This is not a blog about fashion.

However, sometimes someone like MKate looks far too sublime to resist drawing shameless attention to. Here's to being effortlessly cool. Thanks, girl, you put us all to shame.




Prowling photos by the glow of my computer screen is, coincidentally, how I am chipping away at the night. The reality is that I should be working on my piece for the magazine. Instead I am eating Vietnamese with my roommate, drinking lemon tea, researching the steamy past of Fleetwood Mac, and reading a book in bits and pieces.

In addition to hobo-chic at its best, I came across a few other shiver-worthy bites:

(on hearts)
"We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love."--Miranda July, excerpt from "No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories By Miranda July"

and (courtesy of my current muse of the hour, Truman Capote):

(on writing)

"My life--as an artist, at least--can be charted as precisely as a fever: the highs and lows, the very definite cycles.
I started writing when I was eight--out of the blue, uninspired by any example. I'd never known anyone who wrote; indeed, I knew few people who read. But the fact was, the only four things that interested me were: reading books, going to the movies, tap dancing and drawing pictures. Then one day I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation.
But of course I didn't know that. I wrote adventure stories, murder mysteries, comedy skits, tales that had been told me by former slaves and Civil War veterans. It was a lot of fun--at first. It stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad, and then made an even more alarming discovery: the the difference between good writing and true art; it is subtle, but savage. And after that, the whip came down!
As certain young people practice the piano or the violin four and five hours a day, so I played with my papers and pens. Yet I never discussed my writing with anyone; if someone asked what I was up to all those hours, I told them I was doing my school homework. My literary tasks kept me fully occupied; my apprenticeship at the altar of technique, craft; the devilish intricacies of paragraphing, punctuation, dialogue placement. Not to mention the grand overall design, the great demanding arc of middle-beginning-end. One had to learn so much, and from so many sources: not only from books, but from music, from painting, and just plain everyday observation.
In fact, the most interesting writing I did during those days was the plain everyday observations that I recorded in my journal. Descriptions of a neighbour. Long verbatim accounts of overheard conversations. Local gossip. A kind of reporting, a style of "seeing" and "hearing" that would later seriously influence me, though I was unaware of it then,..."--Truman Capote, excerpt from preface of "Music For Chameleons"

Gone,
RB.

Magic hours.

The water in the bathtub sighs heat, reeling me into itself. Limbs ache in a way that I am unacquainted with--subtle; searing. I slink my eyelids shut (ice cubes rest, invisible against lashes) and visualize tawny skin and the smell of a thousand waterfalls. If you asked me to teach you this language, I would say no. You aren't ready for it. Neither am I, for that matter. The house washed stone-gray in that field, somewhere in the far reaches of Argentina, grazes my thoughts. I remember its taste; the way the gnarled floor felt beneath my naked feet, and the wet haze that hung like an unseen gauze in the air, twisting down my throat. I am hungry again for that. This water is the same temperature as my sweat-glazed skin, and it tastes like nothing.

Hours ago, I sat folded into a red red booth across from Meg. Angular black glasses framed her face, and our hands played against wine glasses. I read aloud to her from Truman Capote's book called "Music for Chameleons", and all the while she sketched fitfully; beautifully in her brown journal. We decided together that bravery and taking a few skinny chances makes sense for now. Don't you think?

Then I walked to Paris and back. It was quite nice. I took three delicate bites of an almond croissant, listened for a while to a French couple having an argument in the street, took a metro to Montmarte, had a drag of a cigarette, and then walked home. I considered staying indefinitely, but decided against it. For what reason, I can't now quite remember. Back home in my apartment with the dimmest lighting, the dishes lay undone and my cat cried for her dinner. And so, I took my feet back to the collection of rooms and walls that are my own, at least for this evening. I fumbled with the fireplace, heated some soup and turned the pages of a book, softly and slowly. It was not a bad night.