Ok.

So inspiration is slowly trickling in. Sigh. First, a few of the reasons:
1. Brooklyn Modern, an amazing design book on my favorite borough (Thank you Katy!)
2. Fall. Let's be honest. This season truly is the best. I have spent a ridiculous amount of time walking around Brooklyn in the past few weeks, and the tree lined streets and the brownstone stoops covered in yellow leaves are almost too much for my heart. Especially if I am either drinking tea and/or listening to great music at the same time.
3. My living room is painted!

The third piece of information is very recent as my living room was painted just yesterday. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since, so I decided to think for a little while about why that was true. I came to realize that it symbolizes forward progress in our quest to redecorate. My roommate and I have been brainstorming for so long and now it is coming into fruition. This is a very good feeling. I am currently sitting at a cafe table that sits in our bay windows that look out over the treetops and rooftops and church spires of Park Slope. Sigh.

When my apartment is well designed, my life seems to function at a much higher level. For whatever reason, my mind doesn't feel cluttered when my physical space is not only organized but life giving--a space that invites thought and conversation and relaxation. My mind has felt off track for a while, and I'm sure if I dig deep enough I can find more concrete reasons, but I also think that it has to do with the flux that my living room has been in since August. So. I'm not posting pictures of anything yet, but it is all coming. Soon.

A completely random post for my favorite Kendra.

I'm mid book and without much to say. Hence a few thoughts written to the heart-hurting gorgeous heirloom tomato I cut open tonight:

Not like others,
Your poppy-like red insides
surprised me
and I wanted to frame you
and your many intricate caverns and veins
furnished with generations
of farmers and their fields past.
Don't I always say that I want
the beauty
to be a part of me?

So I ate.

an ode.

My reading life the past week has been a little sub-par. I'm reading a book that is supposed to be amazing, but I'm having a hard time getting drawn up into it. I have promised myself I will read it on all my subway rides this weekend, though, so that I can make some progress. So, it has been other words captivating me this week. Mostly songs.

Last night I found myself defending Ohio fiercely. Not that people were taking a strictly offensive position against my home state, but they were wondering what could possibly be good about it. And insulting Cincinnati (and the city of Dayton, but let's be honest). It should be stated that I haven't lived in Ohio for over 5 years. My parents have since moved. But. There is something ridiculously poetic about our cornfields, creeks and roadside vegetable stands, our Friday night football games and back roads. The interesting part is no matter what I said about the fine state, I could not convince anyone of its greatness. And this I have decided I actually like, even though many may laugh at me if I mention that I know of one of our country's most ignored gems. And of course, nostalgia colors life differently sometimes. But not the autumn.

So obviously, when I was wide awake at 4 am this morning, there was nothing I could do but listen to Over the Rhine while trying to fall back to sleep. Beyond my absolute love of their lyrics and music, they understand the beauty and home that is Ohio. So my point is that this post is an ode to Over the Rhine--whose music and gorgeously written seasonal email updates remind me of and make me long for home.

You really should download the following immediately. Limiting this to 5 was quite painful.

1. Anything At All/Ohio
2. Born/Drunkard's Prayer
3. Latter Days/Good Dog Bad Dog
4. Silent Night/Darkest Night of the Year (duet version...sorry it's not Christmas time. It's just too good not to mention)
5. Suitcase/Ohio

humanity.

i went to look
at art
and remembered.

i had forgotten
to look at faces.

Bel Canto

After meaning to read this book for a few years, I finally got around to it. It was one of those books that I didn't appreciate it's beauty until it was nearly over. Unfortunate. It is the story of a number of wealthy businessmen and their wives from all over the world and a group of Latin American terrorists who take the men hostage at a party. Intending to kidnap only the president of an unnamed Latin American country, when he did not show, they settled for the businessmen and Roxane Cross, a world renown opera star. The most interesting part to me was how Ann Patchett explored the breakdown of human relationships and the the needs of the human mind when placed in such a situation.

