeat all week.* it's the musical equivalent of pressing your face against the refrigerator door in the middle of the night. or lying on bathroom tiles to cool off. the kind of song that makes you feel a little less 100-degrees-in-july-without-airconditioning. (& speaking of airconditioning, i may have just traded some niece-babysitting for an airconditioned car in which to travel to my job interview today. desperate measures. desperate measures).

*this isn't the actual video, it's just the least scary fan video.

so hot i could

it's not that i don't miss blogging. i really do. it's just that it's too darn hot. for anything. except maybe beachballs & bathingsuits & stripes. and even then. really?!

(there's nothing quite like northeastern heat denial & our almost complete lack of air conditioning. wandering around grocery stores can only happen so many times a day).

{image via prettyprettypaper via here}

routines

Z & i are finally into our new place.* the boxes still fully packed, stacked in corners & along the foot of our bare bed, our furniture scattered like statues. but we are here! having grown up in a small town outside of this city, i am excited to be spending a year right in the jam of things. upstate new york (& i mean actual upstate) never ceases to knock the wind out of me with its arms full of forests & farms & the kind of hills which unspool themselves so slowly it doesn't kill you to own a standard car (ithaca might seriously have eaten a clutch or two). from our rooftop it's miles of houses tucked into trees, sprawling brick buildings, & a few skyscrapers standing shyly out of the forest. hard not to dig a cityscape which is equally industrial & green. my favorite part: we are living just a few houses away from where my mother lived in 1972! the next few days are all about finding out what's inside our mountain of boxes--the thrill of uncovering old stuff along with all the fun wedding gifts we received & had to pack up immediately. whoopie! wish us luck unfolding our lives back into some sort of order.

*i am finding that blogging was much easier when i had a routine of when i wrote & where. i'm sure life will get back to normal soon enough.

summering feet

this past week has been a blur of apartment hunting, job applications, & niece watching. all things which feel like amazing headway toward settling in for our next year. but, considering i arrived in the states wearing a mac, a scarf, leggings, & boots, i was wholly unprepared for the 90-degree summering of new york. ouch. first things first: find sandals fast (i can't do flip flops since i drive a standard). i have to admit, despite my serious skepticism of gladiators, this pair turned out to be affordable perfection. i'm converted. they're so comfortable & sexy (& killer when rocked with this shade), that i'm thinking i might just need them in black.

furniture futures

i promise to be back in blogging action soon--but i needed a little family & sun, backyards & grill food, visits to friends who i haven't seen in a year. in the meantime, Z is still in london finishing things up in his program & packing up the rest of our lives there. so, if you want furniture, mirrors, fun things with which to furnish a flat, leave a comment here or email. everything has to go before wednesday!

crash years

the new pornographers put me in mind of ithaca--: of the greenery & gorges of a central new york spring (closely followed by the heatwaving lushness of summer). of bars in may & meeting Z for the first time. of rocking out in my car along cayuga lake. of making garland after coffee filter garland for our wedding. so last week, in celebration of our third anniversary, i gifted Z the crash years. & we've been listening on repeat (across continents) to its guitarshine sweetness. i have to say: what a kicking goodbye soundtrack. what a welcoming hello hello.

(p.s. we finally got our wedding photos. & oh my!)

between

today i am flying back, after almost a year of london-ness. it's been too wild a week--mostly postless (sorry!) & without much room for seeing the city before leave-taking (damn you food-poisoning!). so this morning i am hoping to pull out the polaroid & wander around in the neighborhood for a few last snapshots. to take a little bit of time to say my goodbyes at least to the small radius of where we have been living. Z will be here for a little longer, finishing up his work & packaging the rest of our year into luggage & boxes & brain spaces. i'm caught between a feeling of exhilaration at seeing my family after so long & terrible sadness at finding myself at the end of this city year. there's still a lot of posts ahead & london things to unpack & process. so as long as you all will keep reading, this blog isn't going anywhere.

birthdays, bicycles, oysters

i'm still in recovery mode (& hopefully giving a reading tomorrow, then flying off into the sunset thursday). so i thought i'd give you a tiny photo recap of the birthday seaside amazingness. Z swept me off on an almost-surprise trip to whitsable (in kent) for the turning of 29 (the need to buy tickets home bit made it easier if he shared in advance). it was everything one could want out of realizing they are closer to 30: the sea (!), adventure, oysters, wild boar statue kissing, bicycles, delicious seafood, shell collecting, & a little pint-induced silliness. there might have also been some ice-cream, and some hotel-ness, & some general we love england swooning. Z knows i hate birthdays, & his pre-planned whisking off was just the thing to cheer a slightly melancholy me. considering last year at this time i still hadn't left north america, it was quite the way to kick off a new year!

food poisoning

a little under the weather over here. hoping to be back to normal soon. (i had forgotten how hard fevers actually are--& oh, the delirious conversations!)

