POV: Lifetimes.

POV ("point of view") is a 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.  

I majored in creative writing in college, studying with a small group of students who'd chosen a fiction concentration. We workshopped two or three times weekly, traded advice, got to know one another through our stories - which is, as it turns out, a very intimate way to know a person.

I was broken-hearted the day of our last workshop. It seemed wrong that we should graduate, and move away, and continue our lives without each other. I found myself thinking, crazily, I wish I could grow old with all of you.

This was a theme with graduations. At my high school ceremony, a classmate made a speech. “I finally found a place where I belong,” he said. “And now I have to leave.”

Cones, Kicks, Watermelon Seeds.

Etsy shop Napkin - supplier of these magnificent rainbow-hued garlands - never disappoints. Behold: a hand-painted vintage jacket made to resemble a slice of summer's sweetest; a bikini top plastered with Polly Pockets (eighty-nine to be exact);  high-top Dalmatian sneakers; Ghost World prayer candles; and giant quilted ice cream cones. Strange, funky, freaky, fresh.

Shop owner Cortny calls herself "a dog lover, falconer, and mediocre taxidermist." She enjoys, among other things, lighting fireworks, collecting bugs, dancing, and talking about dogs. Sounds like we could be friends.

New POV post coming tomorrow...

Writers, Weddings, and the Wild West.

This week in words: childhood drawings by e.e. cummings, whose poems I Will Wade Out and You Are Tired (I Think) are two of my favorites,

a round-up of writers' weddings, including - as pictured below - those of Hemingway, Styron, Raymond Carver (at 19), and Arthur Miller, 

and this spectacular sentence. Wow.

e.e. cummings drawings via the Massachusetts Historical Society. Have a wonderful Wednesday! 

Possessed.

I love the idea behind Italian photographer Camilla Catrambone's unconventional family portraits - each is meant to characterize a different family member through a selection of their signature possessions. Though I'd be able to single out items for several of my own family members - my dad, for instance, wears a colorful assortment of bracelets and has always had a Zen Page-A-Day calendar on his desk - I'm not sure what I'd choose to feature in a self-portrait. What would you include?

Visit Camilla Catrambone's website, here. Found via Photography Served.

I'm With Her.

From Toronto-based shop Robber, a lookbook devoted to friendship. Real life friends model the store's spring and summer wares with photographs by Arden Wray of the excellent Boots & Pine. Take a peek at the full book, here. 

So sweet - and I love that sweatshirt. (Makes me think of this love letter from last year. )

Visit the Robber blog, here. Photographs by Arden Wray.

POV: Like Children.

POV ("point of view") is a 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.  

My niece, nearly five, spent much of yesterday afternoon in nothing but a pair of flowered underwear, a set of spangled butterfly wings, and a silk scarf the color of bubblegum. Rapturous, high on blueberry pie and Cracker Jacks, she danced down the length of her living room, shrieking with arms outstretched. 

There’d been a party that day, with treats and toys and a crowd of other children she’d been anxious to play with - in particular, one little sandy-haired boy who’d spent most of his time roaming the apartment on his own. The underweared shrieking, my brother explained in a whisper, was her subtle way of corralling his attention.

I sat with my friends who were visiting for the afternoon, and watched her.

“I feel like doing that sometimes,” Jamie said.

Masters' Machines.

I love this lopsided line-up of illustrious typewriters. With the exception of Cormac McCarthy's sprightly teal number, they all somehow seem to befit their owners. My favorite is Bob Dylan's; however, I'm not banking on owning it any time soon - according Booktryst, Hemingway's will fetch $60,000-$80,000, while McCarthy's sold for $254,500. (Thanks, Paris Review.)

More word-related reading:
-Expired, a photo series by Kerry Mansfield focusing on withdrawn library books.
-Ekaterina Panikanova's painted pages.
-Beautiful words = nightmarish mind?

Via Richard Kadrey. Have a lovely Thursday! New POV post coming tomorrow. 

Portholes.

Luke Casey takes photographs from the portholes of ships. I may be working from a coffee shop on a busy street in Brooklyn this morning, but for now, I'm enjoying this view. See more, here.

