If We Don't.

Many thanks to my friend Stewart for introducing me to If We Don't, Remember Me, a Tumblr feed that features beautiful movie-related gifs (or "living movie stills"). I'm hardly a film buff, but I looked at every one. A few favorites:

And in honor of Halloween:

Have a great one! (Oh, and for those who might be wondering, I'm taking the week off from the Equals Record - I'll be back with a regular post next Wednesday.)

Gifs via If We Don't, Remember Me. Movies, from top to bottom: "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," "Blow-Up," "Children of Men," "Eraserhead," "The Shining".

Dance Freely, Draw Rainbows.

Thank you so much for all of your sweet messages yesterday. We were fortunate enough not to experience any major issues in our neighborhood last night - feeling very thankful for that! My thoughts are with all those who were not as lucky - please stay safe, everyone!

Taking the rest of the day to get reorganized; in the meantime, good advice to start the morning:

See you tomorrow!

Image source unknown. (If you know, please share!)

Hurricane Reading.

I'll be spending the next couple of days inside as Hurricane Sandy heads this way (I'm prepared with lots of food and a stash of cookies). For those of you who are also laying low - or for anyone, really, with a few minutes to spare - here are three great reads for a stormy day in:

1. This letter, from poet Ted Hughes to his son. I read this for the first time this summer and keep coming back to it. "...that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy."

2. "Something Bright, Then Holes," a beautiful poem by Maggie Green. (Thanks, Megan.)

3. A week in former New York Times food critic Sam Sifton's diet. (The entire series is great; this particular entry was just one of my recent favorites.)

Stay safe today, fellow East Coasters! 

Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath photo via New York Review of Books, Warren J. Plath/Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College. Sam Sifton photo by Melissa Hom. 

Leen's Lens.

Life photographer Nina Leen's photographs of teenagers in the 40s and 50s are wonderful...

...but my favorite shot of hers has to be this one, taken at the Ringling Bros. Circus in 1949. (Can you spot the acrobat in the background?)

Have a lovely weekend! I'll be hosting a friend from out of town, and helping her build her Halloween costume. She's going as a table, with her head as the main course - kind of like this. Brilliant.

Photos by Nina Leen, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Tiny Forests & Watermelon Shoes.

Noteworthy curiosities from a recent Etsy trawl: made-to-order watermelon shoes, an air plant housed in a blue teak birdcage, and a miniature white birch forest.

Etsy never disappoints, does it? Wishing you a wonderful Thursday.

Traces.

This week on the Equals Record: thoughts on leaving pieces of ourselves behind in places we love (for me, one of those places is the purple house pictured below, where I lived the year before graduating college).

As always, a short excerpt: "I spent my last year of college living in the front room of a purple and yellow Victorian house not far from downtown Santa Cruz. Six of us lived upstairs, six or so more lived below. The house was old, rickety. It was terribly insulated (I remember laying in my bed one winter morning, almost in tears because I had to get out from under the covers). The bathtub didn’t drain properly and made strange, regurgitation sounds at random, often in the middle of the night. My bedroom had gray carpeting with bits of gum (not mine) stuck in its fibers. I loved that house."

Read the rest on the Equals Record, here. You can find past entries from my weekly column, Looking Forward (about the ups and downs of "growing up" in my twenties), here. Thank you so much for your support!

Bottom image via Pinterest. Please share if you know the original source - I'd love to give proper credit.

Cake Crush.

Someone help me. I can't stop staring at this beautiful cake, which blogger Cristina Sciarra recommends serving "warmed, with just a swipe of butter." (As evidenced below, frosting - in this case, Swiss cream cheese - doesn't hurt, either.)

Cristina's blog, The Roaming Kitchen, is one of my new favorites (take a look at this gorgeous gallery). It's the complete package: great recipes (Cristina attended Le Cordon Bleu), excellent writing (she also has an MFA in creative writing), and beautiful photography. Check it out.

Happy Tuesday!

Presidents, Pegged.

Detroit designer Meg Jannott has challenged herself to "brand" each of the forty-four American presidents, chronicling her efforts on a Tumblr feed, here. After scrolling through, I'm both very impressed and slightly ashamed - Chester Arthur? Zachary Taylor? Did we really have a president named Millard? Time to hit the books.

The last one's my favorite, for obvious reasons. See the rest, here. 

One With Nature.

These otherworldly snaps by French photographer Sophie Fontaine are a gorgeous reminder that there are only so many days left to spend outdoors before winter sets in - better make them count! Now to find a field of wheat to disappear into...

See more at Sophie Fontaine's Flickr, Tumblr, and Etsy shop ( I love that this print is called "Dreams Factory").

Wishing you all a happy weekend! I started mine early with a truly decadent day of eating: Roberta's, Diner, Pies 'n' Thighs. Any exciting plans on your end?

