Life Resolution #462

art love: our girl sabrina

Our sister and I used to collage the world pinks and blue hues and pretty poetry and oceanic magazine images and everything else under the sun and including the sun. It was color exploding in front of our eyes and we tore it out from everywhere, to mish-mash it into being of our liking, on pages in notebooks in our bedrooms.

It's creating. It's that act of creating that feels so good you feel it in your toes and your eyes and the ends of your hair. You feel alive and happy and fulfilled. You feel like it's California warm outside even when it isn't.

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of The Little Prince, which we haven't read since third grade but now totally are dying to)

We don't collage anymore, but we create. We create. Poems and stories and jottings and ideas and anything and everything. Just to create. It's a resolution we want to keep with ourselves forever and then some. Because sometimes it's hard and sometimes the speed of life gets in the way, but we don't want to let it. What a cop out, really, don't you think, moonpies?

*j

Field Reports: Balls to the Wall

photo love

We started a journal. 'Field reports,' we like to call 'em. At first it was intimidating. It had been so long, so many days and months and a year or two thrown in for good measure since we'd let our mind babble onto the page without an edit or a spell-check. Why journal when we should be writing complete sentences, we thought? Ho, ho, what civilization piddles of thoughts these were, it turns out. Because what we forgot in our leanings away from field reporting is the oh-so-lovely freedom of writing thoughts as they pop into our heads, no matter how fragmented or dysfunctional they may be. Knowing no one will see these words but us... ahhh, what sweet reverie.

*

And really, that is how we should all of our days. No punctuation worries. No transition frets. Just balls to the wall-what the hell is up-and-how are you attitude.
*

*

*j

D'Nile Ain't Just a River in Egypt

art love

Heh, heh. Sometimes our headlines make us chuckle like an old man with smelly suspenders. So, check out this little ditty from the NYTimes. It made us think, it made us ponder, it made us snap our suspenders like an excited school girl:

...In this emerging view, social scientists see denial on a broader spectrum — from benign inattention to passive acknowledgment to full-blown, willful blindness — on the part of couples, social groups and organizations, as well as individuals. Seeing denial in this way, some scientists argue, helps clarify when it is wise to manage a difficult person or personal situation, and when it threatens to become a kind of infectious silent trance that can make hypocrites of otherwise forthright people. ...

On that note, we tried to remove our denial from our brains, and think about what we are, thru and thru...

We're a bookwhore,
we're a wine whore,
we're a cellphone ignore button-pusher whore.

We like peace,
we like quiet,
we don't like surface level chats.

We love taking showers,
we hate washing our hair.
We will eat that dip until you yank it out
of our clenched fucking fists.


*j

2nd Star & Straight On Till the Orient

Where would you go, if you had everything in front of you? Where would you venture, if money didn't matter and time was all you had? Some would choose the moon, some would choose the sea, some would choose pretty black mountains to climb away to the very same moon.
*
But we, we cannot choose. Maybe because money does matter, and maybe because time is not all we have, but definitely maybe because there are so many wonderful places we want to walk through and live through during this little ol' life of ours. But you see, don't you see, India's too security warning-heavy, vietnam is too monsoon-ensconsed, and New Zealand is too pricey. So where would we go, if we knew we'd only be going once, just once, in our deary little lifetime?
*
Maybe South Africa,
maybe Brazil.
Maybe Morocco
to the pretty-ditty land of Fes.
*
Who knows, but then again, why not throw back to the good ol' days. Really now, how de lovely would it be to go on an adventure on rail? A divine, old-school throwback to the times of ladies in frocks and liquid eyeliner and dining cars in which you sing about washing your hair with the snow in Vermont. The days of Harry Potter.
*
Well hello and how are you to the very fine Orient-Express. Can't you just feel Ms. Christie getting chills and thrills of excitement down her pretty little spine?
*
And if money didn't matter (which it shouldn't) and spending wasn't no thing (which it shouldn't be), then we think we just might embark upon such a journey, skirting through the wide wicked world of Italy sunsets and inviting grape fields and pretty women in colorful scarves.


