Parallel Botany

A sea change.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:31:00 +0000

Hello, friends.

So...

I haven't been around much in these parts since the new year because I have been working on putting together a brand new blog, which will supersede this site and a couple of other mini blogs I've been picking at for a while.

I humbly invite you to join me over at my new cyber home, Scarlet town. I've already written a handful of posts because I didn't want to refer people to a blank space. Please, do drop by and say hello, if you are so inclined. I appreciate each and every one of my Parallel Botany readers and subscribers, and I hate the thought of losing track of everyone. But, well, things change. Especially on los internets. Still, I'd love to see you over there.

Be seeing you,

Lisa

There are still some buggy formatting issues I'm trying to sort out over in Scarlet town, so please let me know if anything looks wonky. Thanks :)

Year's end.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 07:32:00 +0000

A mid-winter eclipse.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 04:07:00 +0000

During the eclipse in the small hours of the morning, the moon was a dim, dull, cold pebble. It seemed as though I could have reached up and plucked it right out of the sky.

Simple Quick Gift Wrapping for Manly Men!

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:12:00 +0000

Hey! I'll be spending this Christmas here at home with two fellas—my boyfriend, and a friend of ours who is coming to spend the day eating, drinking, and being merry with us. We're not doing much in the way of gifts, just a few little dumb, jokey things. I've adjusted my wrapping paper accordingly, and have gone very simple with the presentation:

Brown parcel paper, rubber bands.
Easy as pie.

I'm going to be making essentially the same pick-at-it-all-day spread of food that I did last Christmas: two quiches, a gaping vat of homemade hummus with pita, and a bubbling cauldron of soup (mulligatawny this year). Add to that a pot of mulled wine, gingerbread ~~men~~ corgis, and the requisite dishes of nuts and candy strategically placed at various points of repose, and you can call us fat and happy.

AND! If we can actually hunt down a bottle of white crème de cacao (no luck so far), we'll be mixing up some holiday cheer in the form of festive cocktails: the Rose Martini and the Gatsby. My boyfriend came across The Gatsby on The Rachel Maddow Show recently, and the Rose Martini was a featured drink over at Design*Sponge.

Now, where can I buy a cocktail shaker in Inwood...

Free wallpaper for your computer: Icy Blue

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:07:00 +0000

Just got back from Washington, D. C. tonight. It was a quick quick quick trip. I didn't take a lot of photos, but I'll share any half-way decent shots later on in the week.

My go-to website for weather updates is showing me little snowflakes on tomorrow's forecast—"Flurries/Wind." I don't think we're going to have any substantial snowfall or accumulation just yet, but it's definitely time to bust out the heavy coats, scarves, gloves, hats, etc. Time to embrace the icy blue coldness and start making plans for a cozy, old-timey Christmas.

Icy Blue
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Some of you might recognize these little wreaths, which I whipped up last December. Indeed, that's when I took this photo. I'm trying to decide whether or not to make more of them this year. I still have some bottle brush trees to glitz up with glitter and pearls, too. We'll see what I have time for...

Oh, and another thing, something very cool! If you're like me and love Advent calendars but are busy/lazy/otherwise distracted and have not managed to purchase one yet, do go visit Circles of Rain, where you can enjoy Sarah's Advent calendar of daily .gif animations. It is the cutest, cleverest thing. Here is December 3:

Advent animation: Circles of Rain

wreath photo: L. Hopkins

The end of autumn.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 05:27:00 +0000

I'm really glad I snapped this photo out my window the week before last because the recent wind and rainstorms have since put an end to this spectacle.

Look at the sidewalk on the right and you'll see that even our little saplings got into the act. Aw.

After an unseasonably warm couple of weeks, temperatures here are starting to drop. We're hitting right around the freezing point at night now. I wonder if we'll have snow in December this year?

Tomorrow, I'll be hopping on the bus to DC, and I'm going to take the quilt along so I can finish it during the ride down. It just needs a whole lot of whip stitch to fasten the binding to the back, and then, well, I can stick a fork in it because it. will. be. done.