Found via Messy Nessy Chic.

Rooftop Reverie.

Who knew that on top of this seemingly inconspicuous apartment building in Williamsburg...

...you'd find this? Props to Brooklyn architecture studio Loadingdock5 for a job so beautifully done. (You can find more photos from the project, here. Not surprisingly, the interior's pretty great, too.) 

As it happens, my new apartment (which is just blocks from the building pictured above), has a rooftop that my roommates and I will have access to once we move in in July. Recreating Loadingdock5's lawn-like oasis might not be possible, but what about something like this? A grill, a garden, a trusty Dalmatian - sounds like the recipe for a summer well-spent.

Sugar Solarium.

Constructed using 162 window panels made purely of cooked sugar, William Lamson's Solarium, formerly at Storm King Art Center, was a greenhouse of sorts inspired by isolated, nature-ensconced sanctuaries - "like a mountain chapel or Thoreau's one-room cabin," says the artist. In addition, he continues, "the design references the architecture of a plant leaf." Sweet.

The solarium is no longer at Storm King, but I'd still love to visit this summer. Have you been? 

See more at William Lamson's website, here. Photos via William Lamson and Pierogi Gallery. © Storm King Art Center. Found via Architizer.

Father John.

Saturday night, as I mentioned earlier this week, I trekked to Philadelphia to see Father John Misty (formerly Joshua Tillman of Fleet Foxes) play at Union Transfer. I'd never heard his music before and was so happily surprised: folk rock mixed with shades of country and psychedelia, it was entrancingly beautiful and weird in all the best ways. I left dazed and a little delirious, dreamy, and with a T-shirt in tow. I'm a new fan. Take a listen below (the first two songs are my favorites).

Read more about Father John Misty, here. Photo by Josh Withers.

Any bands you've been listening to lately? Please share! My iPod is in need of updates. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend - and stay dry, East Coasters!

See the Sea.

Stirring art for a stormy Thursday: French artist Sophie Calle's Voir la Mer is a film and a series of snapshots capturing the reactions of fifteen people seeing the ocean for the first time. On her decision to photograph only her participants' backs: "If I had stood in front of them it would not be the sea that they would see for the first time, but the camera instead. I felt that the back held a lot of emotion anyway, and it was stronger being behind them and watching the sea, like them."

Stills via Kurungabaa. Last two images by Florian Kleinefenn, © Adagp, Paris 2012. Thanks to Jennifer Trail for the introduction.

Lace, Chains, Spikes, Studs.

And now for something completely different. Equipped with lace, chains, and spikes, industrial designer Tamara Bavdek creates jewelry that transcends necks, wrists, ankles, ears. I'm intrigued. I'm also a fan of the fact that the middle piece, pictured below, was inspired by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Says Tamara of her work, "I am inspired by everything."

See more at Tamara's Etsy shop, This Ilk, here. (See also: unusual ear embellishments; a ring inspired by Charlotte's Web.)

POV: Nomad.

POV ("point of view") is a 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 rained the night before I moved out of my apartment. Friends came over to help, congregating in my empty living room.

We’d spent Thanksgiving here months earlier, fourteen of us seated on folding chairs and bar stools and ottomans and sofa cushions. My roommates and I had hosted, because ours was the only space that could fit such a large group. Now, five of us lay on the floor, gazing at white walls, sweating in the heat of a summer storm. 

I opened a window. Two weeks before, I’d ducked out that same window, and climbed up the fire escape. It was morning, and I’d eaten a mango on the roof with my hands, listening to trains crossing the bridge blocks away. It was a warm day. I was without shoes, and the tar on the roof molded to the shape of my toes. 

Love > Likes.

Words to start the week, courtesy of Jonathan Safran Foer via The New York Times: "We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts...

...everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing of the only animal who risks 'getting it wrong' and whose dreams provide shelters and vaccines and words to crying strangers. 

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die." 

Read the rest of the article, entitled "How Not to Be Alone," here. Photo by Amanda Jasnowski. New POV post coming tomorrow - until then, have a lovely Monday!