Ten Easy Holiday Gifts

1. One of these irresistible DIY fruit slice umbrellas.  

2.  An ASOS star crown headband for all of the goddesses in your life.

3.  Felt mistletoe for your main squeeze - it's the gift that keeps on giving.

4.  Another stocking stuffer for the Twin Peaks fanatic in your life (or Gilmore Girls or Sherlock).   

5.  A Ghost Rose Candle - Catbird's ghost rose solid perfume, with notes of English rose, champagne and peony, has garnered a cult following.  I love the perfume's mysterious, romantic scent, but have found that it fades quickly.  Candles are something that I'm always reluctant to splurge on myself, but as a gift, the fragrance is a lovely addition to all of those winter hours indoors.  Bonus: it's named after a passage in Anne of Green Gables.

6.  A Havana Lomo'Instant set for the winsome photographer in your life (and everyone has a winsome photographer in their life).  Doesn't it make you want to vacation in Miami Beach in the sixties?

There's also a Lomography shop in the West Village for many more options.  

7.  A classic home planetarium (or perhaps tickets to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum) for the starry-eyed nerd in your life.

8.  Beautiful old books with that intoxicating old book smell: Sometimes a charming edition of a favorite book is a comforting thing to have.  Go old school and write a note inside of the front cover.

Alibris is my go-to source for older editions of books.  Of course, there's always trusty eBay and bookshops like HousingWorks, The Strand and Unnameable Books.   For new copies of old favorites, special editions are available from the likes of Penguin.  If money is no object, Juniper Books offers beautifully designed or custom collections.     

Dre-e-eam, Dream, Dream, Dream

9.  A gift subscription to MoviePass:  Going to the movies is hella expensive these days.  I used MoviePass for some time before hitting a busy period.  For a monthly fee that equals two or three movie tickets in Manhattan, you can see up to one movie per day (with the caveats that you can only see each movie once and they cannot be 3D movies).  Tickets are obtained through a user-friendly app, which covers most theaters, including indie ones.  A three month gift pass seems perfect for a movie lover in the throes of Oscar season.

Still from the impossibly beautiful movie Blancanieves.

10.  And finally, an easy gift for the whiskey enthusiasts in your life: pourable Manhattans, a barrel-aged, ready-to-drink cocktail, made from a pre-prohibition recipe.  

For the more adventurous, there's also chocolate whiskey (made in Brooklyn from the cocao husks used to create Mast Brothers chocolate).

Three Things

December is nearly upon us!  First comes a few weeks of tinsel-strewn goodwill and awkward office parties, then comes that period of merry mischief between Christmas and the New Year.  And here are just a few other things to enjoy in the month to come.

Streaming: A Very Murray Christmas on Netflix

Friday, Friday, Friiiiiday!  This Friday, December 4, is the long-awaited release date for Bill Murray's Christmas special, directed by Sofia Coppola and with vocals by Miley Cyrus*.  In my humble opinion, it may be the greatest holiday classic since Scrooged.   

*If you can't appreciate that, may three yodeling spirits visit you on their way home from a rave this Christmas Eve.

Reading: The Trilogy of Two by Juman Malouf

So, the holidays make you sick.  You'd rather lose yourself in some sort of dystopian hellscape than listen to one more cover of White Christmas.  The recently released Trilogy of Two may be your antidote to the month of December.  It tells the story of two identical twins, both musical prodigies, who were born on Halloween.  Abandoned on a doorstep and raised by a Tattooed Lady, they grew up in a traveling circus (sold!)  Inter-world hijinks ensue when their music begins to produce magical effects on audiences.

On a side note, I heard great things about the book, but had no idea that Juman Malouf is a costume designer, who happens to be Wes Anderson's lady.  According to The New York Times, she collects traditional Bavarian sweaters that make her feel like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (are you my soul's twin?)   

Theater: Lazarus at New York Theatre Workshop 

David Bowie's Aladdin Sane Album Cover Outtakes, Photographed by Brian Duffy

I have wished for a David Bowie musical for years: a Labyrinth musical, a Ziggy Stardust musical, anything.  And lo, sometimes wishes do come true.  Bowie has partnered with playwright Enda Walsh (Once) and Dutch director Ivo van Hove to create Lazarus, which officially opens at New York Theatre Workshop on December 7.  The still-mysterious project is an extension of the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth (Bowie starred in its film adaptation).   

