oh sorry, i thought paper would protect you.
(image via)
plans.
A. and O. Franz, originally uploaded by Parker Fitzgerald.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
book three: jonathan safran foer’s “eating animals”.
fin : 22 february 2011
The recipe for chicken nuggets is apparently as follows:
1 part chicken, a truckload of corn, a cramped cage, a splash of fecal matter and three parts evil.
hello, my name is giftless.
I love writing, but I hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, “You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I’m not your agent and I’m not your mommy; I’m a white piece of paper — you wanna dance with me?” and I really, really don’t.”
— Aaron Sorkin [writer of only my favorite tv show ever
and many, many other fantastic things.]
* * * * *
the man speaks the truth.
blinking cursor.
blinking cursor.
blink.
blink.
argh.
* * * * *
addendum: after reading the above to the boy and remarking at how accurately mr. sorkin is reading my freaking mail right now, the boy remarks:
“so what you are telling me is that instead of just freaking writing these articles already, you are instead looking up quotes about not writing by aaron sorkin?”
score: boy, 1, procrastinating girl, 0.
blog point oh.
are we enjoying the new digs? i suppose along with decorennovating my office, ye olde blog needed a little facelift. also, i needed to dust off (and by dust off, i mean excavate, attach to a winch, and make a big HEAVING sound towards) my photoshop skills, which i used to make my sparkly new heading.
this may or may not have involved technical advice help from the husband, which may or may not have involved the biting off of heads and many sad apologies. all from me.
i also dropped a name, but in a cleaning-out-simplifying kind of way, not in a i’m-related-to-matthew-mcconaughey-by-marriage-aren’t-you-impressed kind of way.
what?
i am.
or, i was, until my sister was no longer married.
hmmm.
where were we?
yes, we’ve slimmed down here over at {sara, darling}, bidding bon voyage to our smorgasbundle.* titleage. it surely still fits the definition of a smorgasbundle, but it was sounding, oh, i don’t know, a bit buffet-like, which reminded us of congealed mashed potatoes and teeth-clickingly sweet lemonade, and that just won’t do.
you’ll see some other changes here and there, but pay no mind. just enjoy the nice change of clean sheets of writing over here, and come back to comment often.
or at all.
hugs and bunnies,
sara (darling!)
my reworked Jay-Z lyrics just roll off the tongue, no?
now that we are decorennovating (see what i did there: decorate, renovate, innovate all combined into a superword) casa derose, i finally have justifcation and reason to buy a print that i love from an artist that the boy and i both love, frank chimero.
and of course, after eyeing it for the past year or so, right when i get ready to buy it, the site is down for maintenance. [update: big cartel, the shop site, responded uber-fast to my twitter inquiry, and advises it’s not on their side, but mr. chimero’s.]
for 4 days now.
4. four. or, in German, vier.
okay, so i sound rather whiny at the prospect of delaying my instant gratification for only 96 hours, especially when we’re talking about art for decoration purpose and not, say, waiting for more valuable things like air, food, or being rescued from a chilean mine.
but still.
this…is…my…um… chilean mine? yeah, i’m not even sure i can fully go through with that analogy.
suffice it to say, that in my well-appointed home office where i have light and air and zero soot stains, i certainly am only dealing with first-world problems. 4-day-long-first-world problems.
i’ve put my requests out into twitterland, and hopefully it will come through for me.
for this WILL. BE. MINE.
to my sister, on her birthday.
“If you don’t understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child.”
— Linda Sunshine
my sister and i always joke that we are the venn diagram of siblings — so many areas that we disagree, with some key overlapping in the middle. i like whiny college indie rock; she prefers the sounds of the latest band that sounds like three doors down and other bands with names that sound like they put a slew of magnetic poetry pieces in a bag and drew three words randomly. i like my toms shoes; she feels that i stole them from an ugly gnome. my wedding colors were grey and yellow; these colors make her feel grey and turn yellow. i often wait (sometimes entirely too long) to say what i think; people immediately know how she feels about them. i acquire friends over a long time, like moss growing on a rock that makes sure to stay very, very still so that it can be found easily; anyone who interacts with her for exactly 2 minutes each day at her job (her regulars) takes a great liking to her and would probably, if asked, do any amount of favors for her. she enjoys vampires and related literature; we all know where i stand on vampires (and related “literature”, if we’re going to just bandy that word about loosely). we both adore eddie izzard and can quote him ad nauseam (emphasis on the nauseam to people, i’m sure). love 80’s music, and ABBA. the godfather. find mean people absolutely distasteful. seem to be less sensitive on the outside, but are incredibly sensitive on the inside. love summit county as a vacation spot.
i forgive her when she makes me mad with her forceful personality.
she forgives me when i get tunneled into my own world and forget to call her and be nice.
these disagreements, they happen amidst a steady, unwavering love and care. not love that takes a break when we’re at odds (which isn’t often), but love WHILE at odds.
this, this is a sister.
“Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other.”
— Carol Saline
many years ago, i was making some less than stellar decisions in my personal life. having an acute guilty conscience, i became quickly fearful that i might have irrevocably ruined my life, and although i had many friends at the time, was absolutely mortified to discuss these roadblocks with anyone. i didn’t really understand what real friends were at the time, holding many of them at arm’s length to preserve what i thought was how they needed me to be (some image of perfection), then not understanding why these same friends felt closer to everyone else than me. ahh, early-twenties, i’m glad to be distanced from you. nevertheless, despite the fact that i wouldn’t have considered my sister and i to be close (reference: differences above), when i frantically fumbled with my phone looking for a number to call, only one entirely judgment-free name came up on my contact list:
sister.
she answered, as she always did then (today i’m more apt to catch her by text or a call back as we both can’t seem to find our phone fast enough to answer). she could hear the worry in my voice, and did exactly what i needed her to do:
invited me to the bar she worked at to drink with a bunch of drag queens.
what? isn’t that what your sister does?
she let me commiserate and whine and lament and render my garments amidst gnashing of teeth and rolling in the dirt. okay, she didn’t really let me do three of those things, but i’ll let your imagination pick which ones.
after, i felt better. we didn’t solve any of my problems, some of which continued to be problems until i got my head out of the sand years later; we didn’t become magically best friends that night…we were something better: sisters. she never has judged me, made me feel bad for anything, yet never let me get by with being stupid.
how she’s able to do this? i’m not entirely sure…but it works.
“A sister shares childhood memories and grown-up dreams.”
— Author Unknown
my sister can make me laugh by repeating singular phrases from our past (some not so far away): “handi-cop!”, “no ice, no coke”, “lunchbox can haul ass”, “do you have a flag?”…
it’s not just these shared memories, but her willingness and even eagerness to relive them with me makes me feel known and rooted. turning on the music we listened to as we drove to a cousin’s funeral years ago, not really knowing how to handle death except to laugh and have a good time, brings us back to times we cherish now as we get older.
these new memories change — longer talks on the phone. bringing new significant people over and awaiting approval of our choices. stolen looks over the table at the crazy things that happen around us at restaurants (we always seem to get seated by the crazies!). changing our minds about careers about 8 different times. quitting jobs at the same times; finding new ones in similar tandem.
but the thing that doesn’t change is that no matter how far i paddle away from shore, my sister is easy to find, like a beacon through the fog that reminds me where home is; where i always want to be.
so to my sister on her birthday, i love you the very mostest, always.
one more thing i need to do.
this is the personal stationery for legendary film critic, gene shalit.
i’ve been procrastinating designing my own wanting my own personalized stationery for awhile, and as i put more thought to a design, i stumbled upon this awesome example.
damn.
now i’m going to need to find an iconic haircut.
back to the drawing board.
[source]
dinner.
Roasted Bacon Wrapped Asparagus Spears.
WITH a fried egg on top.
need i say more?
as it turns out, yes; there is one more thing to say:
scrumptious.
current state: living in the italics.
“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.”
— Bill Watterson, most notably the creator of Calvin and Hobbes
* * * * *
i find myself, these days, taking the opportunity to live in the italics.
attempting to create a life that not only satisfies but nourishes my soul, uncovering and developing my anima.
a life that reflects values, not only in the connotation that this word typically possesses in our polarized society (morally), but in the larger idea that my life would reflect the things that are of intrinsic worth and desire; the evidence of which can be plainly seen by the way my time is filled and the output of my plantings, not solely by the things i only say that are important.
this is a deciding, a reshaping, a shifting constantly in response to appropriate priorities and influences, not a one time declaration of value.
it takes thoughtful time, amidst a cultural current that seems to trend so strongly in an alternate direction in actuality while professing these same ideals theoretically.
it’s a strange place to be nowhere specifically, but more in motion, made awkward only when explaining to quizzical faces why you left a concrete place for one that doesn’t yet exist.
it makes sense to me.
to my family.
to my husband.
and to herman melville, who said about journeys and places that “it is not down on any map; true places never are.”
* * * * *
so often i turn to the words of others to accurately sum up what i’m thinking, particularly when i feel my own words are meandering and ethereal, like verbal cotton candy which leaves an impression but seems to dissolve into nothing just as quickly as it appeared.
so, what am i really trying to say?
in the immortal words of the wise david bowie:
sara, darling. 
