it's late and i'm tired and have to dry my hair and do dishes before bed. 

i just wanted to comment on one thing. it annoys me that it is somehow "uncool" to use the word feminist for a lot of people our age. 

and one other thing: i really like french stripes, especially on rosemary. maybe she will grace us with a photo of her amazingly gorgeous french striped tank. hmmmmmm. 

olivia. 

let's wear books instead of clothes.

i am trying to pack my bags for a weekend with my parents, my aunt, her friends, my parents' guests, my dog, the rest of new york city, arrgg. i find packing the most stressful thing. ever. i have managed to wipe off last night's mascara. i am basically just going to show up and if i don't have the appropriate clothing, because i really can't imagine being somewhere with different weather, then i'm going to just go shopping in my mother's closet. in my pile on my coffee table of "things to pack" there seems to be: michael ignatieff's book, a book section of the globe, my journal, my wallet, five pens, a small present for my mother, anne carson's autobiography of red (part of the homework i am giving my father, so that we can discuss it, and really, so that we can talk about anything anymore because i have eaten up that book with such delight that my feelings about tears, about monsters, about sex or about porches can't be separated from Geryon's existence), and, i suppose i should find my passport. AARRRGGG. 

goodbye toronto for a little bit, 

Olivia. 

pool party

doesn't this make you want to move to california?

from stylesightings, taken at a coachella party.

- rosemary

I love Sonia Rykiel so much - you must rush to my facebook profile this minute and click on the video I linked there of a mini interview of her. Sonia Rykiel is like Anne Carson to me at the moment, each of them remind me of something in my childhood like the taste of delicious shortbread and tea.

I went to Paris for the first time when I was seven and it was Christmastime. Paris is freeeezing and horrid in December, really, you start to ask yourself why you are there, the wind bores right through you and you don't even want to sit anywhere near the Seine, wait sit, no there is no "sitting" in December, no, you rush about, being gloomy, being grey, cursing your umbrella and getting drenched and feeling the cold like you never have before. Having grown up with Canadian winters (and Ottawa ones too) means absolutely nothing in the face of the Parisian damp cold. Eurch.

And then, there are hot chocolates. Near bookstores, real bookstores, magical and full of so many comic books. And there is a department store, or two, and at Christmas all the department stores fill their windows with enchanting scenes, and they are usually animated. There are little steps for the tiny ones to climb up and take a look, too.

My mother took us to Sonia Rykiel and stuffed me in a blue velvet dress with a red velvet hair band with a bow and my brother got a beige and brown stripped (of course) top and velvet pants for the Christmas season.

Like the porches in Autobiography of Red, like the way Iggy opens his book with an appeal to my emotions about my country, the Sonia Rykiel stripes conjure something magical in me, something little kid and fun, without trying hard or showing off, I never liked bullies or loud ones, and they simply say hello, in a beautiful street of Paris.

Paris, where it's more normal to be anxious and depressed than cheery, for goodness sake's the word "angoisse" permeates their literature. The French have so many words for a bad mood, it's beautiful. And the skies are a terrifying and stunning colour of grey. On a misty day the colour of the buildings changes, they become warmer, and the Panthéon is the most impressive, it doesn't look real at 7 AM on my way to a philosophy of law (i know) class, rushing out of the métro station, looking up at it, in its huge splendour, it looks 2D and a little bit ephemeral, like I could stick my kiddy hand through it.

- O

I think too much about characters. They hurt me. 

Sometimes I wish I could remove myself from words, then I could be a little more free. 

But then I suppose I don't need to wish things were otherwise. And I can live with characters, like Carson's Geryon, we can trudge on together. 