Tickets sold out immediately, but there is still hope in the form of a cancellation line and a Cheaptix lottery in late December.  Get thee to the East Village.      

Unsolicited Advice: Keep a Journal

source: here

One of the best things that I've done for my personal sanity and happiness in recent years is to keep a handwritten journal.  I've offered this as unsolicited advice to just about anyone who will listen.  Whenever that advice falls upon a fellow journal-keeper there's always a hushed moment of recognition, followed by the sort of gushing usually reserved for Chicago sports fans.

I actually use two journals at the moment.  The first one, hardcover and neatly tucked in a drawer, is used when I am feeling inspired enough to carve out time at home for intensive journaling.  I carefully date each entry and can imagine reading it years from now.  The second is more petite, found at Albertine (a French-English bookshop, hidden away near the Met).  I keep in my bag at all times.  It's covered in blots and coffee stains at this point, but is always on hand for the long train rides and unexpected waits that are staples of New York living.

I try not to overthink either journal.  The former, however, tends to take on more of a narrative structure.  "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," as Joan Didion said.  There are also evenings when I just want to dig in - record a beautiful day or adventure, wrestle with frustrations, save anecdotes for later, recount every moment of some entanglement.

The latter journal is on hand for any fleeting notion throughout my day.  I've never bothered to date any entries; they just flow together.  I think that's because I appreciate the chaos of it.  There are no standards for what's written down, which invites me to consider everything. Being in communion with pen and paper, with fewer distractions than normal, allows me to engage mysterious parts of my mind and to catch seeds of ideas before they vanish into gray matter.

Personal journals have taken on added benefit in an age of social media.  So much of our lives are laid bare and despite our best intentions, it's difficult not to consider how they will be perceived.  I believe that it's healthy to consider your life warts and all, and to be able to embrace half-baked ideas without judgement.       

Oh Hello, World!

I'm ready to write.

As my dear friend Jamie-kins mentioned in her first post, I'm Susie and I'm really introspective.  Hold on to your hats.  We about to get deep. 

This year, 2015, the year I turned 30, has been a year of transformation, for me.  I experienced the worst anxiety I've ever had and then came out on the other side.  I got fired for the first time.  I joined a training program to become a life coach cause I sensed it would be an adventure, even though I felt I sucked hard at life.  

I've learned a hell of a lot, and as I step into a new way of being, I only see the learning and growth continuing. 

In addition to all of this, I literally just had an incredibly powerful journaling session.  I'm starting to finally trust my intuition, the voice that just KNOWS, and I let her spill.  By the time I was done, I had developed the awareness that the only thing holding me back from the life that I want - the money, the coaching clients, the love, the creative fulfillment, is the belief that people owe me something. 

 

I decided to accept that no one in my life owes me anything and that all of the pain and hurt I've felt in my life was 100% perceived - AKA...not real.  No one has done anything TO me.

Accepting this means truly knowing that others have no bearing on my experience.  Our minds create our world.  What people think of me literally means nothing. 

Accepting this means there's no reason to stall anymore.  I will create the clients now, I will create the money now, I will create the creative fulfillment.  "What people will say," the big fear that I felt was in my way - is no longer a factor.

I know all of this in my being, and I also know that I'm going to need support when I feel like reverting to my old ways of thinking.

But I know that as long as I keep journaling, I will remain in touch with my intuitive voice.  The voice that knows.  The voice that I believe is guided by the other side.  I will stay in touch with it so that I can continue to access this new way of being and finally step into my POWER.

The other thing I became aware of tonight in my journaling is that I am finally starting to align with my true energetic vibration.  Deep down I have always know that I come from magic, wonder, and possibility.  It's why I have always felt so out-of-sync with the mundaneness of life that I was taught is real.  

I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of people this year that also come from magic, wonder and possibility.  My people.  I'm finally starting to align energetically with the people around me.