{image via marshallart's}

england vs. america

today i am off to teach/take part in a panel discussion on the differences between american vs. british contemporary poetry. considering the rest of the panel is composed of much more established writers, i'm a bit nervous. in any case, i'm sure it will be quite the experience. wish me luck! (p.s. tomorrow i will be getting just a little older, a handful of days closer to thirty, & 366 earth revolutions away from twenty-eight).

{image via cambria}

london: well curated

there is nothing sexier than finding yourself in a store with incredible design & a well-curated selection. & while most people don't think about books as things that need to be well sorted or selected, there is a lot to be said for a good eye & a little specialization. i love the feeling of finding myself in a place where i want to read everything on the shelves. i was lured to lutyens & rubinstein by my friend j* while she was visiting (a famous author friend of hers had suggested it). & it was staggering! half bookstore, half literary agency, specializing in fiction & children's books.** i practically fainted. their organization was drool-worthy--how many places separate short story collections from novels?! they also sold a perfect selection of cb i hate perfumes (library & poetry scented perfume in a bookstore? genius.). there were book-page fans on the ceiling & a giant scroll of calligraphied/screen printed quotes swept across the front window. marvelous to marvel at the whole place! i can't wait to take Z there before we head off. the shop, just off portobello road, is a must.

*for the record of records, i have two friends whose names begin with J that i talk about on here. i realize that many of you probably think i am always talking of the same one.

**now if they would just add some good poetry!

furniture

any of you london readers in need of some furniture? sadly, Z & i are having to wind down our year here a few weeks early (unexpectedly) so we'll be needing to get rid of our furniture lickety-split! despite our best efforts to keep our place pretty spare we still have quite a bit. there's a beautiful georgian dining table (with foldable wings) & two chairs, three metal book shelves, a small modern love-seat that pulls out into a bed, a vintage style clothing rack, two danish modern chairs (Z is eating a donut on one above), a long mirror, and the thing i am saddest to let go of--a vintage school desk with two opening sides (perfect for storage or to turn into a vanity with a mirror inside). if you are interested i'll send pics via email.

wet sandwiches

today was not a good day. tomorrow does not look promising either. in the midst of my decidedly un-violet melancholy, i need to prep for teaching. meet deadlines. remember how to sleep. i'm trying to keep a stiff upper lip, drink lots of tea, distract myself in a mizzle of words. but nothing is really helping. any suggestions? in the meantime, i've been listening to a lot of this. why do sad songs always make me feel happier?!

on a sillier note: i'm in love with a slang term i learned for someone whose a bit overly sad all the time--a wet sandwich. isn't it so fitting?! today i am a total wet sandwich.

do not be scared of being eaten

there's something so ridiculous & charming about these little shadow-boxes of animals. so much so that despite a rather dreary morning their cheeky slogans have cheered me right up. can you tell i'm supposed to be working on a deadline?!

the real thing

did i mention that while J was here we went to see the phenomenal tom stoppard play the real thing? we sat in the second row, practically in the room with these lovers as their lives whirlwinded & lusted & crumbled. seeing this piece as my first non-college/high school theater was a spectacular fizz. not in the least for its meta-ness concerning writers & their lives as people, as writers, as lovers. i can't wait to sit down and read the script--to roll back over some of the intensity in detail. there is a lot to be said for the live, electric word. i'm trying to catch as much of the glittery ephemeral aspects of london before we leave, so this afternoon i have tickets to this (i can't decide if i'm more excited for the actual pieces or the idea of feeling like i am in a secret section of the V&A).

buildings of brighton

i have a thing for buying art that marks a specific time in my life. when we visited brighton a few months back, i was really taken by the ghosted seaside town--its intriguing history & vintage postcard looks. since then i've been keeping an eye out for related prints. these ones by robin101 hit the spot with their clean lines & bright color contrast. i'd love to put two or three of these up in our next space.

pop couplets

here's a sugar-poppy tune for you this sunny bank holiday (in england)--i've been listening to it quite a bit since reading this article. who knew lily allen & poetry would end up in the same space?!

disappearing into

day trips out of london during the week are spectacular: empty trains. countryside. tourist-less sites. grey-bright afternoons filled with stillness & tended stones, fields, cows, & the surrealscape of sheep in low grass (in some places it felt like we were traversing across a strange mini-golf course). the english countryside lends itself well to breathing, to the wonders of lost-ness, to disappearing for days.

piercing quotations

quotation mark earrings? yes, please!

{via postgradhaircut}