More fall colors, coming to an end (but also to a beginning).
Quilted and waiting for binding. I'll take a better photo when it's finished (maybe).

I still have a fair amount to do before my bus ride tomorrow morning and should probably not be whittling away the hours on the internet! I just wanted to pause for a bit and enjoy these fall colors one last time...

Toodles!

Miss Botany Goes to Washington.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:42:00 +0000

Well, she will be going to Washington this coming weekend, December 3-5. Lame duck high-jinks will no doubt ensue!

Abe.

I'll only have two days there, so I have been trying to figure out what to see in that brief time. There is much so much to take in: monuments, museums, the local wildlife (lobbyists). The Obamas will probably be too busy (and too fabulous) to invite me in for a Kaffeeklatsch, worse luck.

In the Red Room at the White House. (Wait—isn't that a song by Cream?)

I'd like to visit the almighty Library of Congress, or at least see part of it, although they only let you check out books if you're actually a member of Congress. Feh.

c. 1897. Books waiting to be filed on the shelves of their new home in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. I should think they've tidied up a little since then.

Ever been to DC? Have any suggestions for a whirlwind visit?

In the meantime, I'll try to finish the very unwieldy task of quilting my New England Fall quilt, as Operation: Good Blankets continues unabated. I've now finished the top and have it pinned to the batting and back. In my fantasy, I have the quilting all done by the end of this week and I spend entire my bus ride down to Washington stitching on the binding. Maybe, maybe...

Or, maybe not.

Back to nature.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:36:00 +0000

Last week I was walking to the park with the dog, when my ankle turned inward and sort of rolled under, causing me to take a swift but ultimately genteel, sophisticated spill on the sidewalk. If ever a pratfall could be said to have an aristocratic bearing, this was it. And that's the Official Version of the incident, as it shall be written in the history books. Got it?

My ankle was fine (thanks for asking). I was left with a large but very shallow scrape on my shin, which stung a bit, but no big whoop. The dog rushed to my side to assist me, and also to see if perhaps a morsel or two had been flung from my bag during my unplanned descent.

I picked myself up, deftly brushed the New York street grime from my fresh wound, and we carried on valiantly, making our way to the steepest, most ill-marked and spindly trail in the park. Our favorite. It was at the bottom of the trail that my ankle rolled inward again. And again, it didn't hurt, but I worried that I might not be so lucky if it happened a third time.

So I took off my shoes. The ground, littered with leaves and twigs and acorns, was very uneven, and I couldn't feel the terrain through the thick soles of my shoes. Going shoeless seemed the only way for me to be truly surefooted.

I felt rather transgressive going barefoot in a city park, in the fall, on that hill, because it's the sort of thing that simply is not done, that I know of. On a beach in the summer—sure, of course. In the spring on new grass—by all means, take off your shoes. But in autumn, while trudging up rough terrain?

It felt great. I might have to do it again, but without all the falling down beforehand.

There's a nice, flat path at the top of the trail, but the shoes stayed off.

Aside from my rough-and-tumble shoeless stroll, there have been other small transgressions that have kept me occupied and amused over the past couple of weeks, although I have been loath to photograph them, or even remember them.

There has been yet more night quilting: furtive patchwork, lots of pale gray, continued rejection of patterns with names, clandestine pressing of seams in the dim lamplight.

Shhhh! Don't tell a soul...

And then I reached into a basket and found this triangles thing I started months and months ago:

Once upon a time, I cut up a zillion pieces of fabric for a blue, red and white triangle quilt, sewed a couple of blocks, then stopped and crammed the whole shebang into a basket, which I then put in a box, on a shelf. Who knows why. But I'm suddenly dying to start up with it again.

It's getting cold in New York these days, and all I want to do is make blankets and then crawl under them. For yonks we've only had a few cheap throw blankets made out of that horrible polyester fleece material, and I've recently sought to remedy this by launching what I have mentally christened Operation: Good Blankets. I just want a whole bunch of good small blankets that are attractive, cozy, and well-made, but not so precious that I have to worry about not getting peanut butter on them.

