Blog Relocation

I have moved! This little blog is on permanent (as far as I know now) pause... I am continuing my blogging endeavor over on Wordpress now!  La Femme Boheme ...thats the new me!

On Self Doubt and Accepting a Dream...

"All I ever wanted to be was an artist. I didn't have any other aspirations nor am I talented at anything.  I don't have any real skills" 

-Patti Smith

     My husband has recently become something of a podcast addict. First it was This American Life, then Star Talk, and most recently The Dinner Party. On a recent Dinner Party binge I was re-inspired by the words of the force that is Patti Smith. Last summer I read Just Kids in something like two sittings on the beach. Besides being enthralled by talk of the time, of beatniks, Warhol's superstars and the Chelsea Hotel, I connected with her words and became sucked in and inspired by her obsession with creating and growing as an artist. Her reflections were so honest and accessible that for once the mysterious aura of greatness that shrouds success felt penetrable. In her brief interview on The Dinner Party, from which I quoted her above,  I was reminded of my mission to follow her lead, read Rimbaud, and not surrender to self doubt.

     For whatever reason I have had a life long tendency of giving up too easily, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes before even trying. I was under some impression that if I was not naturally brilliant at something then it was a complete waste of my time. I imagined that all successful people were successful because of an inborn or divinely inspired greatness. I failed to be convinced that things take time and practice, and I suppose I can admit that I do not find hard work all that appealing. I was absorbed in a delusion that someday I would discover my great talent, or even better, someone else would discover it for me.  We are told so often as children to go boldly in the direction of our dreams that I think perhaps the phrase became meaningless and the dreams became a web of vague aspirations that existed only in some make believe world of "tomorrow" with no conceivable path between here and there and a long enough list of "dreams within grasp" to exist forever in a state of pause. When we are so fortunate as to have so many bright futures within our reach the possibility of failing appears quite humiliating.
     I feel that I owe these grown up realizations to my husband. It is not as if a light was finally turned on in the room of "practice, practice, practice," but more like I left the labyrinth of opportunities that disarmed me and found myself in a wide open field where someone asked, "What would be your dream job, your dream life? Who do you most admire? If there could be one thing you were great at what would it be?"  He said to forget practicality, forget probability, forget money, forget time; find something you love enough to do over and over and over, even if you're terrible, even if no one knows or know one cares, even if it never leads to anything or makes you any money, and do that.  I realize that not everyone has the luxury of following such advice.  My dear husband liberated me, freed me from the trap of too many choices with the permission to fail.
     Who do I most admire? Great writers. People with the ability to string words together in such a way as to express something beyond words. People that enlighten and connect. Can I do that? Certainly not yet. I began this blog with a post sharing advice from Ira Glass. He explained that people with good taste often give up on creating because it takes so long for our own work to be what we can recognize as good. We cannot pass our own critique and we have not the foresight to understand how long it may take until we become what we aspire to be. I have a habit of believing that someday life will teach me things and I will know how to share them when that day comes. I have curiosities and insights now that are not yet developed enough to produce anything of value, and I assume someday it will all just come to me. Of course, that is not how it works. So I will put in my time, reading and writing, researching and sharing, until hopefully someday I evolve into what I hope to be, patient for now with my limitations.  

... Some other interview highlights (somewhat paraphrased) :

"I've always been driven aesthetically. It used to get me in trouble when I was a kid. I would wear the same clothes to school every day. I couldn't bear wearing clothes I didnt relate to. Even the teacup I drank from, I didnt like plastic, I liked porcelain. I can't really explain it. I just developed my aesthetics very early and they were, by 12, totally defined."

"A lot of people think that because I'm very cavalier about my dress, about my appearance, that I don't care about fashion, that I have no respect for fashion, but I have always loved high fashion. I learned about photography and a lot about art through fashion magazines when I was quite young. If I mourn anything its just that I've never really been able to carry off the black dress like Ava Gardner. I like a lot of things, I guess really in the end what i'm saying is, people have one idea of who I am, but I believe what Walt Whitman said, 'we contain multitudes.' When i was a young girl I wanted to be an artist, but I used to dream about being a model."

Real Life...

