flight. cancelled.

"When your dawn theater sounds to clear your sinuses: don't delay. Jump. Those voices may be gone before you hit the shower to align your wits.
Speed is everything. The 90-mph dash to your machine is a sure cure for life rampant and death most real.
Make haste to live.
Oh, God, yes.
Live. And write. With great haste."
— Ray Bradbury


I am Sedona bound.


Photo is for UK Vogue by the surrealist de excellence Tim Walker.

the baroque & the marvelous real

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
— Milan Kundera


I don't know how I missed the movie Everything is Illuminated when it came out five years ago. Surely, if I'd seen a trailer, I would have taken note - the film brings together so many different elements that resonate quite deeply with me: magical realism, Jewish history, a distinctly Slavic style, a quest into the past... Where was I when it was released? What was I doing? How did it so entirely escape both my sister's (a Slavic film buff) *and* my attention? I don't feel that I was even remotely aware of it.

Equally curious, is that while I was oblivous of its existence for 5+ years, as of about a month ago, I haven't stopped hearing about it. References, questions, mentions of "everything is illuminated" has been *all over* - even the Kundera quote above was something I just stumbled across.

I took the universe's hint and it became something of a quest to watch the film, which, after multiple set-backs, I *finally* managed to do a couple nights ago.

And?

Highly recommended. Set in the Ukraine about an American boy searching for the truth behind an old photograph of his grandfather and "Augustine"... it's heartbreaking, and funny, and surreal, and an all-around charming movie. Go see it if you also happened to miss it. Though I still don't know exactly what I was supposed to get out of it yet... perhaps that bit will come later... or maybe I also ought to read the book - ha - is that gauche?

Photo is by Tim Walker - appropriately, I thought, of a Russian household interior.

mary, mary, quite contrary....

"The past is not dead. It isn't even past." - William Faulkner



Picture is Tim Walker.

somewhere between dandelions & sunlight

“Everyone hears the future in a dream.” - Isaiah Zagar

Artist Isaiah Zagar is the subject of a new documentary created by a fellow Boston University alum. My jaw dropped when I read the filmmakers' philosophy on the style of this documentary - a difficult mix of surrealistic perspective with real-life - as it articulates exactly what I'd like to achieve through the documentary medium... a visionary inkling I initially saw long ago in a newsroom and a mere daydream. Could its realisation also be in my future...?

Photo is by the always-surrealistic Tim Walker.

life under the imaginifying glass

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

- Theodor Seuss Geisel aka "Dr. Seuss"


Yet another great fantastical photo by Tim Walker. The last of his for a while - I promise... it's just that I'm hard at work (in my own uniquely fanciful way) and thus, completely caught up in my own creative reveries... his pieces are what's resonating at the moment.

The First Day (a day late)

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Happy New Year!

(Again, the marvelous photo is Tim Walker)

The Last Day

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it - always."

-Mahatma Gandhi

(Marvelous photography is by Tim Walker)