the last of the famous international playboys.

i'm going to fuel my travels with alcohol and sugar. i'll just buy myself a new liver whilst prowling across the eastern nethers of europe. i don't know that this trip feels quite real yet, but i'm absolutely vibrating with excitement (and a heavy dosage of gin) in the philadelphia airport. i was too frightened to let the reality of this departure creep into the corners of my mind, lest i jinx myself or form unattainable expectations.

(clearly, writing a blogpost mid-drink is not my most successful endeavor. i'm no ernest hemingway...yet.)

YAY EUROPE YAY. THIS IS SO SURREAL. BEYOND-DALI SURREAL, WHOSE WORK I WILL BE WORSHIPPING IN THE FLESH IN THE MATTER OF MERE HOURS. swoon.

#despair

The above is a Ruddolf Koppitz photograph to illustrate my #despair. Boo, Philadelphia Art Museum. The worst part is I can't be pissed at anyone or anything other than some vague general concept of LIFE, since everyone I've spoken to is so nice. The curator offered to speak with me so I can learn more about the department, and the WashU graduate/education lady offered to put me in contact with her friend who is a buyer at Urban Outfitters. But still, I can't help feeling all icky and sad. I'm going to finish watching this crazy early Almodovar film (Atame!...or, en anglais, Tie me up! Tie me down!). It's a super interesting look at relationships starring a young Antonio Banderas. My mother would simply melt.

But boo, stinkface! And I was getting all excited and self-reflective and scribbling about how I vastly prefer conceptual things like ideas and inspiration to these little concrete specificities, like editorial write-ups, and now, a momentary crush. Yuck.

I'm super happy you went on two dates (per August 10th, 2:08 EST). Miss you!

my hair will shine like the sea.

hey phoebs;

this was going to be my "look at all the cool pictures and shit i've been collecting for future apartment inspiration," but in light of your case of the blues, i have decided to make this the feel-good post. chin up, buttercup.

i love you!!!

enjoy the silence.

hey there, phoebs.

i am currently rocking out to a mix of crystal castles + depeche mode on grooveshark, so i'm feeling moody and darkly glamorous. feeling, not quite being, seeing as i'm sitting here in very mismatched pajamas, glasses, and with my hair looking like a piss-poor version of shakira's in the 'la tortura' video. #sexual.

i just sent my resume off to the woman at the philly art museum, so keep your fingers tightly crossed that something positive may come out of that rather fragile limb. i've been feeling a bit uninspired as of late (as evinced by the write-up i submitted to my time out editor, who promptly rejected it and told me to rewrite it). i've been consuming massive amounts of literature this summer, and my mind feels so flat and calm, like a lake that so perfectly reflects the sky that gravity, physics, and all other natural laws are utterly suspended by the sight of a perfectly inverted world. i am the looking glass; i haven't quite sorted which side i'd like to tumble into in a windmill of angular elbows and knees.

in the meantime, here is a photographer i think you might like (provided, of course, that you don't already know him): david hamilton. see ethereal fairy-images above. he's evidently been slammed for the pornographic nature of his images. little do those carnivorous critics know that even girls place lolita on a flower-laden altar for background noise, rather than direct emulation.

i've also been amassing a folder of inspiration for life & living, namely our apartment for what will be a very glorious senior year. i'll share them with you at a future date.

i hope all is going well today. xx.

so far away.

hey there, phoebs. i'm feeling slightly nostalgic today, but not a nostalgia that is directed towards any specific time or place. it's slightly more diffused. i miss something, or perhaps a number of things, that aren't my present. i am never certain whether my nostalgia is for a concrete something, such as a past passage in my short little life, or whether i am missing something i've never even had.

that seems rather odd at first glance, but i suppose i'm in a flexible mood where fact and fiction are concerned. i just finished reading a book by a south african writer, j m coetzee, called "summertime." it's essentially a fictionally autobiography of himself that makes an interesting point on whether the autobiographical 'truth' matters, if it even exists at all. and since most of my verbal companions seem to have abandoned me (for a cooler climate, i imagine), i will offer you images to fulfill the absence of my usual verbosity. maybe they'll present a more accurate picture of my emotional portrait. or a more attractive one. i'm open to both options.

virgin suicides

margaret cameron

you know this one.

carole king! my mom has this lp. now if only our turntable worked...

die, virgins, die!

robert mapplethorpe. i'm obsessed with this photo. it depicts perfectly how girlhood innocence is brutally stripped from women as soon as they 'mature' into anything. then, all else pales before her body.

clearly nostalgia is manifested as a dull aching for seventies suburbia, school skirts, virginity, and carole king. i feel like tavi gevinson. mommy v would be proud of my wholesomeness. my suggestions for you, in addition to summertime, include the aforementioned ms king and the virgin suicides.

xx.

cherry lips.

given your superior cultural education, you may already know what i am about to say, but i feel compelled to converse anyway. the background picture on the phoebe-blog is by irina ionesco, a photo of her young daughter eva. irina ionesco is a romanian-french photographer who reminds me the darkling predecessor of ellen von unwerth and sally mann. she started photographing her precocious daughter eva at the age of five, posing her child in very sexual circumstances. at present, she has not quite settled with eva (they have been in court for ages and ages), though eva seems to have utilized the abuse she claims to have suffered as inspiration for a film (my little princess; it's worth checking out). i'm mildly obsessed with irina's aesthetic. it makes me think of austra, the master and margarita, witches, walpurgisnacht, circuses (but not the creepy modern kind), silent film stars, and stevie nicks. in a word, hauntings. this is how i'm feeling this morning.

in other news, i'm currently questing for long velvet skirts and beribboned tambourines to turn this feeling into a wardrobe reality.

young hearts.

hi phoebs;

in light of my present poverty, i've determined that postage lies outside of my cost-cutting, penny-pinching budget. i have instead applied my creative powers to this ingenuous idea: a blog, from me to you. not only i'm i passing as a reasonably eco-friendly individual (paper-less exchanges! how very green of me!), but i'm also able to bring you my thoughts in fancy schmancy multi-media format. i'm going to flay my flesh into pixels, and mask my physical absence with a flurry of videos, images, posts, and links.

i've also been surprisingly mute in my journal of late, though i can sense a storm of words brewing inside of me. perhaps if i have an audience of one (my best friend, my mostly mirror), i will be able to tease out some of those stifled syllables before they end up poisoning me with their silent screams.

here's (not) looking at you, kid.