Does she try to hypnotise you, Peter?

Delivered half-way through the case, the question seems irrelevant.  Lord Peter Wimsey has already proposed to, and been roundly refused by the ‘femme fatale’ in question, Harriet Vane.

An economic crisis, a detective novelist wrongly accused of her lover’s murder, conservative politics and morals, the aristocracy at odds with a rapidly changing population, popular culture at a zenith or perhaps a precarious moment of change and innovation – Lord Peter’s Great Britain of 1929 is as recognizable as our reality of 2011.  The ‘shifty’ morality of loose women and an educated but adrift youth population are the focus of a trial that has the rapt attention of all of London’s classes.

No one more interested than Lord Peter himself, besotted with the accused and setting out to prove her innocence Lord Peter runs a merry chase through London’s underworld and upper echelons.  Pitting himself against Scotland Yard and his dear friend the Police Chief-Inspector, Lord Peter dives into the world of London’s intelligensia and with the aid of the Cattery, reformed thieves, stock market investors, the accused herself, Spiritualists and the dapperest of man-servants attempts to woo Harriet Vane.

London, 1929 – the fashion, the innovations of science and technology, the questions about the role of women in modern society, economic crisis and the unrest of the middle class set a perfect backdrop to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison.  The themes, the fashions, the impudence of a sassy, sharp talking female make you long for a little more glamour while reminding you that no era is as perfect as hindsight makes it seems.

The detective novel becomes in Sayers’ hands a comment on society, life and love.  All in the modern times, of course.

-M

Edward Steichen photograph, Photobucket, Flikr, Grace’s Birdcage, British Library, A la mode, Doctor Macro

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Sometimes I forget the little things: what I had for breakfast yesterday, what day of the week it is, who I was supposed to call. They’re silly and small and not entirely necessary to know and if I sit awhile on the couch, or reading a book eventually I’ll remember and jump up to find my phone or find that box of cereal that was so especially tasty at breakfast last Tuesday. But sometimes I remember suddenly an idea or a person or a moment and it stops my heart to think that they were forgettable. How could I? I almost feel ashamed to have forgotten something so beautiful, like the china set and rosy-cheeked porcelain dolls from my childhood would be hurt if they ever heard. (I’m sorry.)

So here’s a list of thing’s I remember from being small: walnut brownies with powdered sugar that stained your lips frosted white and tickled our noses, mother making me curlie-q roses from the pencil sharpener, the smell of dusty books and the rusted sewing machines at Nana’s. Waking up early every time there was a meteor shower or comet or something else pretty my dad found on one of his late night/early dusk walks and wanted to share… libraries, libraries, libraries, thistle, Marina picnics and the birchwood tree I used to string with lights and feathers and a thin lace blanket to make forts during the winter while letting my eyelashes catch the snow. I promise to never forget you, even if I lose myself.

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“’Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

-J.D. Salinger

E.L. Doctorow, Life, Van Gogh

Love always,

Jess

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Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and looked up and saw jackpines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great Western Slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the western Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land.

We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess-across the night, eastward over the Plains, where somewhere an old man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word, and would arrive any minute and make us silent.

All I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country.

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One of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something — because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards — perhaps all your life, who knows? — surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies’ dresses and the gentlemen’s voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music — everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. ‘The house I was living in when I read that book,’ you think, or ‘This colour reminds me of that book.”

Oh dear, oh deer.

Happy Reading,

Johannah E.

Tigers are Better Looking by Jean Rhys

C: Karina Galstyan and Katya Golikova, Lena Erysheva

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Waking up slow is a very important thing to me. I don’t sleep late, but I won’t up & go. I’m a morning person that leaves generous amounts of time for sun-worshiping. The smell of pillows & coffee is a good thing. You gotta bring the coffee back in bed though. Rule #1, enjoy your coffee, love your fuel. And your window-sun.

So anyways, this morning I’m procrastinating life with cinna-coffee & HBO’s Grey Gardens, the true story of “Big” & “Little” Edie Beale- mother & daughter, relatives of Jackie Kennedy. They have each other, their withering house & their loopy minds. I’m thinking about how much I’d love to be a stylist for this film, recreating scenes from the real 1975 documentary. Everything about it is beautiful. The costumes, the house, the gardens. Maybe it’s ironic to call it beautiful, considering it’s about pigion-holed hopes in a deteriorating mansion. But that’s all perspective- They created a magical world in this house full of theater acts, stray cats & ice cream.

I’m going to pretend Spanish Moss’ vintage pieces didn’t sell out so quick, and use them to style my own:

Drew’s white hooded dress & all the head scarves are my favorite.

-”The cat’s going to the bathroom right in back of my portrait. God, isn’t that awful?”
-”No, I’m glad he is. I’m glad somebody’s doing something he wanted to do.”

“This is the best thing to wear for today, you understand. Because I don’t like women in skirts and the best thing is to wear pantyhose or some pants under a short skirt, I think. Then you have the pants under the skirt and then you can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the skirt. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape. So I think this is the best costume for today.”

Images from Grey Gardens & Spanish Moss. <3

Love always,

Jess

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Here’s a bedtime story by one of my favorites.

I want the chicken-mobile for when I drive out West…

Love always,

Jess

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Each stood for Love, Luck & Loneliness, making your rotation of chance exactly one-third at any given-gambling moment.

Its continuous goal is to spin so that the 3 L’s are always blurred, to stumble people into disarray. A triple threat guillotine slicing clarity to pieces.

But every now and then, approximately once a month, an eye catches one blade to follow it for a couple seconds.
A cat’s eye can’t distinguish which gets caught, & only one gets caught. Glass eyes glue to Love, cling to Luck, or bask in Loneliness for whatever passion-minute is about to vanish into a dizzy spell.

When the fan is off, all 3 go stagnant
building a rut that solidifies dusty indifference.
Waiting to be broken by a passerby to flick a switch, to trigger one of the 3.

& the Lottery-of-Life-loop, tricky like a hoola hoop,
will keep spinnin’ on it’s axis;
After all, we created the wheel.

It’s late & I’m slightly delirious.

Happy Dreams

Love always,

Jess.

Photos: KatarinaDubcova, Flickr, SophieVanDerPerre

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