I feel some fear creeping in, but that's because this is the unknown.  Seeing so much light and power and joy on the horizon is definitely foreign and overwhelming.  But I want it.

Not bad to have had such a breakthrough in awareness on Thanksgiving Day!

Happy Turkey Day, y'all. 

Have yourself a merry little Thanksgiving!

The Incomparable Wednesday Addams

It's here!  It's time to brave Penn Station on Thanksgiving Eve and catch a crowded train out of town.  I hope that you enjoy your Thanksgiving, wherever you may be.  I'll be in a tiny Delaware beach town and figure it's as good of a time as any to embrace a break from technology.  In the meantime, here are a few things that piqued my interest around the internet. 


I've decided that this will be my first foray into the world of piecakens when I'm back home next week.

Heyyyy, Arnold.

Performer, director activist and long-time #girlcrush Sarah Sophie Flicker co-founded At Once, which explores the intersection of feminism and motherhood.

The origin of that mysterious Katharine Hepburn-esque American accent of the 1930s and 40s.

This lovely Canadian couple got hitched at City Hall and used the money they saved to sponsor a Syrian refugee family.

And fittingly, Oliver Sacks on gratitude.

Carol and the Past I Never Knew

Cate Blanchett in Carol, Picture Source Here 

After hearing all of the buzz around the premiere of the Todd Haynes film Carol, I picked up the Patricia Highsmith book that it was based on, The Price of Salt.  I had every intention of loving it: a travelogue and thriller about the then-forbidden love between two women.  By the book's end, I found the central characters elusive, their chemistry arbitrary and the narrative a bit slow.  Still, I can't wait to see it in the hands of two brilliant actresses, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

For me, the book is most interesting when considered in its social context (particularly its place in LGBTQ movements when it was published in 1952).  Patricia Highsmith's 1950 Strangers on a Train was a wildly successful first novel.  It was made into an Alfred Hitchcock movie the next year, catapulting her to literary stardom.  She followed that debut with The Price of Salt, about three-dimensional gay women.  In a bold departure from the lesbian pulp novels of the time it had a hopeful ending.  When the book was released as a mass-market paperback, billed as "the novel of a love society forbids", it sold more than a million copies.

Carol/The Price of Salt is a story that exists firmly in its time.  Its sweet romance was revolutionary.  Its women were forced to endure the indignities of a bigotry that has subsided to some degree.  Still, another aspect of the past that makes movies like this all the more captivating.  There's a quality, beyond the photogenic nature of cigarette smoke and full skirts, that draws us into stories like say, Mad Men so fully.

In a perfect line from his review of Carol, critic Anthony Lane writes, "The time is in the nineteen-fifties, perhaps the last epoch when, as a movie-goer, you could still believe that some enchanted evening you would see a stranger across a crowded room, and somehow know."

I look forward to a Carol/Brooklyn double feature soon.

An Early New Year's Resolution

From the swoony movie The Young Girls of Rochefort, recommended if you happen to have a weakness for the technicolor musicals of the sixties, Gene Kelly's dance movies and singing French sailors.
Picture source: Design Sponge's "Living In" series.  

Starting this blog led me to unearth another that I kept during my early New York days (it feels like a relic of another era now).  I evidently trailed off after a list of New Year's resolutions for 2011.  As with most resolutions, I haven't thought about them much since then.  It tickles me that more than four years later, I've finally accomplished most of them (some just recently; I still need to work on keeping plants alive).     

I'm a resolution enthusiast, even if my resolve can be fleeting.  I used to approach each new year fanatically, with hand-written pages of good intentions TO LIVE MY BEST LIFE OR DIE TRYING.  Over the years, I've learned to stop fooling myself into believing that I'll give up refined sugar, hit the gym in the early hours or read a Russian epic every month.  Instead, I've found what works for me is one or two goals that add something to my life (as opposed to restricting habits).

In the year to come, I've decided to finally learn the guitar.  Years of choir, band and forcing karaoke upon friends have assured me that I have few discernible musical gifts.  That feels liberating, no?  To pursue something with no real practical purpose or plans to master it - simply for the joy of it.  