That doesn't seem too lofty a goal, does it?

Wallpapers for your computer: Scenes from a cemetery.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:23:00 +0000

I had a very busy October and didn't post my usual wallpaper at the beginning of the month, so I'm making up for it now by posting four, FOUR!, wallpapers. All of this month's photos were taken at La Recoleta Cementery in 2007, while visiting Buenos Aires.

The cemetery is a very beautiful place, with large marble and granite mausoleums arranged in rows that resemble the arrangement of city streets. In the brochure we were given as we entered the cemetery Recoleta is touted "a thriving necropolis."

How wonderful is that description?

Cobwebs
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Gregorio Torres
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Statues
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Liliana
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And just for fun, here are some additional photos, including a couple of the ubiquitous gatos that call the cemetery home:

ˆˆ°ˆˆ Happy Halloween ˆˆ°ˆˆ

Wear it close to your heart.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:35:00 +0000

A few of my favorite pendants, both new and old, although even the new ones gesture toward the ancient. Some of them are my own, others are objects of desire.

Beautiful, useful, and greatly cherished, this copper coin holder locket belonged to my great-grandmother.

I love the gentle, radiant beauty of these Talisman pendants by Under the Pyramids. Mathyld will even make you a personalized talisman with crystals of your choice, housed in an antique vial because she is a peach!

A traveling museum of nature's ephemera. Drucilla Pettibone's Mothwing pendants are made from found wings set in antiqued copper bezels, dangling from Dru's own handspun supersoft merino wool.

Jot down your dreams and take them with you. Sweet mini book pendant made with Italian recycled paper and lace, by Antico Valore.

And these? Well, I made them. Delicate old lace on display in little brass frames. I'm the sort of person who saves bits of ribbon and cloth, no matter how small. I never know what I'm saving them for until something like this pops up.

Keepsakes, talismans, lockets, bones, stones. What do you carry close to your heart?

Flinty.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:36:00 +0000

Back from Maine.

Did I take lots of photos of the wild, rocky beaches and breathtaking fall foliage?

No. But it was very pretty.

Did I return to New York restored and well-rested?

No. I feel even more run down than before!

Did I eat too much food while I was away?

Yes, indeed. Well, let's not talk about that...

Inscription: A memorial to all Maine Fishermen who have devoted their lives to the sea.

Little shells, Orr's Island

Oh, and I managed to finish binding the quilt while I was there...yay :)

It still needs to be given a wash, but it's done!

Night Stitching

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:15:00 +0000

A few projects are underway here at Botany headquarters.

Last week, on a whim, I decided to start making a small quilt. I have oodles and oodles of fabric just begging to be used up, so I just started yanking fabrics off the shelf. I chose very quickly, to avoid too much "matchiness," in the hope of coming up with something a little on the ugly side. Well, maybe not ugly, but I think it's easy and tempting to overthink these things and end up with a blanket that is impeccably planned and perfectly color coordinated, yet lacking in ... I don't know. Something like vitality.

My favorite quilt, which sadly I no longer have, was purchased at a garage sale when I was a teenager, and it was a mess. Ugly as sin, but I loved it so much. It was in violation of all the Laws of Good Quiltmaking, the defiant thing. The fabrics were all different weights and weaves and colors and fibers, all salvaged from old clothing, stitched together very unevenly. Some of the flimsier fabrics had pulled loose from the stitching because they really had no business being part of a quilt in the first place. The backing was an old sheet with yellow roses on a white background, and the batting was a ratty old green blanket, one of those awful woven acrylic bed blankets from the 60s or 70s (remember those?). The whole thing was tied together with white acrylic yarn. A real Frankenstein affair, yes, but it was cozy and intriguing. My friend and I would spend time picking out our favorite fabrics (cotton prints from the 50s and 60s were the most prized).

It was a fine blanket.

I know that mine won't be that ugly or shoddily constructed, but I'll do my ~~best~~ worst.

