nuages gris

Day and night
I always dream with open eyes
And on top of the foaming waves
Of the wide turbulent sea,
And on the rolling
Desert sands,
And merrily riding on the gentle neck
Of a mighty lion,
Monarch of my heart,
I always see a floating child
Who is calling me!

- I dream awake, Jose Marti

imperfections by the shore

getting back into the rhythm of city life after a whirlwind two-week escape to california. still finding that i'm digesting the bits and pieces of these trips that were important to me while also trying to hold onto the tiny bit of zen i rediscovered. these pictures are from a beautiful saturday afternoon spent at fisherman's wharf in san francisco - talk about a picture perfect day: weather was in the 70s, blue skies and wispy clouds scattered about, and our lunch of unforgettably delicious fish & chips and fish tacos.

currently digging into murakami's kafka on the shore, love this excerpt below:

That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

shades of sakura

details. chanel bag. rag & bone skirt. acne studios coat. proenza schouler boots. tom ford sunglasses.

every one of us is losing something precious to us. lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. that’s part of what it means to be alive. but inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. a room like the stacks in this library. and to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. we have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. in other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”

– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

sculptural spring

orchids at the new york botanical garden

"Maybe to be powerful is to be fragile."
- Ai Wei Wei

above the clouds

Georgia O'Keeffe, Above the Clouds I, 1962-1963

Humid seal of soft affections,
Tenderest pledge of future bliss,
Dearest tie of young connections,
Love's first snowdrop, virgin kiss!

Speaking silence, dumb confession,
Passion's birth, and infant's play,
Dove-like fondness, chaste concession,
Glowing dawn of future day!

Sorrowing joy, Adieu's last action,
(Lingering lips must now disjoin),
What words can ever speak affection
So thrilling and sincere as thine!

- The Parting Kiss, Robert Burns, 1788

words for thought: rei kawakubo's creative manifesto

Going around museums and galleries, seeing films, talking to people, seeing new shops, looking at silly magazines, taking an interest in the activities of people in the street, looking at art, travelling: all these things are not useful, all these things do not help me, do not give me any direct stimulation to help my search for something new. And neither does fashion history. The reason for that is that all these things above already exist.

I only can wait for the chance for something completely new to be born within myself.

The way I go about looking for this from within is to start with a provisional ‘theme.’ I make an abstract image in my head. I think paradoxically (oppositely) about patterns I have used before. I put parts of patterns where they don’t usually go. I break the idea of ‘clothes.’ I think about using for everything what one would normally use for one thing. Give myself limitations. I pursue a situation where I am not free. I think about a world of only the tiniest narrowest possibilities. I close myself. I think that everything about the way of making clothes hitherto is no good. This is the rule I always give myself: that nothing new can come from a situation that involves being free or that doesn’t involve suffering.

In order to make this SS14 collection, I wanted to change the usual route within my head. I tried to look at everything I look at in a different way. I thought a way to do this was to start out with the intention of not even trying to make clothes. I tried to think and feel and see as if I wasn’t making clothes.

— Rei Kawakubo, October 2013
System Magazine via The Business of Fashion

bond street shadows

details // helmut lang shearling jacket and skirt // raquel allegra top

Bond Street and this building: still one of my favorite places in the city. lurking outside after a delicious meal at Il Buco, dreaming about what lies beyond these interesting gates.

and now a little bit of Poe to wish you all a Happy Halloween!

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love- although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

- The Lake, Edgar Allen Poe

fête paradiso

sunday at fête paradiso on governors island

when the summer sun is shining, the electric sound of happy laughing children and edith piaf oldies blend into the background, and the warmth of your calloused hand against mine makes me dizzy as we watch the carousels spin round and round.

my own mind

She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing it magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how: What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

Marcel Proust. Excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past. Volume 1: Swann's Way

just a whisper

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:

maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,

a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed

deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,

a shout muffled by huge autumns,

by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig

sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance

climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

-Pablo Neruda

endless

details. acne velocite shearling jacket. theory fox fur vest.

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

- Pablo Neruda

silver sunlight

details. complex geometries tee. stylestalker perforated shorts. balboa beach.

feeling completely free on a day so beautiful the seconds pricked tiny pins into our marshmallow clouds. with silver sunlight chasing after us, we sped through these sandy beaches and the warmth of sea salt breezes filled each moment with love and laughter.

weeknight romance

Paul Gasenhemier


LIFE magazine

i'm singing an improvised version of nearness of you in bed. i stop because i think you've lost interest but you ask me to continue. our little apartment smells like the dinner you cooked for us but all i can feel is meeko's warm breath on my shoulder and his tiny heartbeat. there's a constant hum in my head of the remnant's of today but i try to focus on the happy minutes we have here. where it's family and piles of blankets and furious inspiration. 

little by little... everything carries me to you

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to 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

- Pablo Neruda, for Matilde.


Sharing thoughts and strengthening our friendship at a favorite neighborhood spots in NoHo, La Colombe.

early flowers

veda leather and denim. theyskens theory dress. the row sunglasses.

Thy fingers make early flowers
of all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smoothness which
sings,saying
(though love be a day)
do not fear,we will go amaying.

thy whitest feet crisply are straying.
Always
thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,
whose strangeness much
says;singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?

To be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death,thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing).


e. e. Cummings. Thy Fingers Make Early Flowers

in the ripe evening

my three essentials: the tailored jacket, a structured dress, comfortable walking shoes






details. issey miyake dress. theyskens' theory blazer. camilla skovgaard boots.




In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.


Ditty of First Desire. Federico García Lorca