Abduction

Listening to California Gurls and E.T. at work right now.
So amped!!!

If I don't hurry

and clean our room, I'm pretty sure Drew will divorce me...

We just put our feet where they had to go

i've been thinking a lot and i realize that the reason why i always look back on J. with the most unique, wrenching gratitude and nostalgia and even a bit of yearning is because he was the only person who ever pursued me at my lowest point. the others started liking me before then--and they often stuck with me during the bad times--but J. was the only one who actually went after me in the thick of it. it's almost as if the melancholy drew him to me. the first time i ever watched Fight Club was with him at my bedside, and i didn't even mind that when he ate some of my salad, he chomped the lettuce so loudly.

once we walked through the night olives, the glow from the path lamps revealed our breaths. his nose was runny from the cold, and i saw the way it glistened--the transparent wateryness at his nostril and i wanted to reach over to dab at it gently with my gloved hand, the way i might have with little daniel: naturally, with a tenderness so absolute. a gesture that was genuine because it was automatic, without thought, only instinct.

i wondered if he was the one i could feel safe with. and then i realized that i had been vulnerable all along. openly so, and so easily--because he made it easy to be myself, to be honest about the hurt, that it was there and perhaps to stay.

Before/After

Celine: My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad. 

Jessie: I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually. 


Celine: How do you know? You don't know them. 


Jesse: Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality. 

Dork laugh of the day

A happy marriage

"A happy marriage is the union of
two good forgivers." 
--Ruth Bell Graham

New Year's Resolution #1

Stop ordering chicken with my lunch salad just for the sake of increasing protein intake. Despite my best and most heroic efforts to enjoy it, I have to stop myself from gagging with each chunk of bird consumed.

Yara

More here

Never knew

it was possible to hate anyone so much. Everything about you is infuriating.
I dream and dream and dream
that you'll cease to exist.

House tour

See more here.

If we only wanted

to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
--Charles de Montesquier

("My Life Should Look Better on Facebook," The Defining Decade)

Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.

Chloe's Birthday Party

I don't think I've ever loved

to sleep more.

I would give up pancakes for sleep.

And Tigger, too

Chloe's been in bed since 7:20pm and with Drew gone for the week, I've been spending the past few hours of Thanksgiving Eve watching Pocahontas and Winnie-the-Pooh. Right now it almost (almost) feels like a typical day from my pre-married, pre-mom life.

Cactus

It is with some pride and sheepishness

that I announce my amazing ability to finish an entire bag of Goldfish crackers in one, sometimes two sittings.

I was the worst

"I was the worst to the one I loved best."
--Laxdaela Saga

Sally Singer, editor

"I'm not a writer, I'm an editor. I have always been an editor. I love pushing it just enough to take readers someplace they didn't know they were going. And I see patterns--in pictures, in text, in fashion, in everything. I see narratives everywhere."

David Sedaris on Dorothy Parker and humor

"Dorothy Parker is someone who I'd been led to believe was funny. But I find her really sad; her stories are just really sad. 'Big Blonde' is heartbreaking.
And I think people find her funny because humor needs to cling to something.
I used to go to these shows at Second City, and I would laugh and laugh and laugh, but then afterward I could never remember a single thing I had laughed about. I felt as if I'd had a really nice time, but I think humor needs some aspect of tragedy in order to be memorable. The funny things I remember all have a twinge of sorrow to them."

In a past life

It's morning and while I watched the guys across the street watch me get dressed I realized how long it's been since I knew what color the Empire State Building was at night and how it used to smell at 9am in Times Square all quiet and empty snow underfoot and all those people I met at work eating pizza for lunch and us just strangers wandering around Barnes and Nobles reading astrology and laughing because we didn't know each other, never got to, but we shared a time in this city that was now years ago and no matter how many times the neighbors see me naked they won't ever know about that.

The best people

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.
Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

--Ernest Hemmingway

Couples

"Sex is like money; only too much is enough."

--John Updike

Happy Friday

Look at that Dubbo Chin

Central Park with litto bear after work

Difference

Home

sick.

Lol

The things you take

for granted
are what someone else is praying for.

This moment

Winona

1991. via

Ready, Set!

Chloe the Adventurer

You'll never be ready

"It's a terrible thing in life to wait until you're ready. There's no such thing as ready. There is only now and you may as well do it now." 