In other stitchtastic news, we are wrapping up week one of the Ragtime Seance e-course. This week's project was to embroider a pillowcover or handkerchief. I spent a little time at a flea market last weekend, hoping to luck into a little cushion cover I could use, but didn't find anything. Then, rummaging around in my linen cupboard, I found an old white cover for a very large bolster pillow from Ikea. Plain white cotton. The bolster pillows are long gone (and no longer in production, it seems), and this pillowcase's mate was cut up and used for another project long ago. Quite frankly, I didn't even know this one was still around; it was at the very bottom of a drawer.

Good enough. I cut it in half and turned it into two small pillow cases (about 15" x 19"). I picked a neat font called Speedball No. 3 from dafont.com, and got to work, following Drucilla's helpful instructions.

It's from that old song It's Only a Paper Moon, which is from 1933, so I'm fudging the flapper timeline a bit. But honestly, I think my personality is more Depression-era than Jazz Age, anyway.

A better shot of the stitching:

The letters are worked in tiny backstitch using navy laceweight yarn (I think it's wool), and the moon is satin stitch in peach colored DMC floss (I used three strands), outlined in navy.

Because this is an improvised pillowcase, the size is odd, so I'll need to make a pillow to fit it. Yes, yes, someday...

I'm not sure what next week's Ragtime lesson will be, but I can't wait! So far in this course, I have overcome my fear of the satin stitch, which has plagued me since childhood, when a Peanuts gang crewel embroidery kit I tried to make went badly wrong. Hooray for personal growth!

OK, I've got more house guests are coming in just a few days, so I need to 23 skidoo!

I'll take Manhattan by storm bus.

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:05:00 +0000

So, the parents came and went. While they were here, we did the three-hour boat tour all the way around Manhattan. My photos aren't all that hot because my dad wanted to sit inside the boat, rather than out on the open deck. So all the boat photos were taken through a tinted, not exactly clean window, with all the attendant grime and glare. Photography FAIL, as the kids say. We saw the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Roosevelt Island's spooky, crumbling asylum, the New Jersey Palisades, the Intrepid, all the bridges, and much, much more!

As always, upper Manhattan was given short shrift. The tour guide, whose voice and speaking style were a dead ringer for Paul Harvey, stopped mentioning neighborhoods after East Harlem. So the whole boatload of tourists had no idea they were passing Washington Heights and Inwood. Or, perhaps they are now under the impression that Harlem extends all the way to the northern tip of Manhattan. Inwood is small, but Washington Heights is a big neighborhood! It's even the setting of a hit Broadway musical! Welcome to upstate Manhattan—they don't even know we exist. Bah.

The shuttered Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

We also took a "downtown" tour on a double decker bus, which was great. I highly recommend it, if you can manage to get a seat on the open upper deck.

Skyscrapers crowding in on me, with the Empire State Building in the distance.

A regret: I didn't get a photo of the Chrysler Building, and it's my favorite one! Boo!

The Flatiron Building. Completed in 1902, it is one of the oldest skyscrapers.

There was a couple behind me on the bus, and as we drove past the Flatiron, the man mentioned all of the window-mounted air conditioners to his wife. He marveled that this grand construction does not have central air conditioning. I sometimes forget that much of the rest of the nation lives in post-WWII centrally chilled comfort.

The Woolworth Building.

In addition to the boat and bus tours, we also took in a Broadway show: Chicago. I found out that my dad loves the film. I'm not a big fan of musicals, but it was good fun. When I see a show like that, I spend more time thinking about all of the energy that goes into making it happen, since I usually have trouble connecting with the skimpy narrative. I think about all the costumers, electricians, carpenters, set dressers, choreographers, auditions, rehearsals—and all that jazz. I wonder where they found those tiny umbrellas? How long do those ostrich feather fans last before they start to fall apart?

I tried to show them a good time. I did my best. My dad and I have very different tastes. Last time he visited, I dragged him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he probably thought was an absolute snooze. I wouldn't even consider taking him to MoMA. And it's probably just as well that we skipped The Cloisters. Papaya King, on the other hand—we'll definitely have to go there next time. New York has something for everyone!

