oh gosh

What is, what can it possibly be about chipped nails and cigarettes?

misquote of vonnegut by yours truely

photograph of becci by arvida

brightly colored buttons and jaundice flesh

You know, I'm usually pretty annoyed by the "tag seven people" posts. They just end up sorta... oh gosh, I don't know. I take back any cynicism or resentment I ever held over them though, because one on My Funny Eye just led me to the most beautiful blog.

Mieke Williams is a bit of a hodgepodge of photography, design, lifestyle, and general awesomeness. My favourite bits are the ones about little things, a hand embroidered pillowcase, an old desk drawer sorting buttons, a little watercolor and ink doodle. 

There's something beautiful in the small, the secret, the worthless. I think it's the only way to find life beautiful, or even bearable. It's all about finding beauty in the asphalt in the ocean; jaundice flesh is the most beautiful yellow ocher and feet with blackened soles smell like air and soil and grass.

I can hardy wait.

oh my god,

oh my god,

oh my god,

President Barack Obama.

oh my god.

Untitled, 2008

So at the ICA we were only able to see the main, temporary, exhibit by Tara Donovan. We were lucky, however, because the way out was through their smaller, permanent gallery. As we ran through, still wet feet squeaking with each step, I had to stop and look at a piece by a German artist, Kai Althoff. 
The painting that I saw hanging^^ really reminded me of the movie Mirror Mask. The girl has this distinct style of doodles.. really stylized but well designed and sorta dark. Anyways. They defiantly don't have a strong technique aspect but his work is really strong and straightforward, which I like. I wish there was an online collection, a complete collection, of his work. Grrr.

Even his doodles are brilliant

If you haven't read Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, I order you to do so immediately. I read it first a few summers ago.. I was probably around twelve and hadn't read much of his work. It proved to be a very adequate Vonnegut 101. It's basically an autobiography, really, so I expected that it would lack the heart that's so unmistakably present in his fiction. Luckily this is not the case. The book is really like a big cluster of brilliance packed in so tight that every word, every sentence is stunningly simple and honest. 

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

-Hemingway 

I'm always so pressured to articulate everything I know, or think I know, into my writing. I doubt I'll ever be talented enough to do it in one sentence. But Hemingway is saying that it doesn't have to be everything. It just has to be something. Brilliant. 

Every sentence that Vonnegut writes, or types, should I say [he used a typewriter or a pencil and paper for every book he had written], is true. And Man Without a Country piles all those together into something almost all encompassing. True, he didn't get it all, but he only had eighty four years. Had he been given another eighty four, I wouldn't be surprised. But eighty four is long enough for a man to suffer, how could one want to add on time to his sentence?