*j

Never Stop Looking Up

art love


We thinks we should write more love letters. More pondering thoughts to one another. Start experimenting with different typesets and new flowers and old clothes and black coffee.

We want to go sledding with lots of layers for padding and a thermos filled with cocoa and peppermint schnapps, where we make snow angels at the bottom of the hill and our eyelashes freeze together from the snow. Remember when all there was to do was to play?

We remember. We'd go sledding and then have a sleepover in our playroom upstairs, painting nails and filling out magazine quizes and hushing one another as we sneaked downstairs to eat the leftover ice cream cake in the basement freezer. Then the next morning we would wake up at 5 or 6, just as the sun was rising, and we'd walk through our safe as safe can be neighborhood and jump on the trampoline until breakfast.

After all, these moments are what make up life. Ain't that the word, moon puddles?




*j

Isn't it Pretty to Think So?

art love

we'd like to think we don't sweat the small stuff.

but then we get real sweaty over extraordinary small decisions like black boots brown boots flats heels or barefoot? And then we pet the sweaty things.

we'd like to think we are growing wiser with age.

but then we realize no we are getting little wrinkles with age specially around our eyes and also finding the more we go the less we know?

we'd like to think we are cool as a cucumber and fresh as a daisy.

but then we attend a fashion event and get ultra awkward when meeting and talking to strangers and we show up wearing our white girl's version of a rasta hat and plaid yellow rainboots. to a fashion event. a FASHION event.

Ho-hum whoopsie daisies and bang on the drums, at least we're fun,

*f

Material Girl

Courtesy of the delicious VSL, this vid made us think how oh-so-much stuff we have and how much we don't really need and how many books there are left to read and albums there are left to listen to, we mean really listen to, and how many trinkets that mean love to us and how many journals left unused and dishes left unwashed and cleaning supplies left unwrapped and presents to send and notes to write and resolutions to complete and how nice it would if it all fit neatly into stacked brown boxes into the elevator at the end of this :40 seconds of your life, shown above.

*j

2 Cents Thursday

our dream girl.



our dreamboat.



our dream us.


Who are we, if not our style?


*j

photo love

Damn the Man, Damn Our Faults

art love

Sometimes we mess up and, hey, it's no big deal, mambo-mommas. Life's one big pancake and we're just trying to eat our way through. Ya win some, ya lose some, and you drop some eggs some balls some to-dos some friends some commitments some glasses along the way.

But sometimes, just sometimes, we mess up and, hey, it's a hurdle we just fell on top of, lassies. It's a simple thing we just could not complete, and does that mean we are destined for job loss and love loss and missing kitties and effed-up kiddies?

Sigh. Are we done with these years yet? When we say goodbye to this long decade, we're going to celebrate by messing up a whole bunch of stuff, and laughing in its wake.


*j

A Daydream in Hobbiton

photo love

Sometimes we want to be here, tucked away from the rest of middle-Earth and whosits whatsits everywhere. When we used to imagine ourself right smack into the world of The Shire (think the Portland area, if we're considering just the U.S., for geographic location and climate, though we don't recall much rain ever being mentioned), we saw it like this:

We were a swordsmith - the most talented swordsmith in all of middle-Earth and beyond. We lived in Bag End, next door to Bilbo, in our very own cozy nook of a hobbit-hole that smelled of the woods and wildflowers (and these days we would probably add a dash of whiskey to the scent, what with all the adventurers stopping by).

Seeing as how we were oh-so-talented and at home with our sword-making, all the best of the great adventurers would make a point of stopping by before they went out into the great wide world beyond the Farthings and Brandywine. We would shine up their weapons and mend what needed mending, all the while hearing of the adventures they were about to embark upon, and feeding them all the grilled cheeses and ding dongs (our favorite, and yes, we seamlessly meshed our world with middle-Earth's without a moment's confusion or thought of logic) that they needed to start their trip.

