The other day while walking through Old Ventura, I noticed someone had posted messages on some of the store windows. The first read, “Do you even realize how utterly amazing you are?” but as I watched the other pedestrians walk right on by, apparently no one did.

While I made an afternoon of searching for the sweet messages, everyone else simply ignored them. At the end of my adventure I had only found two, but they resonated with me: people are too caught up in their worries, stress, and deadlines to stop and realize how truly blessed they are. Even I had my head in the clouds, mentally preparing myself for my finals the next day, when I should have been enjoying the beautiful Sunday; the present moment when my only task in life was to enjoy the Pacific Ocean views and the  sun warming my face.

A small reminder from a complete stranger had the power to make my day and positively affect my outlook on finals, giving me the incentive to look forward to school and a new project I was planning. So I’ve stocked my backpack for Monday with a roll of Scotch tape and a pack of colorful flashcards with messages that will hopefully make someone’s day.

A bit like fortune cookies, I’ve inscribe the cards with my own messages plus quotes from my favorite literature. I’m planning to post them periodically at school: on random classroom windows, lockers, or sneak them between the pages of books in the library. I’m hoping the trend will catch on, and I will one day find out who wrote the first messages that were such an inspiration to me.

http://doyouevenrealize.tumblr.com/tagged/home_page

xoxo,

Johannah E.

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I had the most beautiful dream last night (forged from my late-night blogging about fairy tales, the rain clouds that I’m so happy are rolling in, and a battered copy of Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife on my bedside table, I’m sure).

I owe the dream mainly to Windling’s beautiful imagery and her almost prophetic accounts of the magic that can happen when it rains in the desert, but more specifically her character, Coyote. The Wood Wife is one of my absolute favorite reads, but I never paid much attention to its antagonist. (Of course any Windling fans are in love with Johnny Foxxe and enamored by Davis Cooper, but it’s  Coyote’s magic that is the catalyst to set the entire plot in motion.)

(Although I could easily talk for hours about any one of Windling’s truly amazing novels, I’d like to describe my dream and if I did both, this post would be incredibly long. I will give you a little background on Coyote’s character, however, from an excerpt on Terri Windling’s personal website at endicott-studio.com.)

It is winter now as I sit in the Sonoran desert of Arizona, contemplating Coyote and his sack full of Trickster tales. In a number of Native American cultures, it is considered inappropriate, even dangerous, to tell Coyote tales at any other time of year; it is disrespectful to Coyote and unlucky to attract his attention by telling his stories out of season. Wild coyotes, cousin to the Trickster of legend, often appear in the dry stream bed just beyond my office window. They are beautiful creatures, untamable, sensibly wary of humankind. It is not at all unusual to see coyotes here in the desert outskirts of Tucson, but there seem to be more and more of them lately — drawn here by my interest in their stories, the traditionalists would say. It is one thing to read Coyote tales as I first did years ago in New York City, far from the creature’s natural haunts; quite another thing to read them here, where coyotes roam the yard at night, making an eerie noise that sounds remarkably like laughter.

It is in the desert that I’ve begun to truly understand how myths are drawn from the bones of each land’s geography — and how very different oral stories become when they are committed to the printed page, divorced from the land which birthed them. Too often printed versions of Coyote tales read (to urban and suburban readers) like simple children’s fables: This is why the beaver’s tail is flat, this is why the sky is filled with stars. In the oral tradition, Coyote stories are marked by their combination of outrageous humor and elements of great profundity; they are stories in which the sacred and profane are tied ineluctably together. “They are funny stories,” a Navajo friend tells me, “but they are also sacred and serious. Trickster reminds us not to be too simplistically dualistic in our thinking; that good can come out of bad and vice versa; and that right and wrong are not always poles apart.” — Terri Windling

It was well past midnight, in the early hours of dawn when the sun just begins to warm the sky. I watched from under my covers, head craned backwards to the roof of our neighbor’s house where the first wisps of light would have been fading on to the horizon if it hadn’t been raining.

The dark clouds hurled their burden of dew towards the earth, washing the sun’s canvas of sky clean from her paintbrush of early morning pink, and flooding the dark streets with her tears. It was beautiful, though not the reason I was awakened so early. Even closer than the beating of raindrops on my window, was the distinct sound of drums.

