Blood was running down his face

Let's talk about how Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes met.  The following comes from her journal... I don't know about you but I definitely do not write in my journal this eloquently. But then again, I don't think I've ever had to write down an experience quite like this.

"Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes. . . . 

And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn't I, and I stamped and screamed yes. . . and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hairband scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. 

And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face."

Slowly dear ask would you dance with me

This video. Wow. Just wow.

Roshambo from FreePeople on Vimeo.

Post title from Part One by Band of Horses.

Everyone thinks I'm a liar

It is 9:20 pm and my host family hasn't called me for dinner yet. It is taking every part of me to resist having that chocolate bar in my drawer.

Anywho I'm taking a history of photography class, and for our field trip today we visited la Maison Européenne de la Photographie. I loved the exhibition by Claude Nori. It made me miss summer. It has been raining and overcast for the last two weeks in Paris which could explain why I am so drawn to the lifestyle and weather these photos convey :)

Post title from Submarine by The Lumineers.

In every way, I've changed since then

Did you know some people kiss for the first time on their wedding day? What the what? I have followed this couple's lovely blog for some time, but until they were featured on A Cup of Jo, I had no idea they waited. Wow. To each his own.

Post title from The First Five Times by Stars. So good.

But I am weak and I will fail you

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

-Charles Warnke

I thought I understood it, but I didn't

I mentioned previously how my sister and I got to watch the early showing of Like Crazy for the Chicago International Film Festival and listen to the director and main two actors speak.  Here is my reaction to the movie: woah.  You know that feeling you have after you've watched a really intense movie like Atonement, and then you can't speak for fifteen minutes? The feeling is similar.  Like Crazy was so well done, focusing on little details that make up a relationship.  The movie was shot in 24 days, and most of the dialogue is improvised.  Dang.  Do they stay together or not, I can't tell you... guess you'll have to see it :)

Come with me my love to the sea

I am definitely in the romantic movie mood.  Two nights ago I saw Leap Year again, which was alright... If your going for a movie where you know the ending within the first 10 minutes, but want to watch it anyway because of Matthew Goode's good looks and beautiful Irish scenery, Leap Year is the movie for you.  Now if you want something slightly better, or a lot better, I recommend One Day.  If I cried in movies, I would definitely have let the tears fall in this one.  It is one of those movies where you need a good two hours to decompress what just happened (which was great, because I had to go to the dentist after, which gave me lots of contemplation time).  Between these two movies, I'm in a bit of a romantic mood.  On top of this, both movies (which I really should not be bringing similarities to these movies, since they were polar opposites on the romantic movie scale) were set in Europe, so I got that whole "man I wish I lived in Ireland/England/France/anywhere not here."  Its super annoying.  You know, the mood where you start planning your future wedding and your honeymoon in the Scottish countryside.  Don't worry, it'll pass, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with this cute wedding photo.

Title from Sea of Love by Cat Power

Be better than The Gap

I just saw Crazy, Stupid, Love.... sooo good.  My favorite quote would have to be the gap line, too close to home yet so true.  This is one of those great heartwarming movies and makes you leave the movie theater feeling like you're floating on a realistic amount of clouds, like Little Miss Sunshine or The Kids are Alright.  And this movie not only affirms the belief that love is worth fighting for (or whatever the moral of the movie was), but also that Ryan Gosling is the most attractive man to walk the earth.  Oh and I would like to be Emma Stone, love her.

At worst I feel bad for awhile, but then I just smile

So I just discovered this amazing blog, HelloGiggles, which happens to be cofounded by Zooey Deschanel, my woman crush.  Check it out yo.  Sometimes it's good to discover that I'm not the only super awkward person out there.  Some fabulous quotes I've stumbled on so far?


In getting ready for a party when you are feeling nervous and awkward: 


"Before the party, I recommend doing something that makes you feel even more beautiful and glamorous than you already are.  For my graduation party, that meant shaving my whole leg.  I'm talking both legs, not just the shin.  This party was a big deal, so I went all out!  I felt like a million bucks!  A smooth million, that is."  So true.


Who doesn't love being single?  But for those few seconds where you are frustrated that you don't have a Ryan Reynolds to call your own: 


"In conclusion, you are not a victim in the dating scene. I don’t care if it has been ten years since you’ve found love. In a world where Jennifer Aniston is the sad, unlovable girl who can’t get a man and she’s smoking hot with millions in the bank and the inventor of “The Rachel” haircut, you can easily see how hard it is out there to get it right. Take the pressure off yourself. There’s no rush. You’ve got this. You’re a pimp. You know all the words to every song in The Little Mermaid. Snap out of it."


But there is hope:


"Ryan Gosling is available. He’s often seen at 7-11 in the mornings and if he has low expectations for his coffee, it makes me feel like we all have a shot."  Yes.  Oh and who is excited to see him in Crazy, Stupid, Love?!  I cannot wait :)


Title from Smile by Lily Allen, photo by this elephant.

I'll take you home if you don't leave me at the front door

I really could live in this coffee shop.  It is the only place I can make myself update this on a regular basis and get my favorite breakfast (after listening for a good five minutes about the barista's terrible morning of having his bike seat stolen... just give me the coffee man, just kidding he really was lovely...)

On a happy note, i love this proposal video so much.  I don't know what my favorite part is: the literal shaking of the hands to match the lyrics, the i heart you t shirts, or the awkward oops i forgot your bag at the end.

what protects our hearts

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?

Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts.

So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess.

And to stop the muscle that makes us confess.

We are so fragile,

And our cracking bones make noise,

And we are just,

Breakable, breakable, breakable, girls and boys.

You fasten my seatbelt because it is the law.

In your two ton death trap I finally saw.

A piece of love in your face that bathed me in regret.

Then you drove me to places I'll never forget.

And we are so fragile,

And our cracking bones make noise,

And we are just,

Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

And we are so fragile,

And our our cracking bones make noise,

And we are just,

Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys. 

Breakable by Ingrid Michaelson, photo sources unknown

you're extremely hot ;)

What a busy week! so even though I absolutely hate this holiday, I leave you with some pre-valentine happiness:

The Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.


-Pablo Neruda

If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, 

and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, 

and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt 

so that we should never hear it.

Love me, because love doesn't exits and I have tried everything that does.

Quote from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

I don't know which way I'm going

Steal my heart and hold my tongue.

I feel my time, my time has come.

Let me in, unlock the door.

I've never felt this way before.

The wheels just keep on turning,

The drummer begins to drum,

I don't know which way I'm going,

I don't know which way I've come.

Hold my head inside your hands,

I need someone who understands.

I need someone, someone who hears,

For you, I've waited all these years.

For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come.

Until my day, my day is done.

And say you'll come, and set me free,

Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.

In your tears and in your blood,

In your fire and in your flood,

I hear you laugh, I heard you sing,

"I wouldn't change a single thing."

The wheels just keep on turning,

The drummers begin to drum,

I don't know which way I'm going,

I don't know what I've become.

For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come,

Until my days, my days are done.

Say you'll come and set me free,

Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me.

Lyrics from "Til Kingdom Come" by Coldplay
Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever,

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle;

Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven,

If it disdained it's brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea;

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

Love's Philosophy by Percy Shelley

Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9