Peru Pictures 1

Pictures from our trip to Peru. The first three days we spent in Cusco, which has an elevation of 11,200 feet. Cusco is in many ways the heart and soul of South America--it's where the Spanish confronted the Incas, and is a true amalgamation of the two cultures. More pictures from the rest of our trip to come...

Happy Trails

we heart it never posts image sources,

which is lame.

A bientot. See you at the end of March (doesn't this month always go by so fast?)

Spancil Hill

Shane MacGowan's voice always leaves me a little misty-eyed. Happy St. Patrick's Day to my favorite Irish citizen--my dear old Ma. And to Aunt Sissy, too.

Signs of spring are around every corner. I'm always reminded of the last stanza of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Inversnaid. It's one my of my favorites.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Next Stop, Peru.

photo: mario testino

One of my all time absolute favorite feelings in the world is the one I get when I'm in an international airport terminal. I love walking through by the gates and seeing the different destinations: Copenhagen, Rome, Beirut, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo. If anyone's every spent time at the Continental terminal at Newark Airport, you know exactly what I mean. There's just something so exciting about the possibility of travel to me--that I could slip onto a plane, any plane, and head to a place far, far away. I pretty much spent half my childhood on planes, ferrying back and forth between the States and Hong Kong (where I lived as a kid) and France (as a teenager.)

So you can imagine just how excited I am to go to Peru on Friday! Our dear friend is getting married in Lima, and we decided to build a little spring break trip around it. I am so so so excited--about the food, about learning more about the ancient civilizations centered there, about getting out of the US! We are heading to Cusco, a city at 11,000 feet, and then to the Sacred Valley, the mountains around Macchu Picchu, and finally to Lima. Anyone with great Peru tips out there please share!

3.15.10

This morning, while sipping coffee my favorite batik draped in the sun.

3.12.10 -- a House is a Home

I really, really like this Brooklyn apartment which is featured in this NY Times article. A lot of their furniture is apparently stuff they inherited from grandparents, friends, family. The place reminds me a lot of my apartment in San Francisco. I too, have stuff that I grew up with and have gotten from my parents and grandparents. Couches, rugs, books, artwork, photographs, tables that I will never get rid of. It seems to me today that so many interiors are sort of overly done. Striving for a kind of contrived perfection, they often look and feel more like museums or galleries than actual homes.

It takes character and personality to make something transcend the "decorated" look. The somewhat saggy couch I'm sitting on right now came from my grandparents house in Nashville in the early 80s. It is the same couch that I used to nap on in the summer sun when I was a teenager at home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I love being able to touch objects that remind me of people and places that sadly have passed on. To me, this is what makes a house a home.

3.11.10

I cannot wait to see this movie, The Exploding Girl. It looks like it might just be perfect.

3.8.10

There's lot of hullabaloo going round about the new Alice in Wonderland movie. I have mixed feelings about it, mostly because I don't always agree with Tim Burton's aesthetic sensibility. I love his darker stuff--Edward Scissorhands is particularly brilliant.

But when I think of the Victorian England, I see images borrowed from the photographs of Lewis Carroll himself, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Over the holidays I read an amazing new book, The Children's Book by AS Byatt (the author of Posession). It takes place in Victorian England, and its characters include the historical figures J.M. Barrie, William Morris, George Merrill and Edward Carpenter. It was an enchanting and beguiling time in the world, sort of a social experiment that ended with World War I.

top two photos by J.M.C., bottom by L.C.

3.5.10

I was kind of bad today. First I bought these (two bags):

And then I bought these:

(sorry for the grainy images-I'm taking these on my iphone)

3.4.10

This is paste paper that I made last week in my bookbinding class. And then I made a book out of it. When I get the book back from my professor I will post more pictures! P.S. - did I mention how much I love making books?!

3.3.10

Those of you who know me, know that I'm obsessed with Brazilian music (okay, make that anything Brazilian). If this little thing called life doesn't really work out my back up plan is to run away to a teeny town in Northeastern Brazil and never come back. For now, I'll have to settle for some fab music circa '95 courtesy of Marisa Monte. The song diariamente is my favorite.