I do miss a good night’s sleep. But darkness has given me many nights of self-discovery, creativeness and thought consultation. We all have a method to our madness right? So, my justification is that it’s a comforting feeling being awake to experience everyone, just for a few hours, at peace all at once. Innocently resting with their natural thought-flow. A few hours free of obligation, expectation and distraction. I think, write, and spark brighter with the stars, so I can’t say I don’t enjoy my patches of insomnia.

Words- Lord Byron, Music- Zooe Deschanel, Photos- fashionising.com, Sam & Ollie, Mike Colon, yayeveryday.

Sweet dreams til sunbeams find you,

-Jess.

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“This morning I was rather glum because I couldn’t find the word ‘Minotaur’ inside any of our dictionaries. This made me sad for the Minotaurs, but mostly because everybody trusts dictionaries and if they are hiding one little word, then they may be hiding lots of other words as well. I thought, that maybe the Minotaurs wished to be kept a secret, but I don’t know if there’s room in the world for anymore secrets.

Because people hide things too. In their pockets. In the knots in their spine and the gaps in their teeth. And sometimes i wish they would take better care because pockets get holes in the bottom and teeth fall out. You should always keep secrets with the monsters under the bed. You can feel them there and nobody else can see them.”

C: The Unicorn Diaries, Ellen von Unwerth

x Johannah E.

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She grew up in a small town
Never put her roots down
Daddy always kept movin’,
so she did too.

Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair
flyin’ in the wind

She’s been runnin’ half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin’ with
the very air she breathes,
The air she breathes.

She was an unknown legend in her time…

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I like to read Joan Didion on the subway.  Her essays.  The dry desert heat of California laces each beautifully constructed sentence and it feels as though I am slipping into a private conversation with a friend who sees the whole picture but, like me, is mired in the individual shapes of each puzzle piece.

My newness to New York City is evident in my approach to the subway.  Take yesterday, the G-train from 21st St. in Queens to Bergen in Brooklyn.  Do you see the girl in the black and white checked 1950s style dress?  You must, hair in a high ponytail, thick rimmed glasses, demure sandals and a fringe of dark bangs — she is delighting in the empty two story subway station and the breezeway it has created.  She reads, actually reads! a hard-bound book amid a group of loitering men.  What book?  The latest biography of Leo Castelli, Leo and His Circle.

My painful earnestness when it comes to books is out of step with subway fare fodder.  The pulpy novels, the gossip magazines, the school books and reports for work look appalled as I stand in the subway car swaying dangerously from both the motion of the train and the weight of my book.  Last week I actually sighed aloud en route to the Chelsea art gallery where I am interning, as a result of Jeffrey Eugenides’ description of complex hybrid emotions like “the happiness that attends disaster”, “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy”, “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar”, or “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” in Middlesex.  The strange look and consequent shuffling away by the older lady who smelled of tinned fish prompted me to swear I would seek out the first news stand so a copy of The New Yorker could be purchased.  At the Strand a few days later I even contemplated the latest Dan Brown novel.

The shame felt from that moment is hard to pinpoint.  Perhaps it was being caught in a moment of not-quite-revelation, but rather of remembering something you cannot believe now you ever forgot.  Those moments happen daily for any avid reader.  Though often they are private moments only shared if you force someone to listen to you read aloud a passage that moved you particularly.  Yet here I was caught out on the L-train headed towards Time Square and the act which I was caught out in was enough to force the character beside me to make a little extra room.
There I was: the subway pervert.

Which brings me back to Didion.  If anyone understands the slightly out of step feeling I experience on the subways, it is her.  She never understood why people refused to be as interested in water allotment in the desert as she.  Or, why strange minutiae tripped her up or kept her attention long after or even before anyone else.  Our private conversations (Didion’s and mine) on the G, L or even the 6-train remind me that while older ladies who smell of tinned fish might not get me, Didion with her over-sized sun glasses and off-beat ways will always be there to stop me from buying the latest issue of The New Yorker.

I like to read Didion on the subway.