And then of course, one day we went with them.

And so our mind daydreamed and toiled and fought and won and discovered and led the way the whole, long, delicious time. And sometimes on some days we go back there, because it's so... much... fun.

*j

A Revelry of Sweetness, at Your Fingertips

And to leave you, my dearies, we leave you with a touch of whimsy, a sprinkling of sadness for our parting, and a world oozing of paintball-inspired color. Because that's how a good life is lived.

So enjoy the video (oozing, we tell you, oozing with color and love and kisses and bittersweet melancholy!!!) but fall in love with the song. It is The New Pornographers at their prettiest finest most cherubically poignant. Introduced to our ears by our dear ol' Dad, we reveled in its love last night while sitting with a pretty pink cocktail among good friends who love us dearly, no matter how long it is between visits. We listened, we talked, we loved.*

And as we love you moonpies, we now pass the song to you. Enjoy, go in peace and love croissants and apple pies forever, Trevor.

*j

*Please also gander a listen to Myriad Harbour. Delight, we tell you, pure delight.

Q of the D

art love

*

A musing, a thought, an idea, brought to you by Allesandro and his wonderfully powerful and opinionated mind:

"Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, deperately moved, changed forever. It would become part of you and never leave, and you would love the characters as if they were your own. Who would want to plow over ground that has been perfectly plowed? Would it not be, like living one's life over again, infinitely painful and dissonant?"

We agree, and then we disagree. We love the words, we adore the poetry of it all, but then, we read books again and again to hang out with our friends again, and we watch movies over and over, to relax with our friends again.

*j

Walmarts & Libraries.

file it under:
a) places NOT to meet someone to date.
b) places NOT to get stranded.
c) places were the freakies, wide-eyed zombie
peepbots, pale-eye mashy mystery gypsies, and
bag'o'syrup smellin' talking' outlouders roam.
d) places not to call home.

First Star to the Right

art love, via ffffound

*

We live in a delicious third floor walk-up, just level with the cracked and peeling corner streetlight, and ever since we put up our darling ditty curtains (homemade with love, mind you) it forever looks as though the sun is setting or the moon is rising. All day long, all the night through.

The curtains are these ever-so-subtle absolutely fabulous sheer, off-white ones, and it creates this vague, out-of-focus glow of faux nature. Sigh. And don't you know, we find it oh-so-extremely comforting... Almost like we live in wide, deliciously open spaces. If you shut out the sound of the street below, you can almost hear birds chirping pets.

*j

A Halo of Humidifiers For All!

product love

*

It is so unbelievably, wretchedly, endlessly dry in our world this week, our only wish last night as every sip of water was making us suspiciously more thirsty, was to have a halo of humidifiers built for us so we could breathe easy everywhere we went. We would never take it off, not until the first day of true blue spring when we would once again have magically luscious skin, flowing hair and no more stuffed up heads.

*

And that, lovely cherry pies, is our wish for the day, if we could have only one. What would yours be? Free cab rides for a year? Unlimited hot dogs for a month? Lots of money? Do tell, do tell.

*

*

*j

Some Of You Will Really Hate This Song

We know, things change. We threw out the Top Gun baseball hat and scrunchies when our first issue of Seventeen arrived in the mail. We donated The Bodyguard soundtrack to Goodwill, where it probably still sits in a bin, waiting for someone to love it as much as we loved that booming sound just before Whitney belts out the third chorus of 'and iiii...'. We mailed our comic book collection to a crush we had in junior high, hoping to win him over but only losing Wolverine (in plastic sleeves, mind you).*

And we know, some things never change. We still love airports, and all the possibilities they hold. We still get quiet when we feel intimidated and can't take a joke to save our life. We still, on some days and in certain moments, wish we were cooler than we are. We still love Neil Young and Bobby D. (because, as Emma put it so eloquently in the divine Love Actually (because we still love romantic comedies), true love lasts a lifetime.).

