Benjamin Button: Beauty that Hurts.

On Sunday, my boyfriend took me to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We've been waiting to see it for ages, since we're both huge fans of the director's previous work, and the previews were just gorgeous. The movie did not disappoint. It was long, long, long in the kind of way where I am very aware of what could be cut and was unnecessary, and yet I didn't really mind it. I liked it much better than the short story and visually, I was entranced to insane points of reason.

Mostly though, I felt wistfully envious of Cate Blanchett's clothing. First, playing herself from a young 17ish on, was breathtaking. She is so incandescently, such a horribly overused word, beautiful that it pained me. There were moments where I wanted to look at nothing but her face.



This is not to mention her clothes, which had me reaching and sad that they were not mine. I loved, loved, loved her little dancer's leggings and yellow swing coat (that I couldn't find a picture of) and the funny beret she wears.







I want to do nothing more than dress like a dancer and wear hats made out of numerous rabbits or other adorable animals.

Second Coats.

I got two coats this Christmas, and this is the second! I am rather fond of it, as it reminds me of Natalie Portman's in Hotel Chevalier (although, being honest with myself, this is only because it's grey).




Sadly, most of the pictures in said movie are when she's naked, and I cannot be bothered at the moment to cap the coat myself. Mostly, it is really nice to have more than one coat. It also feels like the ultimate in excess. Something about having multiple, somewhat unnecessary coats. Ignoring that, it's terribly nice. Though I love cooler weather, once winter in the Northeast hits things get a little boring. The same coat gets thrown over the entire outfit, and I am forced to burrow into the throughout the day or be victim of freezing extremities. But having multiple coats is lovely, decadent, changes the entire attitude and feel of the outfit!

Ensconced in Things (articulate?)

Hello! I hope everyone has, will have, and is having a wonderful holiday! I've taken my barely-spare time to do silly things like sleep in and clean--the piles of laundry were in danger of overtaking me if they decided to rebel--before enjoying things like Christmas.




My family, to no surprise, loves to gift each other with clothing! I think all the gifts I gave were clothes, and I received much as well! Above you see one of my new coats, delightful and edible (there is something very off about the wording of this post that irks me. I suppose I should not abandon my blogging duties!).

Similarly, I have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks reading. It is wonderful! I haven't loved much of what I've been reading, not in that heart-close way that breaks little bits of me (in a good way) but I've enjoyed it. At curiosity and behest of others I checked out Kafka on the Shore (which I had read a bit of my sophomore year in college, but forgot all about) and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. I feel mixed on both. The real point though, is that several people asked my favorite books and while I've danced around that post and referenced things, I think it will soon be time for addressing that issue!

I will be back to regular, ridiculous, posting soon! Right now I must go pointless curl my hair--it's raining--and apply mascara before going out to the Opthamologist where we are buying new glasses! I will then appear appropriately bookish.

Things of Happiness: Books.

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It has been an unimaginably long time since a thing of happiness! This one is also painfully obvious, but no less wonderful, for me to post about. Books are, in fact, the greatest thing on the face of the planet. As an English major, or perhaps, former English major at this point (I'm not exactly sure how that works post-graduation), this is a natural aspect of my personality--to love books with fanatical abandon. But still, they are inescapably wonderful. This semester, since the summer, I have somehow made little bits of time to read entire books that have nothing to do with school, and it is delightful.

There is something very appealing about a book itself. The weight of it, and the satisfaction of words printed on pages, book covers. I especially love spines of books, although I suppose everyone does, in their exposed kind of way. Books are a wonderful prop, and almost always photograph well.


1. Untitled, 2. Untitled, 3. bookshelf spectrum, revisited, 4. adult head, 5. wrapped up in books, 6. no more books, 7. Arcadia, 8. spines

"From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril of Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemmingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village."
-Matilda, Roald Dahl

One of my new favorite things on the internet (I spent ages trying to figure out what sort of sentence I wanted there, and I'm not quite certain I like that one at all, but it will do) is R&R: Karin Elizabeth's book reviewing self-portraiting series. I mostly follow on her flickr but both are quite nice. She takes such wonderful, dreamy photos of the act of reading that are witty and clever. Her reviews are concise, but useful, and the books she reads are admirably varied! It's a fantastic combination of aesthetic thingies and bookish pursuits.

(I am fond of adjectives and adverbs. And I almost forgot this last quotation.)

"She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain."
-Louisa May Alcott

Stitches in Time.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats

Hello, escargot!

Hello!

I am back for a second. This year I haven't escaped the hilariously insane schedule of exams that I have somehow managed to avoid for the past four years, but this morning I find myself with a tiny bit of extra time before work!




I have been wearing pants a lot more than usual lately, mostly because of bitter winds on campus and a new-found curiosity for the things. I also bought the above sweater, from J. Crew, for a bit more than I normally pay for things. It was the last one left (in my size, there were two altogether) and I just loved it. I've already worn it three days in a row so as far as I'm concerned, it was a good idea.

That said, the next few weeks and months are going to be interesting! Like our beloved Queen Michelle of Kingdom of Style, I too will find myself unemployed come January 31st. It's quite sad, as even though it's only a silly retail job, I've worked there for almost three years and will be quite morose when it is time to close down for good (the store itself is closing, so we're all quite sad as now we don't know where we'll buy our shoes!). On the other hand, this coincides rather nicely with my graduation. Which, by the way, thank you everyone for your congratulations and well-wishes! For those who were curious, I will hopefully be heading to graduate school in January. Fingers crossed on that one!

But for now I must traverse through the horrible lands of end-of-the-semester exams and papers. I'm quite stupidly ignoring most of it, which I think is a mechanism of my brain to help it survive, because if I try to stop and think about what I've got to do, I would probably go mad! As it is I keep having dreams that it is the weekend or a Wednesday, and that I can sleep in for an extra hour. Then I do wake up, realize it's Thursday and that I have to get up right now.

I am returning shortly. I need to find a way to battle the cold weather! At the moment I am staying inside and sitting in the bathtub for hours on end.