I rolled onto my stomach and reluctantly wiggled my feet free of blankets, shivering when they sought purchase on the cold, wooden floor. I stood and walked to my open window, just below which a boy was playing a pair of bongo-like drums, sitting cross-legged on my roof. I sat beside him in my flannel pajamas and couldn’t help thinking what an odd pair we made: the wind blew my hair wildly around my face, and rain drops were beading on my arms while he was untouched. The rain fell just beyond his shoulders, as if an invisible umbrella covered his head. His smile was wide and he was almost startled by my presence, amused that I sat beside him so willingly, completely unfazed by his  appearance.

I was in love with the magic that embodied his every movement. To anyone else his demeanor would seem unsettling, the kind of energy that said he knew everything, and if the universe was his playground, I was a single grain of sand beneath his feet. This analogy didn’t bother me, his presence alone was so inspiring. The magic was like a radiation of heat from this cool skin, almost tangible to me and the rain drops that tried desperately to drench him.

One of the  characteristics of witchcraft is one who can walk between the raindrops, but Coyote could do more than that. He walked amongst the stars, the Creator’s gift to humanity gone awry. The all-seeing force who was sent to save the human race. The boy whose naivety couldn’t see that his tricks led to war, and his lust for life led to envy. The man who single handedly turned the minds of the human race; who made a monster of our civilization.

I listened to the sound of rain fall on his drums. He wasn’t even playing them anymore, but instead stretched his legs in front of him and crossed his arms across his chest. He asked me questions about my every day life and I told him I wanted to travel with him, to leave Californian suburbia and this rooftop that was so close to the lights of Hollywood,  I could barely see the stars.

I forgot for a moment who he was, and asked why I never saw him at school. Coyote laughed, and told me he tried to avoid such human things; he was ashamed of what he’d caused us to become– a race of material, senseless creatures driven by our insecurities.

“What a shame we became such fragile, broken things,” he whispered.

I curled up on the windowsill, groggy from the sound of the rain and his sweet voice. “But I’m not broken, ” I promised him, “The rest of the world is sleeping, and I can  wake them up.”

He pushed the wet hair from my forehead and stroked my cheek. We sat in silence as he debated my words, debated the chances that one small human could make any difference in his universe. “You should be sleeping, too,” Coyote whispered.

I laughed as if he were joking, “But I know too much. You can’t sleep through magic.” I folded my arms into a pillow to support my head as I drifted off to sleep. Coyote picked me up and carried me back to bed, closing the window behind him as he resumed his seat on my rooftop. I stirred slightly, my dreams seeped in the rhythm of his drums.”

Happy Reading,

Johannah E.

C: Terri Windling, title quote and excerpt (all pictures from ffffound)

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IN THE WEEK BEFORE the end of the First World War, the 11-year-old Frances Griffiths sent a letter to a friend in South Africa, where she had lived most of her life. Dated 9 November 1918, it ran:

Dear Joe [Johanna], I hope you are quite well. I wrote a letter before, only I lost it or it got mislaid. Do you play with Elsie and Nora Biddles? I am learning French, Geometry, Cookery and Algebra at school now. Dad came home from France the other week after being there ten months, and we all think the war will be over in a few days. We are going to get our flags to hang upstairs in our bedroom. I am sending two photos, both of me, one of me in a bathing costume in our back yard, Uncle Arthur took that, while the other is me with some fairies up the beck, Elsie took that one. Rosebud is as fat as ever and I have made her some new clothes. How are Teddy and dolly?

An ordinary and matter-of-fact letter from a schoolgirl to her friend, one might say, apart from the rather startling reference to fairies. But, as both Frances and her cousin Elsie Wright have since pointed out (they are now grandmothers), they were not particularly surprised by seeing fairies; they seemed a natural part of the rural countryside around the `beck’ (stream) at the bottom of the long garden in Cottingley, near Bradford, in West Yorkshire. – Joe Cooper

I love the imagination I used to have as a little girl.

When I first read about the Cottingley Fairies it must have been during my first few weeks of kindergarten and while I was the only kid in school who didn’t believe in Santa Claus,  I was a strong believer in fairytales. Although I knew Frances and Elsie’s story was a fraud, I could have sworn little people with opaque cellophane wings and tiny outfits made of lilah-belles were  living in my own backyard. Even at such a young age, I realized that the magical of old fashioned folklore coupled with modern day literature was a far sight better than school. (And as impressive as it was that Buddy could shove a carrot up each nostril during recess, I preferred to spend my time reading amongst the dandelions that overran my backyard.)