So yes, our taste has changed over the years, but our general leanings remain pretty solidly intact. And so, the same rings true for the songs that make us stop and hold our breath. Some of them are really quality music from really quality musicians. But some, alas, are not (ahem, that one fab electro track on Zombies' crapfest of an album). We will always be a sucker chick for a cliche pop tune with a catchy beat. And so, we have now explained the presence of the above song, brought to you in video form, unfortunately. And so you have above Timbaland's kissably perfect fine-tuning of OneRepublic's 'Apologize.' Press play, but please try to ignore the supreme douchiness of the lead singer's repeated molestations of the camera lens (or that general vicinity).*

Thank you, and have a nice day.

*j

*Er, wait, we might still be pissed about this one.

*We mean, seriously, what is he doing?! Has he even seen someone accomplish a smoldering look? Has he ever seen a Sting or U2 video? We are frightened for him, and all that his future brings him, douchebag looks and all.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

ad love

*

We heart the winter, we really really do...freshly fallen snow, hot coffee and all bundled up into ourselves like we're in a fort made of clouds.

*

But. We also really really love the sun. We know it's bad for us, but we just can't get enough of the heat on our cheeks, the way it makes the snow all shiny and white, the heat on our... everywhere.

*

Ahh, to have both worlds. While this will never happen in Chicago, we can still dream, can't we?

*

Happy wintery day, love bunnies. Stay warm, and soak in the sunshine.

*

*

*j

spoonful of sugar & a little ginger nutty spice.

how to be an artist

stay loose. learn to watch snails. plant impossible gardens. invite someone dangerous to tea. make little signs that say yes! and post them all over your house. make friends with freedom & uncertainty. look forward to dreams. cry during movies. swing as high as you can on a swingset, by moonlight. cultivated moods. refuse to "be responsible." do it for love. take lots of naps. give money away. do it now. the money will follow. believe in magic. laugh a lot. celebrate every gorgeous moment. take moonbaths. have wild imaginings, transformative dreams, and perfect calm. draw on the wall. read everyday. imagine yourself magic. giggle with children. listen to old people. open up. dive in. be free. bless yourself. drive aways fear. play with everything. entertain your inner child. you are innocent. build a fort with blankets. get wet. hug trees. write love letters.
(sark)

If we created a metaphorical Strawberry and Vanilla Frosting Golden Delicious Cupcake Guide For Daily Living, Sark would most definitely be the main ingredient. In fact, the recipe we would keep inside our darling little heirloom Swedish wooden recipe box would look something like this:

9 cups Sark (for a vibrant livelihood and to make the dough rise each day with a glimmer)
1/4 cup Tina Fey (for geeky hilarious intellect and to keep it genuine and realzy)
1 heaping spooful Gwen (for rad girl Rastafarian attitude and penchant for beautiful aesthetic and fierceness)
2 tblsp Ayn Rand (for a unique individual radical attitude and unexpected bite)
A dash of Wes Anderson (for imagination and the courage to bring that to life)
5 teaspoons Ben Harper (for honey glow and mellow yellow hello fellow warm heart sweetness)
1 cup J.K. (for keeping a child's curiousity, a brilliance to shine, and capacity to dream big)
4 cups Spice Girls (for sexy neverending fun and ability to keep the good girls of your heart close)

What's in your Magic Cupcake Guide you sexy PYT?
*f

Nothing Good Comes Easily.

but what about gumballs.

*f

Hearty Recipe of Le Day: Hot Toddy

photo love

Bundle up, bellas, we've got snow on the way here in Chicago...

Recipe courtesy of Epicurious, whose name we just heart:

2T bourbon
1T honey

2t lemon juice

1/4c boiling water

1 cinnamon stick*

Put bourbon, honey, and lemon juice in a 6-ounce mug. Top off with hot water and stir until honey is dissolved. Voila! You have yourself a hot little toddy. Now all you need is a fur coat, one train ticket to Vermont, and Fred Astaire waiting for you in the dining car.

*j

*the cinnamon stick was our addition, but how YUM does it sound?