CHANEL RESORT 2013

I like Chanel perfume and makeup, but their clothes? Not so much. I’d rather have a pair of Frye boots over a Chanel jacket (or even a bag!) any time of day. They’re beautifully made, but not quite my taste. But I recently saw pictures of the resort collection and just fell head over heels for the cyber-Marie Antoinette vibe. Look! Okay, those tennis shoes are ugly — they were heinous in the 90s, and they are spacky now — but the frocks are bonbons, for sure.

A GREAT RESTAURANT IN A PRETTY MIDWESTERN TOWN

Galena, Illinois is one of those cute small towns with a little shopping district, lots of resorts and loads of bed-and-breakfasts. I went as a child a few times, but only recently paid it a visit as an adult. The nice thing about being not-a-child, of course, is that you can drink and roam around without parents, and therefore go to nice restaurants! Last weekend I had a deelish steak salad at One Eleven Main. If for some reason you find yourself in that corner of Illinois, I recommend: fresh ingredients, local farm-supporting, all that good stuff. And delicious food!

Galena’s good for more than eating and shopping: there are lots of riding centers around, and great resorts for skiing and golfing, if you are into that kind of thing. It’s a super-pretty place!

MY SUMMER JAMS MIX

This short ‘n sweet playlist is heavy on the dance-y pop, featuring mostly ladies with sassy attitudes. It’s kind of a loose, mellow, playful set of tunes that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Rock dudes would be allergic to this, I suppose, but who has more fun during the summer: rock dudes or cute girls? Precisely.

Here’s the track listing! For those who are non-Flashy web types or those who don’t want to wade through an 8tracks mix, I streamed a few tracks here for you.

CULTS, Most Wanted
Lana Del Rey, “National Anthem”
Gwen Stefani, “The Sweet Escape”
SANTIGOLD, Pirate in the Water
Nelly Furtado, “Promiscuous”
NICKI MINAJ, Va Va Voom
La Roux, “Finally My Saviour”
Ellie Goulding, “Salt Skin”
Julia Tepper, “Cold Wind”
Madonna, “The Look of Love”

What are some of your sunny-day jams? I need more!

After awhile, I couldn’t resist, and hopped onto the weird whirly thing myself. This is what it looked like:

That’s how I wanted spring to feel: like twirling endlessly under a blue sky. And it has, very much so. This was a small moment, but it began what has become an auspicious season. So that’s now my first step to any new epoch of a life: find a small experience that bestows on you the feelings you most want to feel, and then feel them as big and bold and glorious as you can.

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I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to clean it out, because, after all, it wasn’t a very big closet. Plus, it was the only closet I had. Yet I had failed to tend to it during my first three relentlessly grueling years of grad school. I let things pile up, stuffed clothes in nooks and crannies, stored luggage within luggage, and generally crammed with everything that didn’t quite fit in my life, on my body, or with my identity into the space. It was just a mess, one I barely paid attention to because I was too busy paying attention to other things.

But then those other things became less pressing. Classes ended in my program, and so did the intensively focused work pace. The semester ended in May, and through most of June I slept deeply. I went home for a long vacation, where I slept some more. It was the life equivalent of a deep, deep breath. When I came back to New York in July, I walked into my apartment, opened the door of my closet to put my luggage away and realized, Wow, I should really clean this up. This is a freaking mess.

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Being ever the optimist, I thought cleaning out my closet would take hours, maybe a long afternoon. It didn’t. It took weeks. Embarrassing, but true. It wasn’t even that I had a hoarder’s store of things, since my closet was pretty tiny, after all. It took so long because I was constantly paralyzed throughout the whole process. I started with putting things into the piles that everyone tells you to make when sorting out clothes: Keep, Discard, Fix. But I found that sorting itself was an agonizing process. I would pick up something, stare at it for a moment, get sucked into a vortex of reverie and, lo and behold, ten minutes passed. What do I keep? Why do I want to keep it? Do I want to get rid of it? Can’t this work for me still? How can I get this to work? I just didn’t know sometimes. It was agonizing. I started on a warm July afternoon, and by the time midnight rolled around, I was still freaking sorting.

What was going on here? I felt like a crazy person. I felt like my possessions had possessed me, and not the other way around. I looked down at the Discard pile at my feet — at clothes that didn’t fit me, that didn’t work for me for one reason or another — and I realized I had moved these items many, many times over, bouncing them between Keep, Fix and Discard. Why was this so hard?

