The Nouveau Riche and Personality Snarking

Seriously?

She's eighteen. I do not understand this kind of opulence for an eighteen year old. She might be really nice; I don't know the girl. Maybe she works. Who knows. But her posts are "Today I wore Balenciaga spring/summer 07 shoes and a Chloé dress. Then my sister and I made a fabulous dinner. I loved today." She has a lot of ridiculously expensive (albeit beautiful) clothing, which is good for her, considering she's only 18. I still look at her blog from time to time, but I find it terribly banal. "Great, today you decided to wear your Chanel boots. Thanks for letting me know." I do not find inspiration in this. She's on my links as Sea of Shoes. You'll see what I mean. Oh, she travels, too, and takes pictures. The end.

I have a lot of things to say about Sylvia Plath, but that should wait. No one should be flooded with her thoughts all at once. So, instead, here's a beautifully pose-less editorial.

She is simple and effortless. Some commenters on fashiongonerogue (where these were taken from) wrote that she needed to work on her posing. "She could move a bit, not pose but work the camera bitch! =))" and "she can work a bit more on her poses." She was the second runner up on Australia's Next Top Model, and apparently she's a terrible person. For example, "When I bought my copy of RUSSH I could barely look at these without feeling disgust at what a horrible human being she is. Inner beauty matters as much as the external." Inner beauty does matter, but it doesn't matter when it comes to photos. No one did a profile on her personality. Her job is to present clothes in the manner the creative director/stylist/photographer want, not to be sweet.

En L'hiver...

This winter, which is not much unlike from other winters (save for the fact that I'm done with my undergraduate education), I want to paint my nails black. Ironically, for the first time in what seems like years, my nails have no nail polish on them.

(via here)

I also have an urge to wear dark colors and dye my hair black again.

 

In a conversation with a friend of mine, she said she was feeling "dark" and "rawr." Without any further clarification, I would have had no idea how she was actually feeling. When I told her I didn't understand, she replied: "I'm in a dark room — completely dark, save for the light from my computer, listening to good music, reading Sylvia Plath poems, and wishing I was in a pool full of black satin waves with my hair black black and a smokey eye and falsies and a tattoo of a skull and bones."

 (via here)

 (via here)

Her description makes sense. It is a feeling that is not solely experienced in the dark winter months, but I've found it occurs more when the cold, dry air and inky evenings envelop us. 

And yet, I want to play in the snow (in Sweden, preferably), and wear white. If I wear white in the snow, combined with my "fair" skin, it might be difficult to tell where I begin and the snow ends.

 

 

(photos not cited via fashiongonerogue)

Inconsistency

I love being a contradiction. I love that everyone is a contradiction. What fun would a person be with a forever-constant personality?

In the west, being contradictory does not sit well with us. We need to be a certain way and be that way all the time. I need to be strong and confident and individualistic all the time; never can there be a time when I am the opposite of those. But, of course, I am those things and their opposite. 


Here are some examples of contradictions within ourselves that we all possess:

• I make precise observations, and I act with abandon.
• I like to have clear plans, and I like to forget my plans.
• I am predictable, and I am unpredictable.
• I love structure and clarity, and I love flexibility.
• I like to study myself, and I like to forget myself.
• I am strong, and I am flexible.
• I don't take anything personally, and I take everything personally.
• I see my work as sacred and mundane.
• I am organized and disciplined, and I am creative and innovative.
• I am strong and decisive, and I am vulnerable.
• I am young, and I am old.

 - from Accomplishing More by Doing Less by Lesser

 I feel like it need not be mentioned anymore that sometimes the photos I put with my posts have nothing to do with the content.

 

(via fashiongonerogue)

Dear Sylvia

"How frail the human heart must be - a mirrored pool of thought."

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again. "

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am."