I'm considering a class at Jalopy, a roots music gem in Brooklyn that offers an incredible range of shows, along with reasonably priced community lessons.  And of course, YouTube remains an invaluable, endless resource for tutorials in anything, as well as for talented duos who melt your heart with their guitar Beatles covers.

Saturday's Wanderlust

Catherine Deneuve bidding her true love farewell from a train platform
in Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

A Scene from David Lean's Impossibly Beautiful Brief Encounter

And here's Katharine Hepburn in David Lean's Summertime.  He just gets it.  

I have this thing about trains.  Like many other things in this world, I'm entirely too romantic about them.  And this is after countless trips along the Mid-Atlantic vying for a place in Amtrak's dining cars during holiday weekends.  Having spent too much of my formative teenage years glued to Turner Classic Movies (in between trashier fare), part of me still believes that train rides should involve pillbox hats, chance encounters with mysterious strangers and tearful goodbyes on platforms veiled by clouds of steam.

I spent my first year out of college in Bandung, Indonesia: a city in the mountains of West Java, surrounded by volcanos and tea plantations.  Among my most vivid memories are the train rides throughout Java, most frequently to Jakarta, three hours a way.  The railway wound through the mountains, past emerald green rice paddies, the occasional water buffalo and children living in rural areas who would gleefully wave and chase the train.  The trains themselves, though occasionally crowded, solidified my belief in the beauty of train travel: cars neatly appointed, surrounded by breathtaking landscapes, barreling towards unfamiliar destinations.

To this day, many of my bucket list travel destinations center around train travel.  There's the Trans-Siberian Railway from Russia to the Sea of Japan, the Danube Express from Venice to Istanbul and most recently, The Glacier Express: a day trip through the Swiss Alps.

Billed as the slowest express train the world (traveling 180 miles in eight hours), it boards beneath the Matterhorn.  From there, it traverses 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and naturally, some v. high mountain passes.  Best of all, this is all experienced beneath panoramic glass ceilings.

The Glacier Express, Picture via Twisted Sifter 

The Glacier Express, Picture via PureWow

P.S. A date once recommended this West Village bar, a throwback to the golden era of train travel.

Style That's Giving Me Life: Celia

Telemundo recently began airing its 80-part series lovingly (if loosely) inspired by the life of the unequivocally fabulous chanteuse, Celia Cruz.  I've only caught one episode so far, but it brings all the high drama to the backstage of Havana's Tropicana Club that you would hope and expect from a telenovela.  At this point, the show follows the boundary-breaking Queen of Salsa in her early career.  Needless to say, being set in Havana in the 1950s, the costumes and sets are to die for.

To add a little Tropicana Club realness into your life, first and foremost, start with the gorgeous Chico & Rita (or Celia, if you're so inclined!)   Otherwise, here's brainstorming.

counterclockwise from top right: stamp heels, Orelia simple star hoops, Red or Dead glasses, Asos dress with fluted sleeves in retro print, clarinet in the air dress in rouge, Selecciones Favoritas de Celia Cruz

Sure Beats Tinder

Vera Nabokov - Picture by artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

I love reading about the lives of writers (Elaine Dundy and Colette's own stories are my favorites).   The summer before last, I was in an Infinite Jest book club and while I don't think I made it halfway through, I happily devoured David Foster Wallace's biography in its place.

The details are what do it for me.  Case in point: the courtship of Vladimir Nabokov and his wife (partner, muse and protector) Vera, described beautifully in a New Yorker piece on the book Letters to Vera.

Vera was born into a prominent, highly educated Jewish family in Saint Petersburg.  Her family fled during the Russian Revolution and eventually settled in Berlin, by way of Odessa, Istanbul and Sofia.  In Berlin, her father established a publishing house where she worked, while teaching and translating for the literary journal Rul.

The New Yorker says:

"One of its star contributors was a young aristocrat, ladies’ man, chess player, dandy, and lepidopterist who was earning his living as a private tutor. He signed his poetry with the pseudonym V. Sirin, but literary insiders, including Véra, knew his real name.