I picked up the items in the Discard pile. There wasn’t a lot, but what was there was quite nice. They were things that felt slightly insane to let go of. Things I had spent money on. Things that I had bought for certain dream scenarios. Things that were just beautiful and lovely in their own right, that I found pleasurable to look at and touch. I picked up a beautiful Ann Demeulemeester dress I had a hard time placing in the Discard pile: it had been particularly to let go of. It was a red silk dress, really lovely to behold and yet I never wore it. Why? It was gorgeous. My fingers lingering over the fine material’s softness, admiring the rich hue, the lovely drape — I was so tempted, once again, to place it back into the Keep pile. But then I stopped myself because suddenly — in a flash — I finally realized I was holding much more than an Ann Demeulemeester dress.

I was holding guilt.

I looked at the Discard pile, and it was like I was suddenly staring at the physical embodiment of guilt. Of shame, of waste, of failed or foolish dreams, of self-delusions. Of projects or resolutions or whims I never followed through on. No wonder it took forever. Try handling the physical embodiment of a few years’ worth of unexamined life and see if you can do it within three hours.

I could’ve just stuffed everything back, stuffed it all in a trash bag or back in my closet. Instead, something in me twisted and clicked: I swore to myself that I would never get into this situation again, one where I was paralyzed by my possessions. I swore that even if I got rid of everything in my Discard pile, I’d recoup its value in self-knowledge and enlightenment. It wouldn’t be just a bunch of stuff I’d try to resell or get rid of, only to fall into the same patterns that got me into the mess to begin with. I was going to fucking learn something from this.

And so I did. Little did I know, I would embark on a much larger inquiry, not only into the usual avenues of style and fashion, but one that touched on where I wanted to be in life, how I wanted to live, what kind of person I had been and wanted to be — and what I wanted to become. And those conversations led to other, connected conversations about money, about love, about all the things flourishing in my life right now. My life has radically changed from that summer after grad school, and it began when I opened my closet.

I also love this cover of “She’s Lost Control” by Spoek Mathambo. Darkwave township tech from Johannesburg. I hear people call this Afro-goth; I don’t care what it’s called, and the video is stunning, riveting even. I could write a whole thesis on the collision of iconographies happening visually and textually here. In 2001, I might have, but now I’d rather just listen and enjoy.

The story “Kashtanka” by Anton Chekhov. It’s about a dog who loses his way. I WANT A DOG NAMED KASHTANKA! Also, what took me so long to read Chekhov’s short stories? I am so slow sometimes!

My only bourgeois dream is to own a house, and in about a year or two, this will come true! I’ve started looking now, figuring it will take me that long to figure out how I want to spend a buttload of hard-earned savings; right now I want a farmhouse, because I want room for horses later. But I may just settle for a townhouse or something, really.

I am playing guitar lately, taking lessons all proper-like. I go to class with an acoustic, but my heart’s with my Telecaster.

This Nicki Minaj song. The first half of this record, i.e. the hip-hop half = kind of genius. And I love how she namechecks Hot Topic, it always makes me giggle a little.

Overall, life is full of such goodness: I’ve been working on a new novel and I am so happy that I don’t want to be on a computer so much! I want to be living and loving! I hope you’ve been happy this spring so far, all lovely blossoms and fresh air. Outside my window I have butterflies, hummingbirds and cardinals. I wake up and open the blinds and the cardinals sit in their nests and cock their heads at me, and I swear, it is the best start to my day (after a cup of coffee.) I wonder if they know me now. That is my goal this spring: to make friends with birds and share the sunshine. xo k.

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The tricky thing is that the areas of life that feel expansive and full of growth and insight for me right now — love and money — are not ones that I’m inclined to write about publicly, for obvious reasons. I really don’t want my love life or the state of my financies to be cached on Google, you know? (This isn’t helped by my day job, which makes me paranoid about how information on the Internet and on phones gets used against people all the time!) Yet I always like to share what I’ve been learning in a space like this. Must figure that puzzle out; as an online-writing veteran of many, many years, I wrestle now with exactly what I want to do with something like this, and how much energy I can put into it without sacrificing my longer, offline projects.

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In the meanwhile, I’ll just tell you that I am really in love with the California Star Jasmine fragrance from Pacifica, which I picked up this past weekend. I love the smell of jasmine but hate often how sickly-sweet it can be rendered, but this one smells fresh and green and slightly sharp but sunny. The whole site is 20% off, so if you’re inclined…

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Also: I have a piece up at Joan’s Digest, an online feminist film journal. I wrote about a really lovely, fantastic film called Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Love, and I think many of you would love this movie! I wrote specifically about the role of costuming in the film, but the film’s larger themes of self-reliance and vocation in terms of women’s coming-of-age is so beautiful and resonant. See it if you can.