Piecing it all together

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:20:00 +0000

The Statue of Liberty's head at the Paris World's Fair, 1878

I'm so looking forward to the Ragtime Seance e-course that I feel I must warn you now that I am planning on posting about it consistently for the next couple of months.

The course doesn't start until September 27th (which means there's still plenty of time to sign up, by the way!), so right now I'm in the gathering ideas/research phase. My objective right now is to narrow things down to specific fabrics and trims and colors. Since I'm not 100% sure what the course will be like, I don't know if I should come up with some embroidery designs of my own, or if there will be pre-made designs included that will likely be better than what I could come up with on my own anyway.

The Statue of Liberty's hand and torch at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876

First, I started thinking about colors, and after playing around with a few combinations, I got midnight blue stuck in my head, with trim and embellishments in peach, along with a little dark red and pale gray.

I have some lightweight dark, dark, dark blue linen that is dying to be used for something, if it can assure me that it won't bleed dye all over any pretty stitching and lace I put on it. There's also some lightweight cotton in the most pale shade of gray that might need to make an appearance as well. We'll see.

Maybe dark blue shorts and a gray top, with a peachy/pink design and a touch of brick red and gray? Or matching dark blue shorts and top and save the cuddly gray cotton for the pillowcase? Decisions!

I've also taken the lead of Ragtime gal Mathyld, who put together some inspiring Polyvore outfits and accessories. I decided to open a Polyvore account and give it a shot myself:

in the flapper's boudoir by lisa_pb

(For the record, I would not actually submit to wearing frilly garters.)

The Statue of Liberty is too old to be a flapper, but if she'd been built just a few decades later, who knows? I have a feeling that under the heavy folds of her oxidized copper robe, Miss Liberty's kneecaps are yearning to breathe free.

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and his most famous sculpture, Liberty Enlightening the World

Speaking of tourist ~~traps~~ meccas, my dad and stepmom are coming to New York next week, and we're planning on taking a boat tour that goes all the way around Manhattan, something I've always wanted to do. I will be posting my touristic photos of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the United Nations, the Brooklyn Bridge, etc, etc, etc. Watch this space!

Free wallpaper for your computer: Small notions

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:06:00 +0000

Hello, September!

I'm still enjoying a nice, long break from the camera, so once again I had to delve into the archives for the monthly image. Honestly, I like having an excuse to go back and take a second look at some of my old photos. This month's photo is from this past January—not too ancient. However, some of the items in the photo are well worn: a very old linen towel with cross stitched flowers, a yellowed remnant tag from a piece of vintage fabric, wooden spools of thread (can you even buy thread on wooden spools anymore? I don't think so.)

Remnant
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I also came across a neat photo from a trip we took in 2005. Don't let the French signs fool you; this is a house front in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Old San Juan historic district is known for its brightly painted houses in every tropical color imaginable, but something about this pale gray house with dark blue mailbox and door and metal signs in French struck our fancy. I'm sure the "CHIEN LUNATIQUE" plaque had something to do with it, as we had been talking all year about getting a dog, and a couple of months after our trip we did indeed get a little chien lunatique of our own.

Unfortunately, the file is on the small side, so I couldn't offer a variety of sizes for different screen resolutions.

Old San Juan
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*le chien*

[[Photos: L. Hopkins]]

Ragtime Seance e-course: unleash your inner flapper girl!

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:19:00 +0000

Ragtime Seance: part e-course, part secret club.

Good news! Drucilla Pettibone and Mathyld of Under the Pyramids have just opened up registration for their brand new e-course/secret stitching society, Ragtime Seance.

Over the course of six weeks, participants will make themselves a fancy little flapper-inspired sleep set consisting of an embroidered pillowcase, camisole, and shorts. The choice of fabrics and colors is entirely up to you. Upon registration, you will be provided with a password to access the class blog, as well as an invitation to the private Flickr group where you can swap ideas and photos with your classmates, or receive assistance from Drucilla and Mathyld, both of whom really are the sweetest young flappers you could ever hope to meet. They will be with you every step of the way, from cutting your patterns to festooning your project with dainty embroideries and lace.

