It is the birthday of the poet I love most.

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."

~e e cummings

Afterwards.

 The best one came down for a long weekend:

* Mexican food and dive bar trivia
* morning vinyasas and coffee on a sunny patio
* Goodwill expeditions, where I dug up some great finds for seek vintage, including an amazing 1980s Ungaro dress, navy blue Stuart Weitzman heels, a cute short-sleeved button down (for my soon-to-be-launched guys' section of seek), and a bunch of other cute finds that I'm keeping for my own closet.
* late-night noodles and champagne (girl dates are the greatest)
* an early walk with pup and pal, down to the Ashley River
* fun, adventure, and chainsaws at Kulture Klash
* brunch at Rue de Jean
* a Sunday stroll down King Street, where no cars were allowed all afternoon
* a little non-thrift shopping that netted me the most beautiful navy blue beaded dress, worthy of the shimmiest flapper, and this incredible linen coat 

In other news, here are some things I enjoyed today:



"Would Hemingway Cry?" in the New York Times' Modern Love

"Marilyn and Her Monsters" in Vanity Fair 

 

Jot it down.

Image from Stockholm Street Style

I love the way words look written on forearms. I often write on my right forearm--mostly lyrics or quotes that are stuck in my head--because I love being able to look down and re-read them. Graceful script on skin. The only reason I wouldn't tattoo words there is because I'd never be able to decide on what one set to make permanent.

"Improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings..."
"Dreams are necessary to life."
"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."

There are just too many beautiful phrases.

Duly noted.

My paper journal is getting so much action these days. As for this blog, who knows. 

 In other news, I am really looking forward to July. 

Anais Nin

Words from the birthday girl:

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."

"Do not seek the because--in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions."

"A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked."

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."

"Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together."

"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do."

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back; a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

"Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together."

Today was Virginia Woolf's birthday.

1902

"I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past."

~"A Sketch of the Past," 1939

Update: I still feel awful.

I have been moaning and groaning and moping around the house because I have the flu. Yes, that flu. But I seriously need to get over myself. Here are some things that have been jumbling around my head today:

Yogi Tea puts little sayings on their tea bag tags. It's one of my favorite things about drinking their teas. Mine today says:

Live from your heart and you will be most effective.

And I like that.

Also, my crush on Jack Kerouac has been reignited.

I was reading his list of 30 essentials for his "Spontaneous Prose" technique and I love them, so I thought I'd share.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

The man makes it sound so easy to be filled with the right words, places, and characters. I need to have a secret notebook again. Why is writing so scary sometimes? I owe some essays to someone and I have them, just sitting here, but have issues letting them go and being done with them. I miss my writing classes in the Forest Theatre at UNC, where it all seemed so easy. We would have great discussions, surrounded by trees, and you couldn"t help but write pages and pages. Now...well, things are different in the real world. I need to shake things up a little.

Here's a little more Jack for you:

Summer Stationary

I just got some fun stationary in the mail today from Coyne & Pinckney! They are so summery and so very Charleston. They even do custom stationary...is it too early to be picking out Christmas gifts for people?

"And this maiden she lived with no other thought/Than to love and be loved by me..."

I saw this in today's Writer's Almanac, and figured that this was the perfect blog post...the stormy weather and gray sky make the perfect packground for Poe's poetry.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me —
Yes! — that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. Public Domain.

It's the birthday of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, born in 1822 in Baltimore, Maryland. She was Edgar Allan Poe's first cousin. When she was 10, Edgar moved in with Virginia, her mother, her grandmother, and her brother. Edgar immediately fell in love with a neighbor, and Virginia served as a messenger between them, once bringing Edgar a lock of the other girl's hair. But at some point, he must have fallen in love with Virginia, because he asked her to marry him after he got a job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia. She married him when she was 13 and he was 27, but she listed her age as 21 on the marriage license. No one knows what the Poes' marriage was like, although biographers and historians like to speculate on whether they ever consummated their marriage, whether Poe had affairs with other women, and how they were affected by the age difference or the fact that they were cousins. Virginia contracted tuberculosis when she was 19, and when she died in 1847, Poe was devastated and started drinking heavily. She may be the inspiration for Poe's poem "Annabel Lee."

In 1846 Virginia wrote a valentine for Edgar that said:

Ever with thee I wish to roam —
Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there —
Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
Never wishing that others may see!
Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend
Ourselves to the world and its glee —
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.

What I Really Want...

...is a penpal.

I have all this stationary, and I never write letters. It's heartbreaking, really, because what is more exciting than an envelope in your mailbox that isn't a bill, or an announcement that you're entered to win $1.2 million, or yet another pre-approved credit card statement?

If you want a penpal, or know anyone who wants a penpal, email me at:

waitforthesignal@gmail.com with your mailing address and check your mailbox!


image, from Griffin & Sabine, at NickBantock.com

What I Wish I Had Written

I am going start a collection of words I wish I'd written. While I am in awe of so many writers, sometimes a sentence hits you and you just can't let it go.

Here's one for today:

"She laid the side of her face against his frail old heart, where the pink shell of her ear could capture whatever song it had left."

My senses are stirred.

*Winter songs played through open windows while warm spring winds sweep low to the ground blow white petals and dust.

* Maya's pink tongue licking drops of condensation off a water glass.

* Feeling so inspired by music, the smell of wysteria, rainstorms, tropical weather--but still creatively impotent. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

* Dresses and dirty bare feet.

* Cucumbers + dill; tomatoes + basil; brie + dry red wines; lavender-infused chocolates.

* Cool showers, cool sheets, cool ceiling fan breezes.

Oh these days of spring, full of madness...