1.

I have thought a lot about outgrowing cities, because I never anticipated what it would feel like. Someone asked me recently how I knew I was ready to leave NYC; she’s mulling an escape of her own. I paused, let a weight shift in my heart, and then said, “How I fill my well is different now; I don’t need so much from the outside world.” What I need now are sunsets, quiets, conversations about families and people’s children and hobbies and daily lives, a wide horizon, a horse, a walk by the river.

2.

Around me the trees are budding ferociously, and there is an unseasonal warmth. Temperatures are in the 80s, and the wind today was whipping through the winds. You feel the heat sink into your limbs, which are still barely thawed out from the winter.

3.

The melody of a certain voice.

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In my dream, I was making a movie, which is something that I haven’t done in awhile. The movie was this: I would bring my camera to a significant room in my life, either set up a tripod or have someone hold the camera, and then I’d film myself standing in the center of the room, spinning.

As I spun, I would begin corralling all the feelings and thoughts I ever had in the room, much like how a tornado sucks up the air around it. The thoughts and feelings would concentrate into my chest; it was like re-experiencing what happened in that room in fast-motion and hyper-speed. And then as I stopped spinning, the feelings would ebb away, and I was left feeling much space and light inside of me.

I put the footage together into a film of me spinning around in rooms, complete with a voiceover of what had happened in the room and what I had gotten from it. I showed the film at a screening, and it was called, no joke, “My Life.”

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(I should also mention that the “significant rooms” in my dream had no bearing on my real life. They were rooms like the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, or a tea room in the Dorchester Hotel in London. Weird, right?)

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I woke up this morning after the dream feeling really light and unburdened, so I decided it was my subconscious doing some spring cleaning. This isn’t entirely out of context with what is going on in my real life; I had a big gasp of a realization earlier this week, a significant shift in something related to my past. But it wasn’t until my dream where I felt I truly let something go.

How do you clean out your subconscious for spring? What emotional burdens and baggage are you cleaning out now?

(Just as I write this, it’s clear and sunny out, and the day should hit 60 degrees in the afternoon. It will be beautiful!)

Happy Leap Day! How nice to get an extra day in the year. I’m using mine to be utterly corny and take a leap — here are a few paragraphs from my novel.

I was too dumbstruck by the skaters to notice who they were right away. But, squinting more closely at the bigger, broader skater, I saw Viv was right. “It is Jim Dietz!” I whispered back, surprised. Jim Dietz had been the equivalent of a heavy metal power ballad at our school, semi-famous for his maroon Camaro and a lethal combination of bad temper and good looks. Viv had a crush on him when we were freshmen. But he got suspended pulling a knife on a kid in the cafeteria two years ago, and then was sent to his dad’s house in Wisconsin. No one had heard of or from him since. And now he’d come back, and become a skater. He had gotten much bigger and grown his hair out, but it was him.

“He’s amazing,” Viv noted, admiration in her voice as we watched him. She was right: he had incredible strength and power. Jim attacked every movement with a forward intensity, as if he wanted to smash himself into something and take glee in the rubble, like a human hurricane on concrete. He had a heft that belied the fearsome speed he got on the board, able to explode into astonishing flips and spins in mid-air.

Then there was the other skater, the one no one knew at all. He was less flamboyant in style, but once you started watching him, you couldn’t help but stare. Next to Jim’s massive bulk, he was taller and lankier, with dark hair and pale skin. A network of tattoos covered him, snaking all over his sinewy arms and shoulders. He had a different skating style from Jim, imbuing everything with a kind of offhand grace and intricacy. The way he moved wasn’t exactly feline, but it had an animal-like, instinctive quality. He could do half-cabs like they were nothing, one after the other. He could do all kinds of flips and grinds, dashed off like an afterthought. He could soar up into the air with ease, getting incredible air off the simplest of railings. He nailed the hardest skate tricks ever, the most complex combinations, and he did it like it was the easiest thing in the world.

I watched them for a bit, admiring the show like everyone else. But feeling my own board clutched against my chest, I remembered what I had set out to do tonight — and realized that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Nothing anyone did tonight would compare. It was this bittersweet feeling: seeing the most beautiful skating of my life, and realizing how janky my own efforts would seem in comparison to it.

I tugged at Viv’s arm, motioning for us to go. “Aren’t you going to go up?” she whispered, looking confused. I could tell she didn’t want to go.

