underway

This is, rather happily, the state of my life right now.

Cut-out artwork is by the quirky and phenomenal Rob Ryan (don't miss his delightful Ryantown shop near London's Columbia Flower Market if you ever get the chance!)

come to the cabaret!

"Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I got an invite in my inbox today for Mr. Alan Clarke's exhibition (a "pictorial cornucopia" he calles it) this Sunday in Dublin and am *gutted* that I won't be able to attend. His pictures are deliciously dark and etheral, intriguing, victorian, comedic - in other words, right up my alley - and they are hard to find!! At least, I've found there to be an extreme dearth of his images on the Internet... so I was greatly looking forward to attending one of his shows.

C'est - next time.

If you happen to be in Ireland this weekend and fancy attending "The Loons Have Looned Their Last" find the details here.

another chorus, or was that the last verse?

"Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return."
— Milan Kundera


I'm reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being right now, and Kundera writes about Beethoven's last major completed work: String Quartet No. 16. Beethoven titled the quartet's final movement The Difficult Resolution wherein he supplemented the notes with a question:

"Muss es sein?" "Must it be?"

followed by (twice!):

"Es muss sein! Es muss sein!" "It must be! It must be!"

As we live along, it is sometimes curious to me how we make decisions predicated on the number of fresh chances we anticipate will be in our future that may never come to pass, but I'm also continously amazed by how many tries, how many try-agains, we get - to the extent that sometimes it's as if, indeed, what must be, must be.

So now, as I push off a present experience, I find myself musing: Must it be? Was that just the third movement? Or is it sonata-over?


Photo: We haven't seen Mr. Smith in a while.

just like that, all the magic was gone

i once had a boyfriend who said, "you're like a siren of the sea - men see you and they just don't come back." a sentiment he not only acutely felt, but had also witnessed among other men; his own friends and acquaintances; the type of emails i'd get from ex-boyfriends.

i used to smirk whenever i recalled this statement - revelling in its truth; sometimes it seemed if i snapped my fingers in the right way i could cast a spell that would extract a man's heart from his chest and put it in the palm of my hand, to fondle or eat whole as i saw fit.

but today, i suddenly felt nothing more than human. and that power, that wily brook of magnetic pull - i felt it evaporate - sink down through the cracks of my soul and disappear into nothingness. the beguiling flame, which i probably very falsely believed i could control, could wield for better or worse, to captivate, to bewitch, has gone cold; entirely depleted, diminished to nothing more than the flat reality of my white blood cells.

in its place is a pervasive awareness that i am just like everyone/anyone else. there is no elusive allure. there is no je ne sais quoi; no mesmerizing quality. i am no enchantress. i am just another person among the flesh-and-blood populace. and a largely unextraordinary one at that.

all the while, i'm sitting on yet another runway, hitching a ride to somewhere - hoping to end up - well, maybe not another incarnation of an enchantress, but maybe, better off.

The rather fitting and Hollywood-esque photo is by Alex Prager of LA, which is the city I've just left (again).

i'm still here

Caterpillar: Who are YOU?

Alice: This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. I -- I hardly know, sir, just at present -- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

- from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland


Photo is by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue

straw poll

Would you move here??


Even if the people think a little too much like this?




And you were the only person in a dress?

buh bye brooklyn

You were the best part of NYC for me.

These pics are just the tip of the iceberg of my sister's new hood in Cobble Hill... patisseries, indie book shops, boulangeries *everywhere*...sooo darling.

Happy settling Kasey!

a lonely hunter

“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
- Carson McCullers (author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)

After a long stage of restless limbo, it appears I'll be on the road again very soon. I'm glad. I'm ready for a new place to settle. A place to put myself and breathe in a new routine. It's been an interesting and difficult couple of months - life has felt increasingly liquid, less concrete, like I can't get a grip on anything - am treading water in a vat of Jell-o. So many things up in the air - my emotions and things on no one geographical point on the map. Being a perpetual vagabond is a lonely endeavor. I know I do it to myself. But it often seems unavoidable. I long for roots, and I envy those who have them, yet I still can't seem to put them down - not for long.

In the days of old, gypsies used to move in packs. I guess I was born to the wrong time. I've been watching loads of Carnivàle lately, an HBO series that traced, you guessed it, a traveling carnival across the dust bowl of the Great Depression. It got cancelled after a couple of seasons about 5 years ago - I somewhat think it was ahead of it's time - I have a feeling people would relate more to the uncertain desolation of that era now. Me, I guess I've always related to the desolation of that era. But superimpose the magical wanderlust of a carnival on top of it... whoa... I know that. A life that's a series of places and incredulous events... I know that.

Maybe it's just a sign of being a life-thirsty American - who knows. But here's to getting back on that quiet road, to embarking on more jaw-dropping adventures, to hunting down a plot of land to stake a tent... and to writing about it.


Photo is by a guy who still travels with the gypsy packs, and astounds me with the emotion he can capture in a single still frame, Mike Brodie.