“Chelsea Girl”

images from Life Magazine, Getty Images and public domain 50s retro ads

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A few months ago my friend & I found a book called Stories Done, Writings on the 1960′s and It’s Discontents, by Mikal Gilmore. We decided to buy & share it, just to have. I’ve accumulated lots of coffee table books that I flip open to for photo reference or a random fun fact. Stories Done is a bunch of essays on the music, literature & youth culture  of the 60′s (generously incorporating credit to it’s predecessors, as well as influence on it’s followers). Although the 60′s is glamorized years after, I like this book because Gilmore doesn’t shy away from the radical truths, the downfalls- the riots, civil rights, the drug use that brought our legends to death, the internal turmoil, the external spread of communism. He blatantly explains the struggle & darkness within the heavy minds of Rock & Roll artists, rebellious writers, young activists, drug addicts etc. I also like him because he’s a witty writer with an opinion, yet not biased.  Rather than repeat redundant facts about Rock & Roll, he has the soul, the understanding of it all, to tell one huge intertwining story.

With books like this (not exactly a novel), I  don’t read them start to finish. My mind jumps a lot, you never know what food for thought you’ll open up to. Here’s one of my fav sections about the Beat generation that I marked from Stories Done:

Allen Ginsberg not only made history- by writing poems that jarred America’s consciousness and by insuring that the 1950′s Beat movement would be remembered as a considerable literary force- but he also lived through and embodied some of the most remarkable cultural mutations of the last half century. As much as Presley, as much as the Beatles, Bob Dylan or the Sex Pistols, Allen Ginsberg helped set loose something wonderful, risky and unyielding in the psyche and dreams of our times. Perhaps only Martin Luther King Jr.’s brave and costly quest had a more genuinely liberating impact upon the realities of modern history, upon the freeing up of people and voices that much of established society wanted kept on the margins. Just as Dylan would later change what popular songs could say and do, Ginsberg changed what poetry might accomplish: how it could speak, what it would articulate, and whom it would speak to and for. Ginsberg’s words- his performances of his words and how he carried their meanings into his life and actions- gave poetry a political and cultural relevance it had not known”…

…John Lennon changed his spelling of the group’s name, Beetles, to Beatles, in part as tribute to the spirit of that inspired artistry.

Without the earlier work of Ginsberg and Kerouac, it is possible that these 1960′s artists might not have hit upon quite the same path of creativity- or at least might not have been able to work in the same atmosphere of permission and invention.

But the most important thing that these men shared was a sense that, in the mid-1940′s, there were great secrets lurking at America’s heart, that there were still rich and daring ways of exploring the nation’s arts and soul- and that there was a great adventure and transcendence to be found by doing so. Indeed, America was about to change dramatically, but the significance of that change wouldn’t be fully understood or reckoned with for another twenty years.

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“It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world works.” –Neil Gaiman

Growing up I dreamt of visiting every single city in every country on every continent of the world. I wanted to meet everyone and know them intimately. I imagined the seven billion birthday cards I’d send to the far corners of the earth; a million secrets and inside jokes and memories; walking into a mall and knowing each passerby by name. Neil Gaiman’s assumption that I’d only ever know five hundred of these souls shocked me– the thought that I would spend a good part of my life trying to avoid some of them nearly broke my heart.

But “it’s just the way the world works.”

I’m not fond of that statement–though it is the way literature works. You have a select cast of characters who are “important,” a chosen few whose lives make the story possible accompanied by a menagerie of meaningless faces that blend into the background. I wonder sometimes in the stories of my friends lives how often I’m forgotten. Am I at least a single chapter or is my influence rendered through a mere sentence? Will the readers have any memory of my presence by the end?

x Johannah E.

C: ffffound, Neil Gaiman

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I didn’t have a whole lot of time to read on my trip to Italy, but I did scribble a bunch:

Walking “home” over the Fiume Arno river right before a storm is the most peaceful dreariness. Standing mid-bridge with sheets of wind & grey gloom- grey with old age- this place embraces it’s years, it’s decay & past inhabitants, it’s foundation. Suspended between waters, sandwiched between the river below & the storm above, I can see they welcome this rain- not so much like East Coast rain that drowns out our already blurred vision with cold- but rain that brings them more flowers- that they’ll put in their shop windows & braid in their bike baskets. The same flowers reflective of their swirling window ironwork, paintings, door engravings & kitchen curtain petals.

