Thursday, May 27, 2004
In Retrospect...
or more specifically in the light of day, Preppy in Pink over Mauvy Rocks was, perhaps, not my best venture into creative color. It looks like bubble-gum and sparkles exploded all over my fingernails.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
The Weary, Wayworn Wanderer Returns to Her Own Native Shore
Yes, I'm back from Houston, where my office was (oh so coincidentally) conducting a focus group on the strengths and weaknesses of immigrant networks. I did some shopping with my mother, saw my father briefly between his "empire-building" in Atlanta and some court case in San Antonio, and spoiled wretched the face-eating puppy whose every limb speaks malicious glee. These things, fascinating as they may be, are all beside the point.
The point is that next week is The Week, the week wherein I shear, ten inches from the tips, the vast majority of my flowing ebon locks. Houston's eternal state of heat and humidity reminded me that a summer with hair as long and thick as mine is a summer rife with the possiblity of taking matters into my own hands with scissors now and regrets later.
I admit to a tiny sliver of apprehension. As Blake once said to me, a woman's hair is her power, and mine, at this length, is so useful for things like allowing well-qualified young princes to climb up towers and, a la Porphyria, being strangled in a moment of beautiful, poetic jealousy.
But, in the end, 'tis a far, far better thing that I go to do.
Adieu unruly strands!
Friday, May 21, 2004
In Living Color
I can post pictures now! It's so thrilling!
Fragonard's Jeune Fille Lisant, one of my favorite paintings at the National Gallery.
In Passing
Regardless of political affiliation, there is no denying that the official photograph of Dick Cheney is downright sinister. There's something part smirk, part snarl, part primal feral leer about it. If his face were a map, it would have HERE BE DRAGONS scrawled all over it in ink looking suspiciously like dried blood. I say this because I pass this portrait of Dorian Grey every day on my way to the water fountain, and it never fails to elicit an appropriate frisson of fear. If I were more faithful to my Catholic roots, I'd cross myself.
Or wear garlic.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Sing in Me Muse...
What a tragedy that in today's fleet and mercurial world, we no longer have the grace to let a tired warrior have her ten days of mourning for something lost, something ceded in the heat of battle. No, today, despite the the pall of the morning, the chill in my heart, I must press on, paint my face, arm myself so strong in righteousness (and a bright canary handbag), plunge into the housing market YET AGAIN, with the knowledge that Beekman Place is dead to me forever, just a castellated brick wall and an iron gate for all eternity.
Go, my friend, and may you bankrupt the profligate buyers who bid $100,000 over the asking price.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Alas! For Yore...
Today is the kind of day I feel like drawing on my post-it pads with white-out pens. The whole exercise takes me back to middle school when that particular technique was all the rage, and Shannon Chislett drew "I love Adam" on my denim binder. (Yes, this was before I decided that anything denim was to be shunned for its plebian antecedents, among other crimes against aestheticism.)
In these days when I am about to enter my first bid in the lunatic housing market, I long for the savage simplicity of junior high at an all-girls school...
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Alexis and I are going shopping on Thursday. I'm a little afraid.
For you see, dear Reader, the great Spring Frenzy has yet to come upon me. I've been busy. I've been distracted. I've been dilettantly meandering around the Internet, occasionally finding a yellow handbag, an argyle sweater on sale. But, at no time since the deficit spending that lured me out of the Winter Depression have I really indulged in a celebratory orgy of vernal apparel.
The time has come to let the beast out of the cage.
You have been warned.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Up, Up, and Away!
Okay, so I know I said that I'd never go back to Houston after the Dante debacle, but really, as Emerson (whom I am given to calling Ralph in unguarded moments) so wisely said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."
Besides, it's for Mother's Day. How can I possibly ignore the great maternal call to return to the vast, bluebonneted arms of my natal state (and more importantly to my mother who exerted subtle, but nonetheless not uncertain, pressure to get me to join my family on a Mother's Day yoga retreat where I will sleep on a hard bed and eat vegetables - VEGETABLES!- with nary a cut of meat in sight).
In any case, at least I'll have Magellan to comfort me.
:)
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Apologies because...
It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when everyone throws
Self-control away.
It's time to do
A wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day
One you'll always rue!
It's May! It's May!
The month of "yes you may,"
The time for every frivolous whim,
Proper or "im."
It's wild! It's gay!
A blot in every way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.
Back to regularly scheduled ridiculousness soon.