Lately I've been struggling to keep up my enthusiasm about blogging. Some days I'm full of ideas on which I fail to follow through, other days I feel I don't have any post worthy ideas, and the longer I procrastinate the easier it becomes to neglect this undertaking.  I browse other blogs, enjoy scrolling through their images, tips, tricks, inspirations and stories, and wonder what it is that I am lacking. Finally it occurred to me that I was completely over thinking this! The reason I attempted to begin blogging in the first place was to give myself a reason to practice writing. I am learning nothing by waiting in silence for some stroke of inspiration or blessing of talent!

Sylvia Plath wrote:

"Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” 

I should simply be writing about anything and everything! 

In other news:

These images, seen above, are my life lately.  Strolling along the coast in Pacific Grove, hiking in Carmel Valley, driving to work at Pebble Beach, beach time on 17 mile drive, and picnicking at sunset.   Some days I experience something I'll call heat envy, homesickness for those hot summers at the shore back east.  In fact I keep forgetting that it's summer time because the weather here hasn't changed all that much and the wind off the Pacific still keeps me in a coat half the time.  One cure I have found for silly thoughts like these is a quick scroll through the memory lane of my facebook timeline or instagram page. Say what you will about social networking but I cannot deny the joy it gives me to browse back through my life in images and reflect on how very lucky I am. Sometimes I just can't believe that THIS IS MY LIFE! I get to live here in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I've lived and been to so many beautiful places, and our adventures are just beginning! How could I possibly look at these images and feel anything but blissful over the current state of my existence! 

One Enchanted Evening...

"Puttin on the Ritz"

My idea of a perfect evening?

Well here it is...

My husband and I have become quite good at orchestrating perfect evenings out in the lovely city of San Francisco! 

For my birthday this year my husband got an amazing deal on a room at the Ritz Carlton San Francisco! They greeted us with champagne, upgraded us to a suite, delivered chocolate covered strawberries to our door, and sprinkled rose petals on our bed before we returned at the end of the night, I vowed to never stay anywhere else again...

We made the most of our suite and treats, got all dolled up, took some silly pictures (as seen above) and then headed downstairs to their lobby lounge for our first round of cocktails. I was determined to enjoy some live music for my birthday, so from there we headed to  The Burritt Room (perhaps our favorite bar in the city) for another round and some live jazz (5:30- 8:30 wednesday nights.) 

We selected Gitane for dinner and what a gem it was! (We will definitely be going back!) The delicious food and bold, artistic, romantic atmosphere both hit the spot...

From there we wandered over and up to Harry Denton's Starlight Room for more drinks and dancing! Lots of dancing in fact, under their big green disco ball, on their lovely dance floor overlooking the sparkling city of San Francisco! 

Each little destination was within walking distance, and the evening flowed beautifully from one spot to the next...

It was all around a most enchanted evening!

(and an SF agenda I would highly recommend...)

Card Games and Cocktails...

 

Thanks to the stylish influences of Mad Men perhaps, card games are attempting a come back and 

I am here to show my support! 

I'll never forget playing rummy with my Grandmother, or hearing stories of the "good old days" when the cousins would all get together every weekend for cocktails and cigars over the card table. 

I think these gorgeous  Kate Spade Playing Cards and The Ultimate Book of Card Games would be a great way to add some quirky class to any little cocktail party! I also just enjoy adding a little theme like this to an ordinary weekend evening with my husband to turn any old day into a fun date night (and save some $$ by creating a fun reason to stay in!)

So shake up some Classic Martinis and Manhattans, throw on your favorite retro tunes and converse in style over a friendly game of cards!

Classic Gin Martini

2½ oz gin
1½ oz dry vermouth
3 green olives

Rinse martini glass in dry vermouth and pour out. Shake gin with ice until chilled. Pour into martini glass. Add olives

The Manhattan

1¾ oz bourbon
¾ oz of sweet vermouth
1 dash of aromatic bitters
1 Maraschino cherry

Pour bitters, liquors over ice in mixing glass. Stir and strain into martini glass. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry.

Also...I just found this adorable suede poker travel set at a local gift shop and can't wait to spice up our next little get-away!

Here's a little tune to set the mood:

Cheers!

Some Thoughts on Writing...

In my long history of attempting to explore writing I have kept a series of "journals." Not a page of self expression still exists from any time prior to 2008.  The day would always come when the remnants of past thoughts and feelings met their expiration date, when the existence of words I had once written now embarrassed and repulsed me and I felt the need to rip the pages into tiny pieces and remove them from my life forever.