Straight out are miles of other bridges, repetitive curves like the arcs of the Duomo. These arcs quickly became our best friends- connecting us from the Brooklyn of Firenze to everything possible. We grew to love the daily crisscross, the one familiar landmark that meant “almost home”. The non-nomadic element of our explorations. One of these bridges, the golden bridge, shelters gold jewelers for miles. It’s similar to walking through a pirate’s Amber tunnel of treasure- from a distance, this gold and these drops must reflect the Italy-Sun like sequins all over Florence.

(fyi, this is George Clooney’s house)

Images: yayeveryday, fashionising, flickr, my lovely reliable digital cam.

Love always,

Jess.

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“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” –American Beauty

Today: look for the beauty in something that isn’t beautiful.

-Johannah E.

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Ciao belllllas! Sorry for temporarily going MIA. I’ve been in Italy taking a Fabric Styling course- we’re here for inspiration, absorbing everything & anything that can be translated into textile prints, color stories, trend forecasting etc. We spent 2 weeks in Florence, 1 on Lake Como.  We’ve been spending our days visiting museums learning everything there is to know about Byzantine to post Renaissance art- all of this including fashion history as well. The Ferragamo museum in Florence was GORGEOUS (I got to touch Greta Garbo’s worn clothes, my life is complete). We visited the Picchi wool textile mill and Ratti silk manufacturer.  Another day was The Liseo Foundation, a group of adorable old women who create high-end specialized wovens- velvets & jacquards (these women are extremely skilled & patient, creating fabrics for the pope, queens, high-end designers, on machines that take months to just thread). And our teacher’s “surprise stop”, the MaxMara headquarters!- their vintage archive (Suzanne would’ve been in her glory), the showroom, original artwork/fabrics from collections dating back to the 50′s- it was absolutely incredible to be there.

My Wish List just got a whole lot longer: (sorry for small images)

Cashmere French shawl from the 20′s/30′s

All these Moroccan lamps I saw in a bar

My to-be chiffon/lace wedding dress<3 found in the MaxMara vintage archives

These jewelry boxes from the Stibbert museum

This 1727 harpsichord, supposedly it’s 1 of 3 left in the world

Murano glass chandeliers for every room of my house, I’m obsessed…

Lamps with velvet textiles by the Liseo Foundation

And since this is the literature society after all, we all need these Japanese fairytale books

As for the goodies that I did manage to bring home with me:

This little number (minus the boots)

Belt from Milan, made in Thailand, with Amethyst stones & bells from India.It’s gorgeous & makes me look like Esmeralda

I had to get at least 1 tourist tee

Italian leather bags for me & mom, mmmm

Silk from Como

& lots of presents for friends and family.

PS- make sure you check up on Red Fox’s posts too, she was my partner in crime on this trip.

Love always,

Jess

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Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world. (Ada Louise Huxtable)

I apologize for my lackluster posts recently, I have a terrible case of senioritis (though I’m only a freshman).

My mind is such a jumbled mess of memories, anticipation, and insomnia I barely have room for well formulated, interesting posts. It seems I’m on the tipping point between having no time to do anything, and the time to do everything. When ever I try to write I’m overwhelmed by the lingering end of term research paper I have to finish and a mound of trig I never even began. I can’t wait to be done with school and have all summer to major in barefoot beach romping and tree climbing and photography expeditions in the forests near my home. I want my homework to be guitar playing, poetry writing, classic movie watching and I want the flexibility to just lay in the grass and watch the clouds if I want to.

I can already feel the sun seeping into my bones, falling asleep to the sound of crickets, waking up well past noon. The smell of old books and dusty, airconditioned libraries, freshly mown grass and lavender lemonade.

I obviously have plenty of time to ramble…

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