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Archive for April, 2012

Favorite things lately

The opening to “Melancholia,” i.e. the only Lars Von Trier film I can unabashedly love and the most beautiful movie ever made about the ending of the world. Also love the beautiful Wagner overture, which pretty much makes the whole sequence:

I also love this cover of “She’s Lost Control” by Spoek Mathambo. Darkwave township tech from Johannesburg. I hear people call this Afro-goth; I don’t care what it’s called, and the video is stunning, riveting even. I could write a whole thesis on the collision of iconographies happening visually and textually here. In 2001, I might have, but now I’d rather just listen and enjoy.

The story “Kashtanka” by Anton Chekhov. It’s about a dog who loses his way. I WANT A DOG NAMED KASHTANKA! Also, what took me so long to read Chekhov’s short stories? I am so slow sometimes!

My only bourgeois dream is to own a house, and in about a year or two, this will come true! I’ve started looking now, figuring it will take me that long to figure out how I want to spend a buttload of hard-earned savings; right now I want a farmhouse, because I want room for horses later. But I may just settle for a townhouse or something, really.

I am playing guitar lately, taking lessons all proper-like. I go to class with an acoustic, but my heart’s with my Telecaster.

This Nicki Minaj song. The first half of this record, i.e. the hip-hop half = kind of genius. And I love how she namechecks Hot Topic, it always makes me giggle a little.

Nicki Minaj, I Am Your Leader

Overall, life is full of such goodness: I’ve been working on a new novel and I am so happy that I don’t want to be on a computer so much! I want to be living and loving! I hope you’ve been happy this spring so far, all lovely blossoms and fresh air. Outside my window I have butterflies, hummingbirds and cardinals. I wake up and open the blinds and the cardinals sit in their nests and cock their heads at me, and I swear, it is the best start to my day (after a cup of coffee.) I wonder if they know me now. That is my goal this spring: to make friends with birds and share the sunshine. xo k.

On conundrums, and the smell of spring

I’m sitting at a table near an open window, and there are lilac bushes just starting to bloom outside them, ripening to a darker purple in the sunlight. Everything smells so lovely and fragile, and the wind is murmuring.

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The tricky thing is that the areas of life that feel expansive and full of growth and insight for me right now — love and money — are not ones that I’m inclined to write about publicly, for obvious reasons. I really don’t want my love life or the state of my financies to be cached on Google, you know? (This isn’t helped by my day job, which makes me paranoid about how information on the Internet and on phones gets used against people all the time!) Yet I always like to share what I’ve been learning in a space like this. Must figure that puzzle out; as an online-writing veteran of many, many years, I wrestle now with exactly what I want to do with something like this, and how much energy I can put into it without sacrificing my longer, offline projects.

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In the meanwhile, I’ll just tell you that I am really in love with the California Star Jasmine fragrance from Pacifica, which I picked up this past weekend. I love the smell of jasmine but hate often how sickly-sweet it can be rendered, but this one smells fresh and green and slightly sharp but sunny. The whole site is 20% off, so if you’re inclined…

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Also: I have a piece up at Joan’s Digest, an online feminist film journal. I wrote about a really lovely, fantastic film called Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Love, and I think many of you would love this movie! I wrote specifically about the role of costuming in the film, but the film’s larger themes of self-reliance and vocation in terms of women’s coming-of-age is so beautiful and resonant. See it if you can.