- Hugh Laurie

"Nothing can compare

to when you roll the dice and swear your love's for me."

A list:
-pink fire escape
-orange desk on wheels
-musky smelling Olivetti typewriter
-three heavy ice cubes in a mug of coke
-beady pearls around a middle finger, 3 timid sprouting hairs
-questions like, "should I wax?" "why is 'Whatever' the worst reply?" "should i trust in Michael Jackson?" "what if the bear pillow gets soggy on the windowsill?" "will it rain?" "doesn't it always, one way or another?"

What then? And what of it. 

How it feels | On Heritage

It’s like a child drawing five point stars on blue

construction paper and looking up at the sky knowing
it didn’t pinpoint its edges so meticulously but rather
bloomed into motion, pulling the universe taught against its edges.
That’s the foot, unbound in hot reality.

Five toes sprawl out toward every pitch of the earth
my heel presses like cheese up against the ball
skin peeling all over.

I would not endure the pain of it;
not the pain of the foot, of the toes broken and fighting against
its own flesh. I could not bear the mother
whose feet are hidden in the silk of their erotic dream,
yet watches her daughter leave the earth as a woman
as a tree branching out, transcending, inhaling ice and feathers.

16th C. Korean Love Letter

from a pregnant widow to her dead husband.

Read it here. 

It'd be nice

to go on a retreat by myself.

Or to, I dunno, just be a normal 23 year old who has no commitments to anyone else. EVERYTHING IS ANNOYING.

I have

the best husband in the world.

Don't

panic.

Jennifer Egan

"If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something vital. "

Zach Galifianakis

“I have a lot of growing up to do.  I realized that the other day in my fort.”

Glass 2.0

And youth

Ready for hot tea and fall weather.

Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
above shining trees, --
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing, softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades, --

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

More than okay

Denim

Success vs. Significance

"Success is when you add value to yourself. Significance is when you add value to others."

- John Maxwell

Bombdiggity

Simply put

via

Comes down to this

"When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that."

– Margaret Atwood, Cats Eye 

Nostalgia

Miss our Game of Thrones marathon + snackz

Rulez r Rulez

“And so you go out with girl, and you’re driving. ‘So what are you reading right now?’ And all too often, ‘Well, I’m not much of a reader.’ WELL I’M NOT MUCH OF A DINNER BUYER. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.” 


– Henry Rollins

Most at peace

I am the most at peace when I'm with gramps. And although I know it may be a form of escape from everything else, from what my life must be like, from my responsibilities to go out there in the world,

deep down I really wish to just spend every day with him. 365 out of 365. Sitting in the back cabin together, taking walks, reading my books as he works on his Chinese calligraphy, doing figure-8 exercises as we watch TV, eating noodles and leftovers, singing Chinese folk songs, unbothered by anything, untethered.

Love, from Us

Jeff left for San Diego, but not before introducing me to tuna dan bing and snails on his last day. Ever since I can remember, he's always made me a more adventurous person, willing to try new things. One of what I was most looking forward to on this trip was hanging out with him. I know I am lucky because he's my big brother and he will always be a core part of my happiness, no matter what. 

Love you, love you lots. 

Love, Nick

"Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

-F. Scott Fizgerald, The Great Gatsby

Jollyism

"Alice was always apprehensive of occasions when happiness was a prerequisite, birthdays, feast days, reunions or weddings. She had difficulty enjoying things when under pressure to do so... Nothing made her sadder than someone who kept reminding her how happy she had to be." 

-Alain de Botton, The Romantic Movement

Love is to give

her the freedom.

Chloe's favorite time of the day

 

Is this the case

"[Bathsheba's] emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings. We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all." 

-Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

Far From the Madding Crowd

"What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave -- that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst."

-Thomas Hardy

Beautiful room, beautiful breakfast

via

A perfect armful

Ann, the discriminating cheeseball

Ann, while reading Love Story: "This is so cheesy."
Me: "That's why I gave it to you."
"There's good cheesy and there's bad cheesy. This is bad cheesy."
"I thought you were an indiscriminating cheeseball."
"I'm a discriminating cheeseball."

Happy Father's Day

Kama Sutra cover design process

Really enjoy the cover of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of the Kama Sutra. It's tastefully daring. And the design process is quite intriguing. 

via

Chillin' with Great Gramps

For future home

Jennifer Connelly & Baby Agnes

Espresso