I only shook my head. “Let’s go.” I took one last look at the two skaters, soaring high in the air in a way I could never hope to touch, and then turned and made my way back to the edge of the park where I belonged.

It is called, at the moment, LOVE AND CONCRETE, and it tells the story of Lily, a skateboarder who falls in love with a mysterious, gifted skater she meets on the scene. But he’s a werewolf, and of course, hijinks ensue. Okay, not hijinks! I jest — it’s a paranormal romance, for God’s sake! But there is illicit swimming in ponds, moshing with skinheads, animal sacrifices, skinned elbows and a secret lurking in the woods. If you’ve ever been giddy with a crush-turned-true-love, you know what my book feels like. If you’ve ever cowered in fear in the middle of the woods at night as you overhear the crunch of breaking bone and flesh against metal — well, you also know what my book feels like, too.

I also started a Tumblr for my book, collecting all the images I’ve been squirreling away since I started the novel. And I must say, it is super, super-hot, with loads of gorgeous wolf pics, skater pics, and the occasional snapshot of alt-rock heroines. Visit it: xoloveandconcrete.tumbr.com. I also started two Pinterest boards, one of just skaters, one of everything else. You can also check out my dream home Pinterest board while you’re there. Or the one of my wardrobe. Those are kind of dorky, but well, there you go!

Interestingly, the last gasp of winter echoed my own internal landscape. I had made some decisions, some of them major ones, the kind that shape your next few years. “A next few years” used to be vague and promising to me in their openness. Now they have an urgency to them; I want time to have a shape, and to matter.

Maybe it’s this urgency now that makes me double-think, rethink, tunnel back around, doubt — to want to go back to what I know instead of plow ahead to the wide-open unknown. But you know, snow melts, time goes forward, and so do you, one step at a time.

But I’m a romantic, and The Age of Innocence is a grand, tragic love story above everything else, and it hit my heart in a way that I can’t forget. Wharton gets the push and pulls of falling in love right, of how two people can come to deeply love one another, even if they never really quite touch. And she renders it with a command of classical craft, within a near-perfect structure and polished, elegant language. On its own, the story of the doomed romance between society man Newland Archer and the divorced “foreigner” Countess Olenska would be kind of a potboiler (of a very classy, restrained sort, of course), but it gets its power from the grasp that Wharton has of the milieu they live in — upper-class New York society in the early-to-mid 1800s — and her ability to situate her lovers within this rarefied, but ultimately stifling, sphere.

There’s such rich, loving detail of this slice of the world — you can practically feel the silks and velvets of the evening gowns, the smell of lilies in a conservatory — but Wharton never loses sight of the subtext of this deeply tribal world, and how it shapes the emotional lives and impulses of its inhabitants. Americans like to presume they are independent and free, that they command deeply individual destinies. Wharton powerfully portrays that this isn’t the case, that no matter what our emotional realities are, we are still social creatures and shaped in many ways by the mores of the world around us. It is just that relative privilege allows us the illusion that we are freer than we actually are.

Besides the absorbing, emotionally subtle love story, The Age of Innocence, to me, is a story about patriarchy and its mechanisms, and how even those who benefit most from it can suffer under it. Newland is part of a certain stripe of “gentleman,” and he sits near the apex of the top of the pyramid of the powerful and wealthy. Sure, he’s likely a bit more sensitive than most, and fancies himself more enlightened (and part of the book’s genius is how the veil falls from his eyes in his respect, and how he realizes his own social training has contributed to his emotional tragedy). But he’s still Mr. Fancy Pants, if you know what I mean. That I came to care for him, and felt the pangs of his sorrow as if they were my own, is really a testament of Wharton’s ability to trace the emotional development of Newland so well. And it’s a pretty indicting comment on a society that the villains of the story are the women the system aims to “protects.”

These days, of course, divorce isn’t social suicide, and Newland and Ellen could (maybe) find some modicum of happiness under more relaxed social mores. Wharton’s work, being so attuned to the social settings of her time, are of a time and place that no longer exist, perhaps adding to their grandeur and romanticism. But it still makes me think — especially when I think about all those fiery right-wing female political pundits — of how a society can convince its biggest victims to act against their own best interests. The ending of The Age of Innocence will always slay me as a romantic, but as I read it again as I’m older, I see how the romantic tragedy is also a tragedy of social and political dimensions, existing within a system that has never really quite gone away, which makes me even sadder.

And the ending of The Age of Innocence? Never fails to kill me as well.