Flowers/Family.

I'm en route to East Hampton this morning to spend time with Max, Margaux, and my new nephew, Dash (pictured below). Moving out of my apartment has thrown my schedule off a bit this week, but I'll be back Monday with a new POV post that I've been working on in bits and pieces the past few days - moving, it turns out, makes it very hard to focus. 

In the meantime, wishing you all a happy weekend!

In case you're in need of reading material, a few suggestions:

-Anais Nin, as interpreted by Lisa Congdon.

-Two lists, ten years apart, by Susan Sontag (thanks, DMH).

-Speaking of writing in bits and pieces: "Learned Helplessness."

Photos by Max Wanger (find more on his Tumblr). 

The Emotionary.

"For months, I tried to define every emotion I've ever felt, and asked my friends to do the same," says Eden Sher, creator of the website The Emotionary, which aims to assign "words that don't exist [to] feelings that do." Below, a few examples:

I'm a fan. And I'm pretty sure, for better or for worse, that I've spent the past year in a near-constant state of conflightenment. See more at the Emotionary, here. Found via Explore. 

Have a wonderful Thursday. (I'm moving today - yikes!)

Toast With Taste.

Many thanks to my dad - who knows I can't resist an edible experiment - for sending me the link to Ida Skivene's Instagram feed. A self-described food artist, Ida creates representations on toast of timeless works by Degas and Dali, Magritte and Munch, among others. I like the Jackson Pollock piece, pictured below, made from yogurt and passion fruit jam. As for Ida? "I particularly enjoyed eating the Monet," she says. 

Further food-related reads:

-What we'll be eating in 35 years.

-Malaysian artist Hong Yi's experimental plated masterpieces.

-Cooking classes on an organic egg farm in the Japanese countryside.

Happy Wednesday!

Bookish Bauble.

For those suffering a case of post-weekend blues, a dose of gold. This ring, designed by artist Jennie Kwon, was inspired by one of literature's most enduring friendships. According to Catbird (my favorite Williamsburg curiosity shop), it's "woven from gold, diamonds, and magic." Charlotte would approve.

Available for purchase at the ever-excellent Catbird. See all Jennie Kwon has to offer (including the Moon and Stars), here.

POV: Age.

POV ("point of view") is a new series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV will focus on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

It was 9 PM.

Somewhere, a dog was barking. Sirens blared. A band rehearsing nearby ended a song with a triumphant crash of cymbals. My neighbors downstairs – all five of them recent college graduates – were howling, popping champagne in the backyard under the flickering light of a tiki torch. 

It was a Monday. I stood in the kitchen window, one floor up, and stared.

Faces Framed.

I love the way photographer Nada Lottermann displays images in her Frankfurt apartment, which was profiled recently on Freunde von Freunden. As someone who once wallpapered her college bedroom in Polaroids, Nada's topsy-turvy hodgepodge of frames (third photo down) warms my heart.

See the full post, complete with interview and additional photos at Freunde von Freunden, here. Find Nada's professional website, here. Photographs by Ramon Haindl for Freunde von Freunden.

PS:  New POV entry coming tomorrow. Apologies for the delay - I've been working on the post this morning and am looking forward to sharing come Friday!

Circuses in the Forests.

Poets House is a national library in New York City that offers visitors the chance "to step into the living tradition of poetry." Its Children's Room features typewriters (not computers or iPads) for aspiring poets to record their thoughts, and the library's Twitter feed features snippets of verse written by city schoolchildren. I've clipped a few of my favorite lines; perhaps not surprisingly, seven of the eight involve animals.

Thank you to my favorite librarian, Natalie, for the introduction.

Further reading:
Accidental poetry found in Google autocorrect suggestions...
...and in the words on the spines of books...
...and in bits and pieces of the New York Times.

Enjoy!

Shoes Over Bills.

Hannah K. Lee's Shoes Over Bills - in which the illustrator equates the cost of shoes with other, less glamorous expenses - makes me laugh. While I don't think I've ever spent the dollar equivalent of emergency dental work on footwear (I'm in these almost every day), I will admit to spending shameful sums each month on things like oysters. Artisanal dairy products. Mysterious cosmetic potions with names like Mermaid Spray. In short, on some level, I can relate.

Visit Hannah K. Lee's website, here, and shop, here. Thank you to Mallory for clueing me in!

Abandoned.

Growing up in Hawaii, I remember playing in an overgrown backyard at a friend's house and discovering, much to my amazement, a cave tucked away among the weeds on the hillside. In it, we found helmets, canteens, discarded papers - war-time relics from decades ago - and I was spellbound to be in the presence of objects that seemed to belong to ghosts. This round-up of abandoned locations around the world reminds me of that moment. 

See more - and find original sources - at My Science Academy, here. Happy Monday! 

Art, Ungulate, Abandoned Books.

Three things to kick off the weekend: "Looking at Art," Shizu Saldamando's portrait series of art spectators, drawn in ballpoint pen,

a duo of informative animal charts by Hong Kong-based designer Furze Chan,

and lastly, these, captured by the very talented Emily Blincoe.

Additional treasures, just because:
-Books abandoned on the stoops of Brooklyn.
-"The Fine Art of Sighing."
-Mark Twain's description of his lost cat, Bambino: "Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light." I love this so much.

Wishing you a happy weekend! (I'll be attempting another kitchen experiment for a friend's birthday on Saturday. Hope it turns out better - or at least better-looking - than this one.) See you Monday.

Gourmet Gatsby.

A confession: I've never been a fan of The Great Gatsby, having read it twice - once as a junior in high school, and again as a writing major in college. Because of this, I hadn't been paying much attention to the hype surrounding this month's movie adaptation - but, I'm realizing now, perhaps I should have been. I might have gotten word about this spectacular, edible tribute - a limited-edition collection of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams - in time to try it. (It's sold out, unfortunately, but the idea, I figured, was still worth sharing.)

The collection features four flavors that transport tasters "from Zelda [Fitzgerald's] childhood home in Alabama, to New York, St. Paul, Paris, and on through the Roaring Twenties." There's cognac with Seville orange marmalade; dark chocolate with whiskey and caraway; sweet cream with blackberries; and homemade biscuits laced with peach jam (created with a nod to the Loveless Cafe in Nashville). Brilliant.

Also, unrelated to Gatsby but just as intriguing (and still in stock!): a flavor that Jeni's describes as "the ice cream version of cheesecake," made from small-batch farmstead cheese and Snowville cream. Sold.

Find this and much more - including flavors like juniper and lemon curd; Savannah buttermilk; and chamomile - at Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, here.