ohMAAN

Archive for 2012|Yearly archive page

for N on her Travels abroad

In west on 06/13/2012 at 12:14 am

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

alain de botton, the art of travel

to having the most magical time,

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cher vous

In east on 06/12/2012 at 12:20 am

In a couple of days I embark on a great adventure through France, Switzerland and Germany. While I am flying solo and sort of feel this spirit of independence I am staying with a good friend in Paris. I recently told someone of my trip and this is what they said:

I traveled to Europe by myself once. It was after a break up. We were supposed to go together but then she broke up with me. So I went alone. I had the best time.

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thinking about you

In east on 06/09/2012 at 4:05 pm

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Willa

In east on 06/09/2012 at 3:38 pm

Our lovely friend, Willa Gross, pictured above for Loeffler Randall.

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the birth of my sister

In west on 06/08/2012 at 6:14 pm

my sister is in New Zealand again, celebrating her birthday and her engagement. she also got drunk at 6am in Figi because her flight was delayed for hours and hours. that’s ma girl!

have a meowilicious bdayz

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To: live forever

In east on 06/06/2012 at 1:19 pm

I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don’t know—you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother’s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference?

Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.

Ray Bradbury

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on June

In west on 06/04/2012 at 11:44 pm

Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco, but because I am talking about myself I am talking here about New York. That first night I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline, but all I could see where the wastes of Queens and the big signs that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL THIS LANE and then a flood of summer rain (even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain), and for the next three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air-conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a bad cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come — was anyone ever so young?

I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those three days was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring, I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

didion

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