Class starts on September 27th and runs until November 7th. If you're looking for a fun fall project and would like to spend time honing your sewing and embroidery skills while making new friends, this course is just what the doctor ordered!

Have a look!

Course Schedule
Supply List

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to perfecting my Charleston...

Toodle pip!

A Welcome Change

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:22:00 +0000

Autumn, Currier & Ives lithograph. A Puritan Carmen Miranda?

I don't want to speak too soon because it's not even September yet, but here in New York we're experiencing a much longed for dip in temperatures. I could just about weep with joy.

A few days ago, I was so fed up with summer that I went back through a folder of photos I took last fall just so I could spend a little time daydreaming about crisp autumn air and rust-colored and golden leaves falling all around me.

Summer is my least favorite season, and I've found this summer to be particularly brutal, both climatically and emotionally. The temperatures have been higher overall, and have stayed high for longer, and the humidity has been relentless. I'm sure it's worse than last year, but perhaps I feel that way every year.

Every spring, as the mercury begins its steady ascent up the thermometer, I'm filled with apprehension. Foreboding. Dread. If only there were a seasonal fast-forward button, I would happily skip over June-August.

John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves

Apples, squash, soups and stews!
Rust, gold, brown, ashy blue, mossy green, brick red.
Long sleeves! Scarves! Boots!

Please hurry, Fall! Your presence is required!

Crusoe in Manhattan

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:45:00 +0000

Now I live here, another island,
that doesn't seem like one, but who decides?

My blood was full of them; my brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I'm old.

I'm bored too, drinking my real tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.

It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain in the handle...

Now it won't look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.

from the poem Crusoe in England by Elizabeth Bishop

Free wallpaper for your computer: window shopping

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:17:00 +0000

This month's wallpaper is a photo I took while window shopping in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens. A window display of colorful beaded silks in pinks and purples, reflecting the busy daytime traffic.

Jackson Heights

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I'd also like to announce that my April wallpaper, Paper Balloons, was featured recently on the very nifty site Wallpaper Luv. They have a ton of beautiful, cool, free wallpapers available, so be sure to check them out if you are like me and are constantly playing around with your computer's background display. Just click on the Wallpaper Luv logo above to be taken to the site. It's fun!

Reading for fun and profit!

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 15:49:00 +0000

For reasons I'm much too weary to go into, this has been the lousiest week of the lousiest month I've had all year, and to celebrate the fact that it is coming to a close, I decided to engage in some good old fashioned American retail therapy, thanks to a Barnes & Noble gift card I was given a couple of months ago. Sometimes life gets you down, and then...HEY! FREE BOOKS!

I've got a dream wish list of books that I never seem to actually obtain. When I find myself in a bookstore, somehow I always end up buying random titles that catch my eye for whatever reason. I don't even try to come up with a plan in bookstores—just wander aimlessly through every section and see what jumps out at me. I don't know how you do your book buying, but this seems to be how it works out for me.

Yesterday's cull: worldliness, travel, adventure, and ... well, Poe.

Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl

The Unknown Poe

Following the Equator, Mark Twain
(and what a fine head of hair on S. C., by the way!)

I don't know what these choices say about my current state of mind. Let's see how this breaks down: two books about leaving behind the familiar and getting out into the big wide world of seafaring adventure and cross-cultural exchange, and one book of dark journeys of a rather more inward nature, certainly. Two 19th century books by two of my country's most highly acclaimed writers. One mid-20th century book, written by an adventurous scientist from Norway. As for the timeliness of the Poe purchase, I can only say that the feelings of rejection and futility I've been experiencing this month are cosmic in proportion to my typical, occasional "case of the blahs." Or, as dear Edgar puts it:

"Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively
Made in his image a manikin merely to madden it?"