We didn’t have a TV in my house until I was almost seven years old, so instead of growing up on Sesame Street I was left to create a world of my own. With the most magical characters from classical literature as my best friends (think The Adventures of Huck Finn meets Peter Pan, with the musicality of Mary Poppins) “we” could keep ourselves entertained for hours. I would write plays for my “friends” and between Peter’s knack for humor, Bert’s fantastic choreography  and my ingenious costume designs made from flower petals and an Elmer’s glue stick, it definitely kept the neighborhood fairies entertained.

I’ll admit I’ve grown up and now have quite different friends now (Jem Finch and Dill Harris are at that age where they “don’t play with girls” anymore), but on a warm spring afternoon when the dandelions are just beginning to bloom, I  still wonder if fairies exist.

C: Vogue, iheartit, ffffound

Happy reading,

xox Johannah Elizabeth and her best friend, Peter Pan

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Holden’s words today take on new meaning as J.D. Salinger has taken his leave of this world.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything.  If you do, you start missing everybody. - J.D. Salinger

And everybody shall miss you, sir.
-Michelle

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Growing up homeschooled in semi-rural Oregon with no cable televison, where nine months out of the year the sidewalks grow mold due to general wetness of the region, there isn’t much else for a girl in my situation to do but read everything I could get my hands on. I went through phases of reading only non-fiction text books on astronomy in the 5th grade, or reading autobiographical accounts of womens’ lives on the Oregon Trail or during the Civil War in full costume - but mostly my biggest vice was the novels I found on my mother’s bookshelf or the old tomes I found in my Aunt’s basement in Seattle. Looking back I realize my first real “crushes” on boys were fictional characters, as the only males in my life were family members. My girl friends were Anne of Green Gables, Elizabeth Bennet and Jo March. Having no stories of my own of first kisses in Junior High or week long boyfriends in elementary school like my friends, I decided for this entry of the Lit Society to introduce my best childhood boyfriends and first crushes.

Christian Bale as Theodore Lawrence in Little Women
Oh how I wished he was a real person and not a figment of Alcott’s brilliant brain!

Holden Caufield is still my favorite crush
“People always think something’s all true.”

I will always be looking for Finn
Ethan Hawke in Great Expectations

My dream fictional father figure
Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird

Always a place in my heart for adorable cheating pick-pocket orphans like Oliver Twist.

Arturo Bandini shares my disdain for the “real world” of mediocre jobs and shallow people
Collin Farrel playing Bandini in Fante’s Ask the Dust

Always akin to Huckleberry…I wanted to be him

Obviously Mr. Darcy
Matthew MacFadyen in Pride & Predjudice

I found a kindred spirit in Sal Paradise

Infatuated by the rationalizing of murder for money and a higher purpose…
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov from Crime & Punishment.

Last but not least, Gilbert Blythe

“All pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moonstruck madness.”

xo, Suzanne

PC: IMDB, Flickr

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“Antickes and Frets” an excerpt from Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories.

In the spring of 1568 Mary, Queen of Scots, fearing the wrath of her subjects, crossed the border into England. With many regrets, her cousin (the queen Elizabeth) cast [her] into prison for the rest of her life.

In a tale reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm and their capriciously haunting folktales, modern-day writer Susanna Clarke’s “Atickets and Frets” delves deep into the mind of Mary Queen of Scots, and sheds light on her plot to murder the cousin that essentially buries her alive.

(Although the Queen’s mental state isn’t discussed in the story, her hallucinations and murderous visions should be noted, and before I explain the events of her death it should be assumed that  isolation has led the Queen to insanity.) This compromised state of mind fuels the Queen’s desire for revenge and when she meets the Countess of Shrewsbury, whom she believes has the power to sew curses into her embroidery, she fantasies of murdering her cousin by sending her gifts tainted with black magic.

