Newport

I will be in Newport, RI at the Newport Folk Festival until Tuesday. Try not to miss me too much, because I'll be back with lots of pictures for you!

Have a great weekend dears!

My Bike

This is me on my new bike that I asked for as a graduation gift. I was riding it around my neighborhood before work this morning and Melina happened to drive by just in time to almost run me over. I look relatively ridiculous, but isn't my bike cute?

Marination Station

So, what do you do when it's Sunday, you are 22 years old, a recent college graduate, moved back in with your parents in New Jersey, and it's raining outside?

Pickle, of course!

This project became a much bigger fiasco than I intended it to be. On my way home from work there is a farmer's market, and I finally stopped at it last Monday. They happened to have pickling cucumbers for 99 cents a pound. (99 cents a pound turned out to only be 3 pickles).
Then I had to find pickling spices, which I finally discovered at Chef Central, and I needed to find a jar, which I also found at Chef Central. And then I needed to find a good pickling recipe, which turned out to be relatively difficult. A lot of people put up pickling recipes online, and not all of these people are very good at giving concise instructions.

And then my friends found out I was starting a "Pickling Project" and they had nothing better to do, either, and so they helped me pickle and we took lots of pictures.

Anyway, I won't be giving a recipe, because chances are these pickles came out terrible. I couldn't find a great, easy-to-follow recipe for refrigerator pickles, so we kind of made things up as we went along. We did make two different varieties though, and I'm nervous to try out either, but also really excited, in case they did actually turn out to be delicious.

If anyone has a good recipe they can suggest, I would love it!

Quote of the Week

Summer: So, what if I'd gone to the movies? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? What if I'd gotten there 10 minutes later? It was - it was meant to be. And... I just kept thinking... Tom was right.

Tom: No.
Summer: Yeah, I did.
I did. It just wasn't me that you were right about.
(500) Days of Summer

(image via zooeyclaire)

Diane Keaton in Annie Hall

I'm not sure I could ever pull this off, but I love the way Diane Keaton's character dresses in Annie Hall. (I could do without Woody Allen's white ensemble.) I especially like that first photo, I think it's a little more adaptable to today's style, if I ever felt so inclined. These pictures make me excited for fall and cute new clothes! I'm starting to think about these sorts of things, because I need to buy big girl clothes for my big girl internship soon, and for class.

Bright Eyes Covers

This girl does some really good, really simple covers of Bright Eyes songs. This song (First Day of My Life) is actually where I got the name for this blog. I really like her covers of Poison Oak and Lua, as well.

Remember that time I loved you? It was today.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on the cover of Details Magazine this month. And I may or may not wish that white fence was me. See ya.

Quote of the Week

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

(image via rockandroses.tumblr.com)

A Real Room Re-do

You may recall last summer when I "re-did" my bedroom. I still had the same paint color, same furniture, etc, that I had when we first moved into this house when I was in middle school. However, my one request for moving back home after graduating college was that I could turn my bedroom into more of a grown-up bedroom. There are some things I couldn't part with (such as my blue tube lights), but basically it's completely different!

I love the paint color because it makes my room so much brighter and it feels a lot bigger. And I love all of my new furniture, but I really love the bookshelf. If you click the pictures you will find evidence of my extensive Sylvia Plath collection.

Morning Ritual

As I've grown up, my mornings have always been really important to me. If I have a bad morning, chances are the rest of my day isn't going to go too well, either. As my routines change, so do my morning rituals. At school, for example, I would always try to wake up at least an hour and a half, or two hours before class so I could make myself breakfast, enjoy a cup of coffee, and take my time getting situated for the rest of the day.

Right now my morning weekday ritual involves the following:

Coffee, Oatmeal with peanut butter and granola, and today some blueberries. This is accompanied by a little book reading as I wait for my coworker friend Melina to arrive at my house for our daily carpool.

All the while, I must entertain these two creatures in order to prevent them from eating my breakfast if I need to walk away for a second. I am able to prevent this about 50% of the time.

ps. I hate that dog toy so much. It has these pointy bumps on it so Mickey tries to play tug of war with it and it hurts. And it weights like 5 pounds so he always drops it, and often he drops it on my foot. I avoid it at all costs, but it's also his favorite.

Why I Choose Coffee Over Water

During the week, I hate to say that it's quite possible I consume more coffee in a day than I do water. I wake up, get ready for work, pour myself a coffee, and quite possibly buy myself another coffee as soon as I get to the office. And some days, like today, a pot of coffee is readily available in the office. My eco friendly reusable coffee mug doesn't help the cause. Nor do my busy nights and weekends.

Yesterday, for example, my friends and I went to a free concert in Central Park. Taking the train to the city can be quite the trek, and it was super hot out yesterday. So once we got to Summerstage to see Victor Deme, Trevor Hall, and Jimmy Cliff, we mostly just layed down on the tapestries we brought along and drank wine that comes in a carton (Bandit- awesome) and bottles of water.