So as I make these new attempts at writing and sharing I am faced with the reality that the day will surely come when I am disappointed with the work of my past self.  With this in mind, here I am, on the internet, scratching away at some attempt to put myself out there and see what I can learn from that experience.

In this sense, I find Lena Dunham, creator of the new HBO series The Girls, an admirable source of well articulated inspiration and insight.

In this interview with Fresh Air she addresses some of the criticism of her new show, along with some of the themes and issues the show strives to explore.

As a 25 year old "girl" who spent her most formative years single in Manhattan I am addicted to this show for all obvious reasons.

Beyond that though, after watching her breakout film Tiny Furniture and the first few episodes of the series, I find her work refreshingly real, her life experience expertly and oh so humorously illustrated.

For me, the points that struck the deepest cord in this Fresh Air interview were her thoughts on putting herself out there at such a ripe age. She is a 26 year old girl living in NYC exploring the experiences of girls in their mid 20s living in NYC.

(In Her Words:

GROSS: That was just making me think about how almost treacherous it must be to be so out there when you're still in a fairly formative phase, you know, when you're in the early days of independent adulthood, and you're putting your life out there on the screen in a transformed, fictional way, but you're drawing on your own experiences, and you're turning them into negative experiences for dramatic purposes, for your character.
So it really must be transformational for you to be going through this now, since the early 20s are a transformational period for most people one way or another.

DUNHAM: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny. My dad is a painter, and he teaches graduate school, and one of the things that he always says is he thinks students should wait until after graduate school to show their work because he thinks it's important to have that moment where you kind of are experimenting without the feeling of someone's gaze on you or without the feeling that you're sort of going to be held to the decisions that you make in your creative process throughout your life.
You need - but the thing is I come from a very different generation than my father. You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.
And so I've sort of just made the decision to be OK with the fact that I'm not going to love everything that I put out into the world, and I kind of go, well, maybe, my hope is oh maybe it'll sometime be helpful for another young artist to sort of see my development and see the way that it - that I sort of lived out loud a little bit. But there's definitely times where I - where I don't think I let the sort of the weight of it hit me, the amount of stuff about my own life, the amount of images of my own body that I've put out into the world. And then I also love what I do, and no one has forced me to do it, but there's the occasional moment at, like, 3 in the morning where I suddenly realize, like, my breasts are on TV, as is a fairly accurate account of my first post-college relationship.
And you have your, like, five minute of existential terror before you return to sleep about that topic.)


There are heaps of opinions out there on the effects of social networking, the ways it is re-shaping our lives, our relationships and the way we understand and express ourselves.  I have never been one to resist change, I instinctively embrace it.  I am always in support of openness and transparency, encourage honest communication and suffer the consequences. My hope is that this age of internet identities and exhibitionist self exploration will bring rise to a less ignorant, less judgmental, more accepting and better informed generation. I am optimistic that when we share, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we welcome others to be more comfortable with themselves, we help each other learn more of what it means to be human, we connect, we enlighten, we grow. 

So thank you Lena Dunham!

One Lovely Morning...

I have found my pastry soulmate in the almond croissant. 

I have yet to attempt to bake this perfect pastry, and believe I may prefer the experience of setting out to the bakery on sunny mornings, wandering along the quaint garden lined streets of my little California town, past the flower market where these lovely roses lie in waiting, and taking in the aromas of coffee and sweets while I select one scrumptious treat from their batch.

Oh, the simple joys of life!

I hope you have a simply scrumptious weekend!

Go Slowly...

Smile, Breathe, and Go Slowly.

There is too much beauty you might surely miss...

Go Slowly Print ... art by ekaterina koroleva ... do ho suhs cause & effect installation

Writers and Their Books...

On my last trip to my local Anthropologie I was inspired by this book on the personal libraries of thirteen prominent novelists.  For one thing I always enjoy expanding my personal reservoir of inspiration by seeking out the sources that inspire those that already inspire me! More interestingly though, this book takes a deeper look, through gorgeous photographs and thought provoking interviews, at the relationship between reading and writing, and at what our collections of favorites may say about us.  Furthermore, the onset of e-readers provides an opportunity to find new value in the entity of the book and the library, or perhaps simply to rediscover those qualities that keep us collecting. All in all I think it is one lovely idea for a book, that has given me plenty to think about!

What's in your library?!

...and why...