The monarch bases her plans of assassination off a story she once heard in passing conversation, of a woman whose embroidery reportedly made her husband so paranoid he simply died: “Bess Hardwick embroidered him a coat checkered over with black and white squares. And, after he had worn it a few times, he began to complain that the whole world had become to him nothing but black and white. Every dark tabletop seemed to him a gaping black hole meant to swallow him up and every window filled with white winter light was ghostly to him and full of malicious intent. And so he died, raving about it.”

The Queen of Scots was impressed. She had never heard of anyone being killed by embroidery before. (She herself was very fond of embroidery.) And so…

There were cockatrices and lions and manticores-all sorts of beasts which (the Queen hoped) might be made to tear Elizabeth to pieces through the means of magic and embroidery.

The women begin to sew gifts for Elizabeth, but laced only with the curses she mutters under her breath the Queen’s stitching holds no magic, and therefore no effect over her cousin.

The countess embroidered a pair of gloves for Elizabeth, which she decorated with pictures of sea monsters amid blue and silver waves. But though she filled the monsters’ mouths with sharp-looking teeth, Elizabeth was not bitten by anything, nor did she drown.

Frustrated by years of failed attempts, the  Queen resigns from her quest for vengeance, feeling as if she is the one bound by cursed stitches to such a morbid life.

“One evening she was staring vacantly at an embroidered hanging. It showed some catastrophe befalling a classical lady. A breath of wind caught within the chamber kept bringing the hanging dangerously close to a candle that stood upon a coffer. It was almost as if the little embroidered figure desired to rush into the flames.

‘She is tired,’ thought the Queen. ‘Tired of being sewn into this picture of powerlessness and despair.’ The Queen rose from her chair and, unseen by any of her attendants, moved the candlesticks a fraction closer to the hanging.

The next time the wind blew, the hanging caught the flame… [Her attendants] pleaded with the Queen to leave the apartment, to hurry from the danger, but the Queen stood like a figure of alabaster. She kept her eyes upon the embroidered figure and saw it consumed by the fire”

“See!” she murmured to her women.

“Now she is free.”

Photo credit: Thanks to the always wonderful ffffound, wikipedia, and sfgirlbybay’s blog and flickr accounts for the pictures found in this post.

Although this story has no happy ending…

Happy Reading!

xo Johannah E.

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If you’re looking for a satirical, almost vampiric love story, step away from the crowd of teenage girls in “Team Edward” shirts and read Twilight. No, not Stephanie Meyer’s saga of angsty teen blood suckers, but Crepusculario, a 1923 publication of Pablo Neruda’s romantic poetry.

This poetic account of Neruda’s own love life garners its name from a collaboration of the Spanish terms for “twilight” (crepusculo) and “collection of poems” (poemario); and while Neruda’s talent for cadence and his style of hauntingly beautiful phrasing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it’s the raw, uncensored feelings behind his words that win our hearts.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

True, he’s no Robert Pattinson and you can’t look forward to a blockbuster movie with shirtless teenage werewolves anytime soon, but for a rainy Sunday afternoon Neruda’s poetry is absolutely perfect. (Plus I’m sure Neruda’s accent was much more attractive than Pattinson’s depression era “americano” spiel, and your sub-conscience can look forward to a little Chilean flourish when you read it in your head!)

But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine.

The poetry featured here is all credited to Pablo Neruda, the title was inspired by Zachary Skovold, and the photos are thanks to wildfox couture, fashion fever, dee, and souvenirsofagirl.

Happy reading!
Johannah E.

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Totally abashed and smiling

I walk in

sit down and

face the frigidaire

it’s April

no May

it’s May

such little things have to be established in morning

after the big things of night

-Frank O’Hara 1961

Poetry does not often capture my attention.  As someone once said, “most poetry is bad.  Even the really great poets only have a few that are exceptional.”  There is something about Frank O’Hara which subtly hits all the right chords and his Lunch Poems are an amazing collection of what exceptional poetry is all about.

O’Hara was a member of the New York School of poetry as well as the Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the MoMA.

He poetry has an immediacy and is deeply rooted in the sensations and events of his life.  Lunch Poems, as a collection is named because these were the poems he wrote on his lunch break during his time at the MoMA.  These poems speak to me because they capture feelings and flashes of moments which relate to both the ephemera in our lives and the banality of day to day living

you were there and you know all about these/ things

I had a teacher one whole summer who never told me/ anything and it was wonderful

we don’t like/ Henry James so much we like Herman Melville

what of Hart Crane/ what of phonograph records and gin/ what of “what of”/ you are of me, that’s what

and I’ll be happy here and happy there, full/ of tea and tears.