We may or may not have also attempted to use free beach balls as pillows...somewhat unsuccessfully.


By the end of the day we were all tired and sweaty, but we came back with a favorite new song:
Deen Wolo Mousso by Victor Deme.
We have no idea what the lyrics mean but we love them.

Quote of the Week

"People are afraid to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles." Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blair's car. All it comes down to is that I'm a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven't seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.

Bret Easton Ellis Less Than Zero

(image via massimojocare)

My Dream Car

I don't know anything about cars, the way most people do. I know what I like, and that's about it.
I currently have a bright blue jetta and I love it, and recently I discovered the Eos, in this sky blue color. I have decided it's my next car (whenever that happens). It's a hard top convertible and I can easily picture myself driving it. On our way home from a bar down the shore the other night, we saw one parked in the parking lot and my friends made me pose for a picture with it. I happily obliged. I'm also holding an empty cheetos bag. I was hungry!

Concerts Coming Up

Though I'm pretty bummed that most of my summer vacations have come and gone so quickly, one of my favorite times of the year is still to come: The Newport Folk Festival! Last year I went it was absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it.

A couple of my friends are coming this year, too, which should be fun! I have only ever been with my family so I can't wait for my friends to experience the magic that is Newport Folk Fest.

This morning, while wallowing in my misery about the fact that I have already been to Bahamas, Italy, and the Jersey Shore, and having all of it behind me, I I realized I am actually going to A LOT of concerts in the next couple months:

Sunday: free Trevor Hall show in Central Park
Tuesday: Jack Johnson and GLove at PNC
last weeked in August: Newport Folk Fest
August 13: Ben Kweller and Barenaked Ladies
September 30th: Fun at Bell House in Brooklyn.

I went to zero concerts during the year (very weird for me) so I am happy to make all of it up now. Time to leave work now! More later :)

Sylvia Plath's Tulips

Throughout my career as an English major, I have analyzed this poem inside out, upside down, sideways, backwards, word by word, line by line, tying in every little piece to every little thing that I know about Sylvia Plath as a writer, and once in a while, simply as a human being. And let me tell you, I know a lot.

The thing I love about this poem, though, and about Plath's writing in general, is that even though the meaning of the poem can be is so intensely full of despair, certain lines just stick with you, and once in a while they just pop into your head like it's your own inner monlogue in her words.

I know Tulips has a lot to say, not much of it being positive, but in times of utter stress, one line comes into my head: "I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up." The line goes on to say, "and be utterly empty." Even though the way she means it is probably not the way that I mean it, it brings me peace. Maybe its because I do yoga from time to time and my favorite part is the meditation at the end of each session, where you lie with your hands turned up. Maybe its because my intense research and anaylsis of Sylvia Plath's life and poetry was something that brought me happiness and peace during really stressful times in my life. Maybe its because sometimes being "empty" doesn't have to mean you're dead, but means that you have freed all negativity from your body, at least for the time being.

I understand why Plath readers would always want to link her poetry to her eventual suicide; I used to do that. The first paper I ever wrote on her was in high school, and I decided to analyze her last published poem, "Edge," and detect devices that may have been foreshadowing her suicide a couple days later.

But I know now that doing things like that can be interesting, but it's a disservice to Plath as a writer and as a person. It's easy to find elements of death in her work, but there's so much more than that, too. Most of her readers seem to have their blinders on; they are only looking for one thing. It took me a while to step back and look for more, but I am so happy that I did. I actually find it quite difficult to separate her personal life from her work, because she is certainly is a confessional poet and is inspired by life experiences, because what writer isn't? However, I feel like Plath is the one writer that people often forget to look at objectively, and a lot of meaning can be lost without that. End rant?

p.s. I know the tulips in the poem are red, but these orange ones are so pretty, and there's a rainbow shining down on them. Photo found via staring_at_the_sun.

Tulips

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Grumpy

I just got back from a fabulous weekend on Long Beach Island, but I can't help but be a little grumpy for the following reasons:
1. ear infection relapse
2. spilling water all over my phone this morning and breaking it.
3. it's 105 degrees outside right now and I'm wearing a scarf and wool sweater at work.

I never even got the chance to tell you the story of my ear, and there certainly is a story to it. But I guess that's a good thing because apparently the story isn't even over...
(Long story short: In Italy I got a TERRIBLE ear infection which resulted in a ruptured ear drum and a visit from an Italian doctor in Positano.)

I really want to be in a good mood, I really do, but its been over a month and my ear is still not back to normal. I know I was born with messed up ears and am prone to ear infections, but this is ridiculous. I want to be able to swim, and shower without covering my ears like a normal person does. It's been over a month, already! I'm going to the doctor after work today, and getting new phone tomorrow hopefully. And then we'll see where I'm at.
But for now I'm just going to try and think happy thoughts...

Quote of the Week

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself."
Eleanor Roosevelt

(image via weheartit)