Spring is spring-loaded. It seems like greens, purples and yellows are popping from buds and branches and cracks in the sidewalks like tiny, beautiful explosions. I have this sudden desire to sit barefooted on my front porch while Maya watches me intensely write tangles of scribbled nonsense as she lies in the shade of the bushes.

"All of this around us'll fall over
I tell you what we're gonna do
You will shelter me, my love,
And I will shelter you"

I could write in my journal, time after time, day after day, about my struggles, my heartbreaks, and my endless insecurities. I could make a list hundreds of miles long about all of my worries and fears. But then, on a day like this, all of those things sort of crumble and all I have left is a very soft sort of hope and happiness.

Jet Lag by Eve Robillard

He flies over the ocean to see his girl, his Sorbonne
girl, his ginger-skinned girl waiting for him in the City

of Light. Everywhere river and almost-spring gardens,
everywhere bridges and rainy statues. Streets going

nowhere, streets going on all night. I love you my mona
my lisa, my cabbage, my gargoyle, Degas' little dancer

in dawn's ragged gown. But on the third day she
picks up her books, tells him she needs to study:

she adores this town, she's not coming home in May, she's
going to stay all summer. Lowers her morning-calm eyes.

He's all right in the cab, all right on the plane droning
him home in only three hours American-key in his lock now

his tick-tock apartment, shiver his shadow, his need
to sleep. Then with a tiredness washing over and

over him and through his raveling bones
he begins to know.

A Prairie Home Companion: Nostalgia, Musings

This weekend has made me think about a lot of things; namely, A Prairie Home Companion. Yes, Garrison Keillor has an odd, breathy voice and sometimes tells stories with no apparent point. But it's not about him. It's about what his voice--his show--represents to me.

As long as I can remember, from 6-8pm, A Prairie Home Companion really has been our companion. I would wake up on crisp, fall Saturdays and play outside with the boys, climbing trees, making potions, playing kickball in the circle, until I had that outdoorsy smell that little kids get, and the knees of my jeans were thoroughly stained green. But as the sun started setting, and the already crisp air got that undercurrent of pure cold, it would be time to come inside. The lamps would be turned on, and so would PHC. My dad would be in the kitchen, covered in flour as he kneaded the dough for noodles while bread baked in the oven and the sauce bubbled on the stove behind him.

I'd run upstairs and leave my pile of tomboy clothes on the floor and step into a warm bath, thoroughly girly with piles of bubbles. I'd lay in the tub with the faint murmurs of the radio show in the background. It was in that tub that I imagined my future as a famous actress, archaeologist, or writer. I would make bubble beards and bubble bikinis until the bathwater turned chilly. I'd put my warm pajamas on and run downstairs to help my dad crank the pasta machine, making piles of ribbons of dough.

When the pasta was cooked and I had finished dancing to PHC's musical guests, I sat down with my family to eat. This is where the magic happened. I'd sip milk in a wine glass and my family would talk. We'd talk and talk and talk. I think it's what solidified us. On those Saturday nights, lulled by stories of Lake Woebegone, we shared our own stories: things that happened in our days, what we dream about, what we fear.

As I got older, Saturdays became less about tree-climbing and more about shopping. My bathtub musings became focused on how my first kiss would happen, what my first love would be like, and how it felt like the process of growing up was taking FOREVER.

My family's dinners became more rushed as I inhaled food as quickly as possible, to dash outside when I saw the headlights signaling that my best friend or boyfriend had arrived to cart me off to yet another movie or show.

The irony is, I can't remember the plot to most of those movies, or the lyrics to the songs played. What I do remember, with vivid clarity, are the endless discussions around the table--of religion, of politics, of silly stories--being accompanied by PHC's house band.

In college, when weekends at home became treasured, the Saturday dinners became longer again. The pasta was still fantastic, as I remembered, but my wine glass held a nice cabernet instead of milk. The discussions got larger and lingered past PHC, into some Celtic music program until someone put on some jazz. It was at that table where I saw my parents as real people, full of quirks and history and individuality. It's where I learned to respect them and like them, and understand why they did the things they did.

These are the things I cling to; the things I want for my future family. I want to sit around a table with my childern as they tell me about their dreams over pasta, and look into their eyes and be shocked at how quickly they grow, while they sit in bathtubs filled with bubbles, wondering why growing up takes so long, and what are they going to be when they grow up (if it ever happens) and who will kiss them and what will they smell like, and what is it like to love someone so much that it actually hurts...




Side note: Last night, when my family went to see A Prairie Home Companion live, we all talked about how surreal it was. My father has been listening to this show for 26 years. His history with the show is older than his history with me. It was magical. Also magical: Mr. Nappy Brown. This talented R & B musician is 78 years old, but when he sang and danced (yes, danced) on stage, it took everything in me to not throw my panties on stage. He had that kind of presence that only the truly, utterly talented do. He is famous for writing this song:



for Ray Charles, but he's now famous to me for giving my family yet another incredible memory.

There is no way to describe her since she wasn't created yet when all things were named. She is not a fish, nor a bird; she's more than a girl, she's less than divine. She lives without definitions, parameters, descriptors, and other such nonsense. She is the person that I keep wanting to be. More than wanting. Lusting to be. I want to be the "she" admired from afar. The secret of far-away admiration is that people never get close enough to you to hurt you. They smile and wink at you from a distance, much like stars. Close enough and all you feel is their searing heat on your thin skin, already burning. If I were this "she" I would dress myself in costume, every day. I would smile vaguely at everyone that passed, keeping my eyelids at half-mast. People would have debates: "Her eyes are blueish-brown." "No, I swear. They are sort of green with goldish glints." They would talk forever and a day about costume and colors of eyes and never be able to know anything else.