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." from The Bell Jar

(all photos via fashiongonerogue)

War

Tim Rice-Oxley said this about A Bad Dream: 
"A Bad Dream is the most emotional song on the record. It was based on a poem by W.B.Yeats, called 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death', and I think it also came from visiting lots of battlefields and graveyards and so in France, which sounds very morbid, but that's the kind of thing I like to do on holiday! I've just always been really affected by... I guess still being a relatively young man, I still have a lot of empathy of people of my age and even younger, who are going off to war; and I guess the idea of going off to war has been in the air for the last couple of years, with Afghanistan and Iraq particular [sic]. Those seem like very distant things, but I think in Europe in particular the Second World War is still something that still looms quite largely in a lot of people's minds, and it certainly should. I'd also been reading a book called 'The New Confessions' by William Boyd, in where the protagonist of the book goes up in a hot air balloon to film the front line, and he gets shot down and captured. It just made me think a lot of people when they go off as young men, and when they come back - even if it's a couple of years later it's like they've become old, and all the things they left behind have changed. And it's something that you can never ever go back to being young again. And I guess it's just a very sad song."

What he said sums up the lyrics of the song fantastically. I find the line "Baby, I'm a man; I was born to hate" odd. But it's somewhat true. When a person is off to war, he (or she) is supposed to hate the enemy. But are men born to hate? It's such a cynical view, and I sincerely hope people don't believe this.

War isn't necessary, but I don't doubt for a minute that it will always exist as long as the human race is on earth.

 

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” 
- Hermann Goering (Despite his high ranking in the Nazi party, this quote possesses truth.)

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” - General George S. Patton

“War is fear cloaked in courage.” - General William C. Westmoreland

 

 

(all photos via here)

Mumbo jumbo

I am shallow, and I am deep.
I am hard, and I am soft.

I am everything and nothing.
I am a contradiction.
My essence is a logical fallacy.

I am a cloud, a tree, a squirrel, a seed, an ocean, a black hole, a star, a Grecian goddess.
I am a cocoon, an illusion, a weightless entity.

I am a mind.
I am a body.
The two coalesce.

I am a blade of grass, a book, an iridescent light.

I am a lover, a being, a transcendental Form.
I am alive.

I am dead.

Existence and non-existence flow through my immortal remains.

I am rude, and I am kind.

I am bored, and I am interested.

 

I am a siren, and I am a prude.

I am something.

I am nothing.

(all photos via fashiongonerogue)

The importance of drapes

Let's talk about drapes, shall we? (Warning: spoiler alert for The Death of Ivan Illyich by Tolstoy)

 (via potterybarn.com)

One day a successful Russian man, Ivan Illyich, decided to put up drapes in his house. While he was on the ladder hanging the drapes, he fell and hurt his side. At first, he didn't' think he seriously injured himself. But, as the pain in his side grew and grew and grew like a ginormous monster banging on his ribs, he became more impatient and irritable towards his family. Eventually, he saw the doctor, and the doctor realized that this malady would kill Ivan. His family and the doctor skirted around the issue of his imminent death. And yet Ivan was undoubtedly cognizant of his impending doom. In the end, Ivan died.

Moral of the story: If you hang drapes, you will die.

BUT! Ivan hung new drapes in order to "keep up with the Jones'" — not to make his house a home or to add beauty and vitality to his (and his family's) life. He hung new drapes to keep up with the anonymous other, not to make himself and/or his family happy. And yes, drapes can make a person happy, in case you were wondering.

If a person likes a certain chair or a certain car or a certain pair of shoes or a certain anything because of its status in the outer world — that is, because of its importance to the anonymous others — the object(s) will be rendered useless and will, most likely, cause unhappiness. However, if a person likes a certain chair or a certain car or a certain pair of shoes or a certain anything because of its aesthetic beauty or its sentimental value, the object(s) will be meaningful, and therefore of worth.

And now a beautiful and interesting photo. Why? Because it makes me happy, and it inspires me. Who knew a railroad track could be shot like this and not like the typical senior portrait where the person is walking or trying to balance on the rail?

(via fashiongonerogue.com)