People like me need people like Poe.

Goodbye, July. I'm so happy to see you go.

FREE BOOKS!!!

Project 365, a sputtering engine

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:42:00 +0000

Discarded bear, 204th Street, Inwood

Bust of Washington with electric fan, George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal, New York

Double exposure of Cooper Street at dusk, Inwood

Rational Insanity

Convent of the Good Shepherd, Isham Street, Inwood

At this point my "Yay, Project 365!" has devolved into "Yeah, sometimes I take pictures of things..."

I'm thinking of scrapping the whole business of dutifully numbering and cataloging the daily photos and adding them to the Flickr group, as I transition back into my regular habit of going through spurts of wanting to take lots of photos, followed by nice long breaks from taking snapshots.

There's something about taking photographs that I find alienating. When I'm out on the street, for instance, and I see something "photo-worthy," the simple act of getting out the camera and preparing to use it automatically distances me from my real experience of the thing I am about to photograph. As I stand before the subject and think about photographing it, I am in effect denying myself the actual experience of the thing because I've already turned my attention to commemorating and idealizing it. The camera intrudes upon the present, prematurely relegating it to the past, as it is happening. And so I grow to resent it.

That might not make a lot of sense, but I swear it's true.

[[photos by me]]

Treasures from trash: !אריק אינשטיין

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:44:00 +0000

Ask me about Israeli pop music and I'll tell you the truth: I know very little about it. But I know more about it now than I did several years ago when I found this cassette sitting on the lid of a dumpster behind the apartment building where I lived at the time. No case, just a naked cassette. Unable to read the label, I took the tape inside and gave it a listen. A male singer, the arrangements sounded like late 60s or early 70s, elements of folk music and ballads and rock-lite paired with soft psychedelic-era guitar flourishes. I enjoyed it quite a bit and decided to hang on to it.

Fast-foward (heh) a couple of years, when my boyfriend met a new client—an Israeli woman— at his job. Over the course of their meeting, the conversation turned to Israel. He suddenly remembered the cassette, and fetched it from car. "What is this? My girlfriend found it in the garbage."

"Oh, it's Arik Einstein. He's very well known in Israel."

And that's how we learned about good old Arik, one of the seminal figures of Israeli rock music. Armed with this knowledge, we did some research on-line and hunted down re-released CDs by Arik and some of his contemporaries—Shalom Chanoch, Josie Katz, Shmulik Kraus— and had ourselves a little buying binge, resulting in this:

Don't you just love discovering cool things in the most unlikely places? I now have all this music in my life because someone decided to abandon an old cassette to the landfill, and I just happened to be there at the right time to intercept it.

Thunderbolts and Lightning!

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:45:00 +0000

We had a brief but very impressive lightning storm pass over us last night, with deafening thunder and rain coming down in sheets. It was truly awesome, which is why I took about thirty photographs, although none of them captured the awesomeness.

But still! Storm!

[[Photo/.gif: me]]

Forgotten things: embroidery

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:21:00 +0000

I found three small embroidered panels I made that had been languishing in the bottom of a nearly inaccessible drawer in a buffet cupboard for years. I had forgotten all about them.

What to do with them now? The first two are basically completed, the last one still needs work.

I love doing embroidery, but I never know what to do with it at the end! I promptly lose interest.

Any suggestions?

Making It Mine: Baudelaire

noreply@blogger.com (→lisa) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Correspondences

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let sometimes emerge confused words;
Man crosses it through forests of symbols
Which watch him with intimate eyes.

Like those deep echoes that meet from afar
In a dark and profound harmony,
As vast as night and clarity,
So perfumes, colors, tones answer each other.

There are perfumes fresh as children's flesh,
Soft as oboes, green as meadows,
And others, corrupted, rich, triumphant,

Possessing the diffusion of infinite things,
Like amber, musk, incense and aromatic resin,
Chanting the ecstasies of spirit and senses.

— Charles Baudelaire (trans. Geoffrey Wagner)

Correspondances

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
— Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.

— Charles Baudelaire