But as the scenery grows I see from different lights–the shades and shadows undlate in my perception. My feelings swell and stretch; I see from greater heights. I realize what I am still too smart to mention;

when the serpents bargain for the right to squirm

and the sun strikes to gain a living wage—

when thorns regard their roses with alarm

and rainbows are insured against old age

 

when every thrush may sing no new moon in

if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice

—and any wave signs on the dotted line

or else an ocean is compelled to close

 

when the oak begs permission of the birch

to man an acorn—valleys accuse their

mountains of having altitude—and march

denounces april as a saboteur

 

then we’ll believe in that incredible

unanimal mankind(and not until)

 

 

 

–E.E. Cummings

It seems like every story told about us isn’t meant to be;

I used to be a much more voracious reader when I was younger than I am today, mostly because I have a laptop that can provide me with ample entertainment (or, you know, work) to do on my daily commute.  So this year my reading list has been rather pathetic for the moment, but I’m hoping that some traveling in the next few months will afford me the opportunity to read uninterrupted for a few hours at a time here and there.

Part of this resistance to read is the fact that I tend to take on more difficult material.  Case in point:  The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.  I love me some magical realism, but it’s honestly difficult to only give a book like this forty minutes of your attention at a time–it really requires a few good hours of being immersed in it, but it’s difficult to not feel guilty that you’re not doing something more active instead of sitting around on a sunny Saturday afternoon, such as playing tennis or completing wedding planning shit.  So I’ve shelved that book for the moment, with the intention of returning to it post-wedding.

Since then, I’ve been reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, which is a semi-autobiographical recounting of the author bumming around Paris, getting drunk and fucking whores while getting some meager writing jobs here and there in the 1930’s.  The infamous c-word appears at least ten times in the first ten pages, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of the novel’s vulgarity.

Arial is not Helvetica;

 

April 2, 2008, 5:49 PM, East Norwalk, CT.

 

And it’s me you need to show–how deep is your love? I really need to learn, ’cause we’re living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be. We belong to you and me;

So I spent Saturday afternoon in a darkened movie theater downtown after a spirited lunch with the boy, his lab-mate and his visiting friend watching Sex and the City.  While not as horrible as I had expected–there were some genuinely funny moments that reminded me of why I loved the show in the first place–there were many, many things wrong with the film on the whole that I must vent about.  Be aware that spoilers will be written about, so proceed at your own risk:

Architects may come and architects may go and never change your point of view. When I run dry, I stop awhile and think of you;

There was a huge rash of deaths on Monday, between Bo Diddley, Yves Saint Laurent, and Anne D’Harnoncourt, that I feel compelled to write something about it.

–Wait–who was that third person, you ask?  Well, I’ll get to that.

It always makes me sad whenever one mentions the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the first association that comes to mind is “the Rocky movies.”  It also makes me sadder to visit the museum and see countless tourists (and locals alike) try to recreate their own version of the running of the steps, and focus more on posing with the Rocky statue rather than sparing a glimpse for any of the other pieces of art in the vicinity, or for the gorgeous building itself, which has a curious (and brilliant) story behind its construction, as told to Michael and I by one of his cousins (whose dad used to be the head of Fairmount Parks & Recreation under Ed Rendell, so he knows his Park history):

Hoppípolla/I engum stígvélum/Allur rennvotur (rennblautur)/I engum stígvélum;

(Note:  normally I don’t like posting the sources of lyrics, but because the above are in Icelandic, I will–this is from “Hoppípolla” by Sigur Rós’s album Takk… and if you haven’t heard this record, download it immediately.  It’s one of my favorite albums to listen while commuting because you can just leave it on and it sounds so good. )

I’m one of the very few people in my group of friends who has a commute that lasts more than ten or fifteen minutes one-way, and I easily take the cake for longest commute at three hours round-trip.  The bulk of this takes place on the Metro North which makes it more palatable–I can sit, zone out to music, work, or read Jezebel if I want to and completely avoid the clusterfuck that is driving I-95 anytime during rush hour.

In short, it’s pretty great.  There’s only one downside, really–I can’t park at the train station in New Haven because the waiting list for a parking space at Union Station is five years.  So I have to park at nearby Temple Street and trust in CT Transit’s free shuttle to get me to the station and back safely.

Second time around, indeed;

Not sure if you’ve heard or not, but there’s this movie based on this show on HBO coming out in a few weeks…Sex and the City?  Does it ring any bells?

Oh, right–it’s been fucking promoted EVERYWHERE.

Don’t get me wrong–I loved the show, and still watch my VHS tapes of certain seasons in addition to owning all six seasons on DVD.  Certain seasons provided much sartorial inspiration (the fourth and six seasons spoke to me, for some reason), but you will never, ever, see the “Which SATC character are YOU?” Facebook application on my profile, nor can I ever order a Cosmopolitan again.  I won’t lie and say I was completely immune to that when I was in college when it was on, but that was then, and like the fabulous foursome, we’ve all gotten a little older (if not a little wiser).

There’s a cloud sitting on my tongue;

“Tag clouds,” like the one to the right of this entry, are just fancy ways of organizing the topics discussed most on a particular blog.  The larger the type, the more entries are tagged with it–it helps you get a feel for the subjects an author will write about the most.  On this blog, for instance, “commerce,” “fonts!,” “fashion” and “photography” are tagged the most, so they are the most noticeable.  In a report I did for work, I acutally used this kind of layout to emphasize the words and phrases most liked and disliked among respondents to provide a stark visual contrast that would be immediately recognizable, and overall it worked quite well. 

Now it seems that there are those out there who want to look at whole brands from this perspective:

Sometimes you don’t make me feel like I’m living at the edge of the world…”It’s just the way I smile,” you said;

It’s a little frightening how often I tend to source the many characters Gwyneth Paltrow has portrayed on the big screen–I’ve been a verson of Margot Tennenbaum (complete with faux-wooden finger that I made out of clay and vintage fur coat), and in the process of planning my honeymoon, I’ve been devising a packing list in my head that bears a strong resemblance to Marge Sherwood’s in The Talented Mr. Ripley:

In fact, last Sunday afternoon found me in my closet figuring out what to wear to an upcoming event where I have to be dressy, but not too dressy, without having to run out and buy anything.  I settled on a look that I wore a few weeks prior when Michael and I took a friend out for dinner at Barcelona, that was heavily inspired by Ms. Sherwood…

You must take the A train, if you wanna get to Harlem;

In honor of the fact that this blog gets by far the most hits from people looking for transit maps (specifically, for some reason, Milan), here is Massimo Vingelli’s updated vision for the MTA Subway map for New York City, courtesy of Men’s Vogue:

 More images can be found here.

I’m completely drooling, and I’m very tempted to go to the MTA’s online Transit Museum store and order a print of the original.  Some people collect art–I collect transit maps.