Bad Girls, Bathrooms, & Babirusas.

So happy to have discovered artist and writer Ann Shen's illustrated zines, including Bad Girls Throughout History, which "briefly, and in no way comprehensively, illustrates the most bad ass women who have ever existed,"

A Short Guide to Your Bathroom, which profiles "the ghosts, demons, and spirits that go bump in your bathroom,"

and That's Not My Name, an informative compilation of commonly misidentified animals. (My niece would love this.)

Shop more, here. Thanks to Miss Moss for the introduction.

Have a wonderful Thursday! (I'm off to spend the afternoon with Jennifer and Bekka - we have no solid plans, aside from eating. Sounds perfect to me.)

Survival Story.

This week on the Equals Record: remembering who I was before I learned there was such a thing as "cool."

An excerpt from the new post: "In kindergarten, I announced to my friends and family that I was 'a woman of destiny' who spoke two languages: English and 'cat.' (My teachers, at one point, had to separate me from my best friend for excluding others when speaking cat.) As my grade school education continued, my pastimes evolved - I taught myself to bake bread, filling our freezer with numberless misshapen loaves of rye. On weekends, I read the newspaper while eating radishes and raw onions. I wore mismatched socks. I wrote, illustrated, and performed a short story in which the starring character was a pair of underwear owned by an aging rock star named Steve...In short, I was a quirky child."

See the post in its entirety on the Equals Record, here. You can find past entries from my weekly column, Looking Forward (about the ups and downs of "growing up" in my twenties), here. Thank you so much for reading! 

Bottom image via This Isn't Happiness. If you know the original source, please share!

Goodnight Kisses.

My tastes have skewed more toward peculiar than precious as of late, but I couldn't resist sharing these "Kisses Goodnight" pillows by Etsy favorite Colette Bream. Well done, as always, Colette. Besos!

See more on Etsy, here. Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Sweet Thing: Toby's Estate.

Anyone who works from home will tell you how important it is to have a place like Toby's. I've parked at one of those little round tables for the better part of many an afternoon - finishing work, paging through a book, soaking in the light from its gigantic front windows (a coffee shop so bright is a rarity). 

But if we're being honest, the real draw for me is the food. Most days, I order the avocado toast (drizzled with tahini and flecked with sea salt), or the yogurt if I'm feeling especially virtuous. Every now and then, though - try as I might to resist - I succumb to this.

Baked at Roberta's, one of my favorite restaurants from my old neighborhood, this sturdy little curlicue of a sticky bun may be gone in three bites, but it packs an exquisitely buttery wallop. Words can't describe how much I look forward to having one on certain slow-moving, cloud-cast days - so I'll let those sublime, glossy drips down the side speak for themselves. 

Read more about Toby's, here. Top image via Dwell.

Unusual Hats.

Just for fun: serious-looking people with animals on their heads. Brings a whole new meaning to wearing fur.

Any plans this weekend? I'll be working on a new story for the upcoming issue of Rue (very excited!), and, at some point, attempting to make these with a friend (again, very excited!). Wishing you all a wonderful, warm weekend whatever your plans! 

Images, clockwise from top left: via the ghost of me, unknown, unknown, Alen MacWeeney, Tomasz Wagner, Haciendo clack, Peter H. Fürst. All found via Hazel Terry's pinboard "A life with animals" - thank you, Hazel!

A Softer World.

In college, "A Softer World" was one of my favorite stops on the web. A collaboration between writer Joey Comeau and photographer Emily Horne, the site features comics that read like poetry - they're often very dark, but do some digging and you'll stumble across gems that are exceptionally sweet, heartbreakingly gorgeous, and, at times, ridiculously funny. Paging through its archives earlier this week, I was happy to revisit some of my favorite entries - and discover a few new ones, as well. Below, four stand-outs.

See more at "A Softer World," here, and on the site's corresponding Tumblr feed, here.

Neighborly.

This week on the Equals Record: how one night in a local barbershop - watching a boxing match, of all things - changed the way I think about my Brooklyn neighborhood, and made me love it even more than I already did.

An excerpt from the new post: "All my life, the cities I’ve lived in have felt like temporary homes. Growing up, my family moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Honolulu, and I knew that Santa Cruz, where I lived for four years in college, wasn’t a city I’d remain in after graduation. Now, though, for the first time, I’m beginning to get a sense of what it might feel like to be a part of a community. To settle in. To make a place my own. And I’m realizing I don’t just want to exist as part of my neighborhood—I want to know it. More importantly, I want to know the people I share it with—and not just the ones whose lives look like mine."

Read the rest on the Equals Record, here. You can find past entries from my weekly column, Looking Forward (all about the ups and downs of "growing up" in my twenties), here. Thanks so much for your support and kindness, as always.

Image: "Houses and Birds" by Judy Kaufmann.