- Olivia. 

family ties.

my mother is way cooler than me because: she has a better eye for h&m than me, and emails me tips of cotton ribbed tshirts that she got for herself there, she offers to buy me underwear long distance, she sees philip seymour hoffman in central park, she has no time for movie reviews, she is my best friend, she tells me something and then says "there i just gave you a tip for a short story, now you better get writing, are you thinking about it yet? what about the story?" and, of course, it goes almost without saying, she makes fun of everyone. we went to a french restaurant for my birthday, but one that was so simple, not trying to be french, and so, without trying, felt a bit like paris if you pretended there weren't new yorkers arguing about. and all my mum said was "look! you're among your people!" awesome. 

love, 

O

happy belated last weekend

i'm not really into religious holidays.
sorry i've been AWOL, i just had a visit from my brother. and now i'm stuffing myself with cake & candy that my mom brought up.
here is a cute picture:

i think it is from the wild fox look book...??

we have been planning a photo shoot to produce a picture like this:

from the jak&jil blog.

so anyway, we need to get on this! i'm going to be the colorful one. what to wear, what to wear?

xo rosemary

someone wrote about me.

Sleeping Woman


Her book,
open and overturned like a small tent,
her glasses, her ashtray,
her exhaustion hanging in the room
like the shadows of a lamp she had forgotten to switch off
before she went to bed,
her green aspirin strip
with four pills missing,
our late night argument,
which ended in confusion and compassion
still hanging in the obscurity of this dawn
that will now pass
from darkness to the sun,
everything
brought her so suddenly to mind
that I could hardly believe
she was still asleep.

Mourid Barghouti

- Olivia

secrets to my success:

- pearl earrings. 

- ignoring my cell phone. 

- ignoring my mother's calls. 

- cursing very loud during voicemail messages left by said mother. 

- but replaying a good friend's funny message to do with beers just after to warm my heart. 

- thinking about thinking about babies. 

- oh and zara. 

- and perrier - to go next to my wine and to cure my hangover and because it's french. 

signed, 

Olivia. 

I don't like harem pants-- the lower the crotch, the worse they are if you ask me. They were getting big in Berlin around this time last year and I really didn't understand it. Of course it's not like we're really seeing any in Toronto yet, but blogs are always shoving them down my throat. My problem is, they look sooooo comfy! But no, I will not cave, no sir.

- Rosemary

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never 

been loyal.  

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, 

somehow -- the central heart that deals not

in words, traffics not with dreams, and is

untouched by time, by joy, by adversities. 

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at 

sunset, years before you were born. 

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about

yourself, authentic and surprising news of 

yourself. 

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the 

hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you

with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. 

- from Two English Poems, by Jorge Luis Borges (1934). 

hello! 

so it's easter saturday, and maybe you're still hungover from thursday evening's end of school celebrations like me. plus, today is a bit of a pain sandwiched in between good friday and easter sunday, i mean, there is loads of work to be done, there are miles to go before we sleep, we have to keep chugging away, but it's easter and i think it's a time to pause. i remember lots of easters before, i was usually dressed up as the easter bunny in a pink rabbit costume and i went around helping my mother organize easter egg hunts for the kiddies at my dad's office. (read: steal all the eggs before my brother could). easter strikes me as a time for adventure as the snow slowly says goodbye and there are blue bells on the lawn; running around my grandmother's backyard i remember thinking soon enough we will be in the pool! but then there was easter lunch or easter dinner, with an itchy dress that was "so cheery for spring sweetheart" ew. i was a tomboy. i had a dream last night about a boutique store in paris that sold only lego pieces. and the basic ones, no wings or missiles or palm trees, just the blocks in the basic colours and they were all divided by colour in a bookshelf it was all very clean and organized. i think that is what my heaven looks like: combo of a french person being rude to me in the shop (the guy running the store), lego, clean space, LEGO, and colour-coded organization. 

what i've been meaning to say is that if you're skipping your essays or being a heathen and escaping your religious reflections this easter, check out my good friend's art show: 

www.kingtrash.com has the details. 

- Olivia

oops my head hurts and feels like there are little mices scrambling at top speed to fit onto the wheels but the whole roller coaster is collapsing. 

in the meantime i cannot stop going to zara. obsessively. buying. returning. crying. obsessing. loving all the everything. 

no more syntax either. 

love, 

O 

color vs. black

Today I found this on the blog Rackk and Ruin, a little collage of off-duty models. I admire anyone who can put together a great all-black outfit (well, I admire anyone who can put together any great outfit), it is very cool. Unfortunately, I a) don't own enough black to do that, I don't think, and b) would feel like a fake.