Neon in daylight is a/ great pleasure

while everywhere love is breathing draftily/ like a doorway linking 53rd and 54th/ the east-bound with the west-bound traffic by 8,000,000s/ o midtown tunnels and tunnels, too, of Holland

and Allen is back talking about god a lot/ and Peter is back not talking very much/ and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth’s/ although he is coming to lunch with Norman/ I suspect he is making a distinction/ well, who isn’t

There is much about O’Hara’s work that appeals to me.  The focus on New York, the interest in sights and sounds, celebrities, friends and the string of moments which make up a day, a life - make Lunch Poems an easy read.  His form changes greatly from poem to poem, with different meters and play with grammar.  O’Hara presents a very intimate collection of poems.  Laying his life and himself before the reader while also reeling the reader into the poems, making them a conspirator, a confidante and at moments O’Hara makes himself a stand-in for the reader.

For fear of discussing poetry to the point of rendering it boring, I shall close with my favorite poem from Lunch Poems.

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see the headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

- Frank O’Hara 1962

kisses,

Michelle

mac: vmagazine, Nirrimi, wikipedia, barnes and noble

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Foreword: There were a few instances that led me to choose The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd as my first contribution to the Lit Society. First, my discovery of a quote on the first page by one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda: “I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.” This, and the first chapter which describe the protagonist as a young girl, braiding spanish moss into her hair made me certain it was a perfect choice.

Kidd’s novel plays with the concept of soul mates, following the life of Jessie  in a story I can only describe as coming of age, despite the fact that the narrator is a wife and mother. An emotional adventure through the temptation of “soul mate” versus the marital bonds she shares with her husband, Jessie is torn between following the strict definition for love which “molds her to the smallest space possible” or following her heart. It is only through the latter that she discovers herself.

The novel was lovely and written in a style so beautifully descriptive it was almost like reading poetry, but as I sat down to write my review I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Stuck in the mindset of English analysis essays, I kept trying to write thematic statements and summarize the plot, rather than remembering the true purpose of literature: to decide what the novel means to me.

I ended up procrastinating on facebook and found the page of a sweet boy I didn’t even remember adding as a friend, whose profile said “When I’m by myself  I think about life and who I want to share it with.” Not realizing at first that his words mirrored Kidd’s message exactly, I  went to merriam-webster’s online dictionary and looked up the word “love.”

¹love

Function: noun

Etymology: Latin lubēre, to please

quotes: Benjamin Disraeli, Pablo Neruda, Zach Skovold

photography: tim walker, mb10, daydream lily, bresanne, beth retro, bits of beauty, waldemar and max, youngnapark

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Best,

Johannah E

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“He combed his hair like James Dean. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For awhile they lived together in a tree house. In 1959 she watched while he self destructed. Terrance Malick’s spellbinding journey sets the scene for innocent beauty overtaken by wilderness.”

Russh #30 (September/October 2009)
Photography: Derek Henderson | Fashion Editor: Stevie Dance

I can’t think of a more fitting editorial to visually narrate this autobiography by, Jeannette Walls.
This whirlwind tail of a family’s cumbersome adventures via life on the road in the 1960’s is so emotionally turbulent it’s hard to believe this is the authors real life childhood story.
Too insanely irresponsible parents who let their children roam free through the Mojave desert at the age of three, catch on fire, sleep in a shanty in West Virginia where it snows indoors with no heating or running water, forget to feed their children for weeks on end is just a small taste of the montage of unbelievable scenarios Jeanette encounters while growing up as the town drunk’s daughter. The truly remarkable thing about this story is that you actually grow to love the parents of the narrator as if you were seeing them from the viewpoint of their young daughter. When the father dies near the end of the book, I actually teared up despite all of his horrific qualities.

Life on the road - leaving their lodging in the middle of the night to avoiding paying…

Life as the poorest of the poor in Appalachia…

The thing about this novel is as conventionally sad as the content may be, it really isn’t a sad book at all. Each chapter is extremely brief and written like an individual short story and will most likely keep up devouring each page by flashlight late into the night. I am completely addicted to the writing of Jeannette Walls, can’t wait to read more.

xo,
S

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