Scotland the Brave

Just got back from a whirlwind trip around Northern England and Scotland. Driving up the east coast of the Isle of Britain we crossed the Border and after about another hour of driving came around a bend and were greeted with the most beautiful sunset. My traveling companion actually stopped the car in the middle of the road the sight was so arresting. After we pulled over we got out of the car and tromped around the golf course (you can see the flag in the photo) and took pictures and just soaked in the beautiful atmosphere. The trip was a little more difficult than I had planned on but that one moment made all the aggravation worth it. A touch of the sublime in the everyday.

18 Days In.......

...And I'm finally ready to face the New Year. The last two weeks have been spent catching up on leftovers from the old year, catching a cold, and then finally catching some zzz's. So here are my Goals for this year (I hate the whole thought of New Years resolutions, this probably stems from the year I resolved to be Bitter and it was the only resolution I kept):

Find More Ways to Explore my Creative Faculties
Read More ( definitely didn't finish enough books in 2009)
Write More (see below for the first fruits of this Goal)
Be More upfront about my feelings with others
Get Out More often
Take More Photos
Post More Items on this blog (yeah, yeah, like we haven't heard that already)
Be More stunning and fabulous than I already am


So there we have it, 2010 is the year of MORE, I hope I can keep up.

P.S. here is the first thing I wrote this year

Waiting
Waiting, softly waiting.
Sneaking sly, sidelong glances.
Searching for signs
And signals of your intentions.

Waiting, softly waiting.
With an unheeded watchfulness,
Long studies of your shuttered face,
For some sense of your feelings.

Waiting, softly waiting.
With veiled impatience,
For a touch, a kiss.
An indication of your affection.

Waiting,
Ever so softly waiting
For your heart.

Sweet Perfection

One of my favorite things to eat in France are these perfect little cookies called Macarons. Somewhere between a crisp meringue and a moist sandwich cookie, they come in all different flavors. Chocolate, Vanilla, Rose, Caramel, Lemon and Lavender are just some of them. My personal favorite are the Pistachio. I cannot even describe how wonderful these taste!! Little discs of absolute perfection. Pastries and confections are a real art form in France. It's not just about the taste, it's also about texture, scent, and appearance. All these elements come together to make some of the most divine dessert experiences I have ever had. Even the way the people at the pattisseries wrap your selections is completely meticulous. From the moment you choose a glossy parcel from beneath the glass to the moment you pick the crumbs from the crumpled wrappings and lick your fingers for every last delicious and scintillating morsel, it is a full blown sensory experience. I only wish I could find some place close to me that sold them. In the absence of any French Pattisseries in my neighborhood, I have decided to try my hand at them myself. I'll let you know how they turn out, and if I find a good recipe, I'll post it here!

Portrait with Attitude

I have to confess I have always had a problem with taking people's portraits. I feel that, unlike painters, photographers often fail to capture something of the person they are portraying, and instead capture only an image. Which is why I have a tendency to frustrate many of my friends and family by confining my travel photographs to Landscapes and Architecture. I have recently decided that maybe, I need to return to portraits and see if I can't manage to improve my technique a bit. Which is why I am so happy with this photograph. Anyone who knows my friend C. will tell you that this displays a great deal of his personality, from the pose, to the location (read the sign, he is the type that would create some noise), to the knowing smirk that his inner circle is oh so familiar with. This has inspired me to work a bit harder, and see what I can come up with.

M.I.A.

So far I have been failing miserably at this blog thing. I love to read others' blogs, and think of endless things to post on my own, and yet never seem to get to it. But I have recently returned from Paris and that City, teeming with
Art and Artifice, has inspired my creativity and motivated me to begin anew and post all those things I have been thinking of. So keep watching this space. I will be Missing In Action no more.

Feeling Blue

I'm feeling kind of down today, another of my best friends left town for a very long time, the second in three weeks. I am now thoroughly sick of missing people and at the moment I only see my loneliness increasing exponentially as the months pass by, so to celebrate my current glumness I am posting a picture I took a few months ago that perfectly suits my mood. I went to Portland, ME with my sister T (one of those who has recently abandoned me) and we went and drove along the coast outside of town just as the sun was setting, there was this little side street that we decided to explore and at the end was this magnificent beach, all the surfers (Surfers? In Maine?) were coming in out of the water, and everything was misty as the light was fading, it felt as if the whole world was blue. I loved the moodiness of the waves and the rock and the newly risen moon, and just about had an apoplexy when my camera batteries died right as I framed the perfect shot. AAAGGGHH, it was agony. I have since become incredibly OCD about charging the battery. I just want to swim in my melancholy today, but don't worry, I have plenty of projects to pull me out of the doldrums tomorrow!

Poetry

So I have been doing a lot of reading lately and as a consequence I have also been doing a lot of writing. I feel like whenever I immerse myself in good books I just itch to write, sometimes short stories, but this time I have been writing a lot of poetry (some of it typically horrendous) but I wanted to post one poem that I am actually somewhat happy with, I am still tweaking it but am posting the current working draft.

Elegy on a Lost Love

I will miss
The lissome whiteness of your thin fingers,
Your eyes
Which called to mind the Sapphire brilliance of a night sky,
Your soft strawberry hair
that never seemed to lay the way you wished.
I will miss your mouth,
With which I was so fascinated,
Thinned in anger or curled in a jovial smirk,
The laughter lurking in the corners of your eyes.
You have placed yourself beyond my reach, so irrevocably.
I will miss
The lost opportunities to smile when I hear your voice,
To gasp in false dismay at your latest shocking pronouncement,
To laugh at our constant misunderstandings,
But most of all I will miss
The way my heart leaped
And I came alive
When I knew you were near,
My love.

So there you have it, my literary attempt after having read The Painted Veil, and Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham and The Possessed by Dostoevsky, all books which I would recommend, but they have perhaps made me a touch maudlin of late.