THUS, (haha that is such a paper word, I've written far too many papers) I wear color. Daily. I like it, people say it suits me.


- rosemary

who do i love when i want to say "i miss you a whole heck of a lot right now"?

i don't know anything. i am in literary studies. that is a fact. and every class i am reminded how little i know, how huge the books are, how awesome they are, how tough they are, how painful they are, what a struggle the author went through to write them, how impressive they fucking are.

what a treat. what's worse is that there is more. the books, once you get past the menacing beast of intimidation (temporarily for it always rears its ugly head again), well, they are fun, they are silly, they are hilarious, they are sappy, even joyce is a sensationalist at times what the fuck. damn it that's so annoying. so we write on about them, we talk more about them without meaning to, it's just hard to walk past molly bloom's without wanting to discuss the female orgasm, it's just hard to think about a boy's arm muscles without hearing neruda tell me sweet nothings, it's just hard to oh my god it's just all a fucking pain.

without the pretensions of a perhaps more established (to be diplomatic) department, for we only have a vague sense of a community shelter that welcomes lost souls that is the literary studies program (how canadian, eh?), we are lucky to have this awful, terrible, discouraging and pathetic toil.

i cannot do anything. adam gopnik wrote that paris taught him to appreciate food and cooking a meal. after spending all day trying to write, which, even after submitting something, what do you really have after all, he accomplished something by cooking a meal. and that made all the difference.

i really like food. i do know that.

love,

Olivia

I spent the weekend with my brother and we had a lot of laughs. 

The result of the weekend goes as follows: 

If you're in a pizza place and this person orders just cheese on their pizza, you probably shouldn't be friends with them. 

Alas / excitingly, there is more where this came from. 

- Olivia

Rufus in the daffodils

I love Rufus and I love daffodils! Here is a portrait of Rufus, a bunch of daffodils, my grey woollen arm and some water. I love flowers, they are so friendly. And daffodils come around the time of early spring hatching, of April showers,  of snow at Easter (hurray!), of hot cross buns, and of family time. Their French name "jonquilles" delights me. As the days get longer inch by inch and I am sad for the change of season irks me - I have not had my fill of winter and it seems too long before I will see her again - the brilliant yellow of these simple flowers greets me and gently welcomes me in and offers to act as my guide as we descend to the hot weather. 

- Olivia

Yesterday some of us crammed onto a school bus full of children to go out to a farm for sugaring. It was a really fun day, except I was bushed after and didn't do any work, but on the way there My German and I talked about Germany/Berlin a lot and probably annoyed everyone. Or just sounded really tedious. And now I miss Berlin and once again am very torn about where I should end up, geographically speaking.

(picture links to a Swedish blog with lots of great pictures.)

- rosemary

MObama vs. Bruni

Yummy favorite New York Magazine is following the fashion battle that is going down today: Michelle Obama vs. Carla Bruni. Click on the link to read their awesome tally of the events so far (this is apparently going to continue on throughout lunch).


The fashion battle itself is pretty close, though you have to have to MUST give Michelle props for wearing that jazzy print. And Carla definitely loses for the flats. But in this picture of the four of them, the Frenchies are getting their asses kicked! Barack steals the show and they look aaawesome.

UPDATE: the Times UK also has a story about this, with a great photo.

- Rosemary

sorry what?

Olivia, what is a zoomer?
I checked on urban dictionary but with no conclusive answer.

- RM

and yes i do yoga. i am a yuppie. i also drink green tea and listen to 96.3 classical radio. i know what a zoomer means. that is a problem. i sometimes listen to diana krall and pour myself a stiff drink. oh well. 

- O. 

drastic!

today, on my way to yoga, sleepy, in the grey drizzle, from the front field or whatever in front of university college is called, i had to stop in my tracks, and i was late already, i know it's sounding bad already: i saw the CN tower and i thought "oh it looks pretty." 

i need my head checked. i am supposed to be a toronto-hating-ottawa-native who only came here to study and be miserable and whose heart belongs up the gatineau on a lake or on an icy pitch. 

(maybe i like this place, it's so unexpected. there's a term in french "se poser" and i feel like i want to pose myself here for a bit). 

- Olivia