On May 8, 1923, Véra Slonim and Vladimir Nabokov met at a charity ball, or so he recalled. Schiff sets their meeting on a bridge, “over a chestnut-lined canal.” All accounts, including Véra’s, agree that she was hiding her features behind a black harlequin mask that she refused to lift as they meandered through the city to the Hohenzollernplatz, rapt in conversation."

Como Agua Para Chocolate

I fell in love with Laura Esquivel's novel Like Water for Chocolate while reading it in a college Spanish lit class.  Happily, the sumptuous adaptation is streaming on Netflix these days.   

The story is filled with dizzying romantic and familial intrigue.  Reading it in Spanish some years ago was an extended process.  So every evening as I met my usual dining partner in the cafeteria, I would ply her with the latest plot twists.  Tita and Pedro are madly in love, but she's forbidden to ever marry!  Pedro is marrying her sister, Rosaura in order to remain close to Tita!  And that was just the first chapter.

The true heart of the story though is Tita's liberation (personal, sexual ... even political since the story is set against the Mexican revolution).  She is bound by an oppressive family tradition and a mother will continue to plague her from beyond the grave.  However, her vitality cannot be repressed and seeps out into her cooking (as she prepares all of the meals on her family ranch).   This in turn makes extraordinary things happen to everyone who consumes those meals.

Tito and Pedro have a clandestine love for the ages, but truth be told I don't care much for Pedro.  He's the jealous, moody type even if he is an impressive romantic.  

     

I rooted for Tita's unflinchingly doting suitor, Dr. John.  The bow tie and test tubes belie another deeply romantic, more responsible spirit. 

And then there's Tita's other sister, Gertrudis.  She's a saucy ginger with the boss attitude to match.  After eating one of Tita's recipes, she runs away to join the revolution while er, making whoopee atop a galloping horse.  Naturally, her judgement never disappoints.  

Gloria

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to see Gloria Steinem speak at the 92nd Street Y as part of the Makers project.  She was every bit as brilliant and witty as I had built her up to be.  She also happened to be strikingly youthful and exuded a relaxed, palpable joy.  At one point an audience member asked her (in more words) how she has avoided being worn down by a lifetime of going head to head with misogyny.  She replied (again, in more words) that the women's movement is a bottom-up, communal movement and a joy that assures you that you're not crazy, the system is.

This weekend, I began to read Gloria Steinem's latest book, her first in two decades, My Life on the Road.  At age 81, she has spent most of her life traveling: as the daughter of a roving salesman, as a bright-eyed twenty-something in India, as a journalist and of course most famously as a self-described itinerant feminist organizer.  So, she has gathered her notes and journals and composed a beautiful meditation on the traveling life and global communities.

I'm only halfway through, but one of the most noteworthy takeaways (all the more so in our era of digitized communities) is the importance of shared physical spaces.  Although Gloria began her career as a writer and had a fear of public speaking, she began to tour the lecture circuit after her interest in the women's movement was stifled by editors.  She sings the praises of campuses and particularly bookshops - where anyone can join in the exchange of ideas.  

The New York Times review noted that Gloria largely ignored the social debates happening online.  Instead, she offers a gentle reminder of the alchemy that can happen when ideas, even wildly different world views, meet face to face.    
        

An Introduction

picture found via déjà vu

Hello!  My name is Jamie and I'm creating this blog with my dear friend, Susie.  We met when we lived next door to one another in an all-girl dorm at our Virginia college.  The hallway we lived on (in a building just off the main campus, overlooking a cobblestone street) was magnificent.  Every night, us gals in the middle of the hallway would gather just outside of our doors until some poor soul down the hall would inevitably begin to slam their door in protest.  It was terrific bonding (sorry poor souls!)

Susie and I soon discovered that we shared (among other things) a hometown just outside of DC, relentlessly optimistic inclinations, an abiding love for all things ridiculous and a compulsive need to reference 30 Rock.  Flash forward some years and we now live in cities approximately two hundred miles apart.  Susie happens to be a wonderfully introspective person, so increasingly we've shared personal and creative challenges across that divide. 

Thus, this blog was born.  To quote Willy Wonka in that terrifying boat scene, "There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going."  We're here to share the things that excite us, whatever those things may be.