the pedestrian - or, thank God it's friday

the best (musical) present was given to me this week.  happy, uplifting, joyous even - this song makes me feel like spring is well on it's way, plus i've woken up with it playing in my head almost every morning. additionally, it makes a brilliant driving soundtrack (especially at 150 kms/hr on the open highway with the sunroof open) and puts a little brightness in my work weary soul. the fact that the foxboro hot tubs are REALLY green day, makes it even better.

i'm not sure if this is the "official" video, but it definitely makes you want to dance along with that gal and then steal her awesome boots.

happy friday, all!

(and to m - cheers and thank you!!!!! xoxox)

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in the land of chalk drawings...

we heart sidewalk chalk!

considering myself to be somewhat artsy, i try to give the mini pens, crayons, markers and clay as much as i can.  now that she doesn't try to EAT everything, it is a lot easier - and now that she knows she can make her mark on things, she is thrilled every time we do something crafty.  when i clean the house, i find a random colourful scribbling here and there, which i take as evidence that she has some artistic leanings.

the mini and my latest obsession is making chalk drawings.  i picked up a package of crayola sidewalk chalk and we let loose on the back patio.  she LOVED it - she took every colour and made her mark everywhere - on the patio stones, the back steps... even the fence was not spared.  even though we both ended up covered in multi-coloured chalk dust, the backyard felt like it was filled with joy and expression. 

having an artist and a musician as parents, i hope that some of that rubs off on my girl.  (so that she'll become famous.  well, i can wish, can't i????)

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kid.

my favorite version of the pretenders' "kid". dreamy, ethereal, romantic. like falling for someone. this one's for you.


(similar to the version used in the movie "17 Again" with hot jailbait zac efron. still very cool.)

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soul of a poet.



photo courtesy of f*ckyeahtattoos (i wish i could say that this tattoo was mine, but sadly, i am too much of a committment-phobe to get one.)

i'm not much a poetry aficionado - besides yeats and keats and shakespeare and the odd nursery rhyme, i don't know many poets' works.  in high school i went through a phase of writing poems - these rambling, yearning, adolescent poems full of the requisite teenage angst (i cringe just thinking about them and thank god they are in the garbage somewhere) but i have always been in love with e.e. cummings and his quietly gentle words. 

early in his life, cummings went to paris and fell in love with the city.  he wrote letters that were censored due to his vocal hatred for the germans, and eventually was arrested and imprisoned by the french army on charges of espionage and other "undesirable" activities.  shortly after being released, his father was killed and cummings used these events as the basis of a novel and his poetry.  cummings was quite prolific, writing over 2,900 poems, 2 novels, and several plays, not to mention countless drawings and paintings.  going on to marry three times, cummings had one daughter and eventually died of a stroke in north conway, new hampshire, in 1962.

what i love the most about cummings' poetry is the fact that he mixes the avant-garde (use of lowercase letters, odd punctuation) with the classic romantic tradition.  i'm thinking of incorporating some of cummings' words into a stamped piece, but i'm not confident yet in my skills - but maybe one day...

sometimes i wake up thinking of his verses - sometimes they appear in my dreams.  like today:

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream?   oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear

  (yes, probably a little sappy for a cloudy sunday morning - but his words are so lovely)



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