"We write to taste life twice." Anais Nin

A Poem for your Monday

The Darkling Thrush   

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

    When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

    The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

    Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

    Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

    The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

    The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

    Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

    Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

    The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

    Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

    In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

    Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

    Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

    His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

    And I was unaware.    

Currently...

Pink ranunculus from Trader Joe's on my kitchen table

Craving: savory yogurts from Blue Hill ...especially the beet flavor!

Reading: basically every single article on npr's blog "the salt"

Lusting over: this vegan leather top that would look cool with white jeans

Listening to: this remix by Tom Odell - Another Love (Zwette edit)

Learning: how to change what you find attractive in 60 seconds

Inspired by: this dude who sees possibility where others might see limits

...and by this (local!) self-published children's storybook writer

...and by Lupita Nyong'o's Oscar speech, specifically these words:

"It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is due to so much pain in someone else's."

Gentle pep talk from F.Scott Fitzgerald

New toe nail polish - OPI's "Keys to my Karma" 

I know what violets look like now

I wrote this poem the other day and, at the urging of a friend whose own pellucid honesty I deeply respect, I will share it here along with the explanation behind it.

I know what violets look like now. 

Josephine, to keep her Napoleon, wore the scent of  violets, which once inhaled were soon forgotten and never to be recalled until the wearer pressed again the little petals to her skin. He must come back for he could not rest in the limbic grey where most sense is kept.  

I know what violets look like now for I have seen them sleep in winter snow;
I have seen the purple whir beneath the soil, heard them speak of yellow toil. 

A long time ago I read a small anecdote that Josephine (Napoleon Bonaparte's wife) only wore the scent of violets because it is the only scent the brain cannot "remember" until one smells it again. I am not sure how true that fact is but nevertheless it piqued my interest enough to stay with me all of these years. The romantic in me wondered  if Josephine did it as a way to always bring him back from war and from conquering distant lands. I am also fascinated by the connection between memory and scent as the two are intimately tied together perhaps since they happen to "live" next to each other in neighboring sections of the human brain. 

The memory of this little story came back to me as I was googling wedding bouquets (because, why not?) and I wondered what a bouquet of violets would look like. The verdict? They are so tiny! More research revealed that they are one of the first spring flowers to bloom thus making them essentially winter-steady flowers. To me, the flowers that survive winter and bloom first in spring are the most steadfast, just like the love needed between Josephine and Napoleon to keep their often long-distance relationship alive.

The "limbic grey where most sense is kept" is a play on words since sense (and scent) are located in the "limbic" part of the brain otherwise known colloquially as "grey matter." The word sense is a homonym for "scents" (and cents! ha!) The reference to the limbic grey area of sense can also be a nod to the limbo of traveling for work or the limbo grey area of logic. We cannot just stay in the logical, "sensible" grey area of life all of the time. Sometimes we have to rely on something deeper than our minds, something more intuitive and emotional in order to find our ways back to what (and who) we truly love. 

And so, there it is. 

Lake house resort in California? With a smores night? Ah, oui, bien sur!

A heartfelt look at our societal perplexity and lack of understanding about "addiction"

Would you like to know the secret to health? Try to make stress your friend...

Sachin and babi dresses give me the butterflies: classy cool with a feminine flare

Think you'd ever try naked yoga? Me, I am not so sure (unless Daniel Craig was there)

Delicious hybrid of a puttanesca and a niçoise: Gwyneth Paltrow's tuna tomato bowl

Jo's 10 ways to beat the winter blues. My favorite? Going for a walk around town!

And, (who doesn't love another numbered list?) the 19 hard things you need to do for success

For Your Ears

"Song for Zula" Phosphorescent 

"Ethio Invention no. 1" Andrew Bird

"Retrograde" James Blake