One of the sweetest and honest love stories I've seen in a while... by Andrew Haigh

Default Trailer 3/18/09 from Default: the Student Loan Docume on Vimeo.

new classical mood...

so moving, this piece took my breath away...

as for music, there is nothing more beautiful than this....

Yesterday Kai and I visited two city funded prek programs in carroll gardens and cobble hill. They serve the lower income community with clean and appropriate care for their kids on a sliding scale. The Warren Center, albeit it’s reminiscence to a clinic, showed a certain humanistic approach to the realities of what they were faced with being a city run program. The latin director who guided us through the school reflected on the problems of cut funds, removing hamburgers from the menu, expensive finger printing process on volunteers and lack of teachers in the afternoons. I liked her honesty and openness to look at the realities laid upon her and how she put forth her own ways of creatively coping with it. Little signs of flourishing showed here and there as herbs grew in potted beds on the roof top play ground, lively african american girls set up banquets in play time and vibrant art hung on the walls.

At Amico one entered with a similar clinical feeling, it’s halls were empty and yellowed, but clean. Our tour director was a young heavy woman with an overenthusiastic air who talked without pause and heaved as she climbed the school’s stairs. The first thing she did upon entering the 4 year old class that was in session was show us the bathroom. Was it to divert us from the fossilised head teacher instructing 10 wide eyed youth as she clapped her hands in a dead pan manner? Or the sickly obese assistant teacher sitting to the left who could barely walk across the room when she coldly assisted a child to wash his hands? How could this be I asked myself, that they could find a woman like that to be fit to teach? I’m not saying that a fat woman is not a good person, yet one must ask, that if a person is in such a state of severe health, how does that reflect on the vision they have of themselves and others.

My preference in regards to Jan was for him to go to the Warren Center, even if the class would consist mostly of girls and well what an experience for him, with his shock of blond hair and french tongue, to be embedded among such a diverse culture! Still my reflections after leaving both places was that why do city funded schools have to suffer such a depressed atmosphere? Why the clinical looking buildings, the obsession with hygiene and sterilizing sprays? There was a certain heaviness and lethargy. Why was music, art and yoga being cut? Surely in this large and abundant city there must be enough people who can volunteer their time twice a month for these children? And why would the city themselves, tax these schools so heavily with the weight of expensive finger printing costs ($150 x3 per teacher/staff)? We must be able to do better since right next door, ps. 32 and 58 (also public schools) are flourishing beyond belief with the support of the local community.

Rachel Barrett: "Nature and Nurture" Narrated Slide Show from Orion Magazine on Vimeo.

when art is work

A table scape I designed with Melissa Colgan for our spring 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings... inspired by the swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler

higher

There are times my heart cannot contain the abundance of feeling it has for you, overflowing into my fingers as I write, your presence lingers with me throughout the day. With you I can be alone, in your absence there is no need to miss you as you are there. Complete silence is as filling as our words. The eloquence you have in expression and thought is not one I will ever possess. My limited vocabulary and visual language will have to carry me along side you with a humbled quietness. Because of you I see the beauty in all men, their potential, their strengths and vulnerabilities. Watching my child place his hand in yours as it belonged there. That life could go on anew, different and not as a replacement, but a continuation of what is to be. There IS space for more.

Ingrid Berman by Yul Brynner

I love this private moment that Yul captured of Ingrid... perhaps on set, quietly reading her lines, going over the script. The partially open door, inviting and also showing restraint. And as I look up to the top of image and its make shift ceiling, I wonder if it is part of the film, that moment of solitude or just a place she tucked away to be by herself?

how magical is the work fashion editor Katelyn Mooney and photographer Anna Palma...

really love the french line Bobo Chose...

ah for the love of pasta!

jack gilbert day...

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Going There
by Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

by Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue
has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

found these today while doing a photo search at work... stunning!

Top photo by Inez & Vinoodh; bottom photo by Nick Knight

looking forward to seeing this