The hostages and the terrorists within time broke the one rule that could ruin everything: they began to see each other as people and not as enemies. And, like just like the poets of the past have predicted over every age, it was art that began to break down the walls. Bel Canto means "beautiful singing" and when Roxane Cross started to practice again, the entire house was captivated by the beauty of her voice: "Kato played another and then another until everyone else in the room forgot that they badly wanted to be someplace else." I am so fascinated by the power of art: be it painting, music, theater, literature to remind people of what is beautiful and good:

"All of the love and longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together made a weight that was almost impossible to bear. "

I don't want to give away the story of the hostages and their captors, but I have been trying to think of what else I could say about the bewitching universality of music and art, but with no surprise to myself, I realized there are no words.

Four time zones later, back on the BQE.

the moon slouched low and wedged;
midwestern in its autumnal glow.

Summer Reading Conclusion.

One thing I have realized about myself this summer is that I function better as a person when I have a schedule. Otherwise, I wake up around nine and before I know it, it's noon and I can't really explain what I have spent the whole morning doing. This summer, I had high hopes of being employed. I planned my travel (or lack thereof) around it, and was actually looking forward to working in the morning and doing writing projects in the afternoon. Since I wasn't employed, any hopes of a schedule fell to the wayside. And after I stopped stressing about not having a job, I found that my motivation to be productive had waned completely. Or, it could have been writer's block? Either way, I did spend a lot of time reading, though.

I wanted to highlight a few of the books that I read. They've been sitting next to my bed in a pile, signifying that I needed to write about them. But, we all know that didn't happen. But anyway, here are a few:
1. Rape a Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates: The title of this book is provoctive and potentially offensive enough that I avoided reading this one on the subway. However, it was much less offensive inside the actual pages. Oates writes part of the book in the second person from the voice of a twelve year old girl who witnesses the violent rape of her mother. This was actually the most thought provoking part of the story for me: "You were Bethel Maguire everybody called Bethie. Your childhood ended when you were twelve. Always you would think if." It is simulataneously a tragic coming of age story as well as a portrait of judgement.

2. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu: I initially read about this in the New York Times Book Review, and it really did live up to the praise it received. Though it was slow moving at times, this is an incredible story of an African immigrant, Sepha, in Washington, DC. The title comes from an excerpt from Dante's Inferno:
Through a round aperature I appear,
Some of the beautiful things that heaven bears,
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.
Sepha and his friends continually ask the question--both out loud to each other and to themselves in their minds--How did I end up here? Sepha then asks a question that I think is one all people ask at one time or another: "Where is the grand narrative of my life?" (page 147). In his quiet search for meaning amidst life's heartbreaks, he runs across another poet's words that completely capture the heartbreaking and hopeful essence of this story:
We have come this far, to find we have even further to go
The last traces of a permanent twilight have faded and given way
To what we hope is nothing short of a permanent dawn.

3. Amulet by Roberto Bolano: I picked this book up last spring at the Book Expo of America, having no idea what a gem it was. I read it early in the summer and then began seeing Bolano's name everywhere. A Chilean writer, his work has only recently been translated in English. The story is set in a tumultuous Mexico City during the 1960's, the main character Uruguayan ex pat, slightly crazy lover of poetry. She is one of the most interesting characters I have met...and hard to completely understand as she slips in and out of lucidity. But you can't read her and not feel moved if you are a lover of language and art: " Dust and literature have always gone together..I conjured up wonderful and melancholy scenes, I imagined books books sitting quietly on shelves and the dust of the world creeping into libraries..." Art and words are her hope, and the voice that Bolano pens is original, highly creative and beautiful.

Now I'm wishing that I actually took the time to write about each of these individually, but I'm considering myself lucky if you made it to the end here. Other notables included Middlesex (completely thought provoking), The Brooklyn Follies (fun because it's set in my neighborhood), Looking for Alaska (young adult), Breaking Dawn (I will eventually write about this 4th and last novel in the Twilight saga) and The Same Kind of Different as Me (a great read for anyone who grew up in a middle to upper middle class church...tells the amazing story of a wealthy couple and a homeless man whose lives changed as they began to understand and know one another.)

Ok! I'm done! I feel sufficiently energized to start posting regularly again:)