wednesday wisdom.

Be pretty if you are, be witty if you can,

but be cheerful if it kills you.

Carved into the chimney brick at my Welsh professor's house. Took it as my personal mantra for Summer 2008. Three a.m. departures? Cobblestoned sleepovers? That slug in Andrea's ice cream? nbd.

The somewhat pathetic paper-cut a la Rob Ryan is my small tribute to No. 6 Strathnairn Street, my Cardiff flat way back when. Definitely a product of the five-in-the-morning portion of my Essential E deadline sprint.

when you go:

1. Write a novel on a napkin at The Elephant House. Keep a lookout for Bertie on Scotland Street. Feel your familial bones break for the beauty of crag and moor.

2. Run a morning mile along Hadrian's Wall. Return at sunset. Believe in time travel.

3. Play 1, 2, 3, He's Yours in Oxford. If bored of natty boys on bicycles, reevaluate your sanity--and if still not convinced of the power in a particularly dapper suspenders/bowtie combo (who are you?!), take in an afternoon of the Ashmolean before finishing off a book at the Bodleian.

4. Make a scavenger hunt of the blue history plates in London. Spend an afternoon with Sir John Soane. Ask the doorman if it's possible to live at the NPG.

5. Head home to Cardiff. Read Under Milk Wood on the walk to Castell Coch. Take the family out for some Monday night music at Y Mochyn Du. Visit the Doctor.

6. Order sticky toffee pudding at Seend's Barge Inn. Fall a little bit in love with the waiter. (If it's meant to be, it will be.)

7. Wade out to St. Michael's Mount. Follow the Grail trail to Tintagel. Send a letter from Land's End.

dare disturb the universe.

a few of my favorite things: 

stars and stories about stars, planetariums, charts celestial, telescopes, constellations, the southern cross, magellanic clouds, summer nights and winter nights and also autumn and spring, the deep navy black of dark mountain midnights, that translucent turquoise along the night sealine, watching stars with the one you love, feeling the earth move, the mystical moist night-air, the first star, the second star to the right, written in the stars and star-crossed lovers, starry-eyed.

foxes and folklore about foxes, the tail of it, llwynog from llwyn, reynards and vixens and kits and fuxs, all in a skulk or a troop or an earth. in Mali they are the trickster gods of the desert, chaos incarnate, and in Peru they are mind-fighting warriors and in China they have nine tails and did you know, the word shenanigan is considered to be derived from the Irish sionnachuighim, I play the fox. red foxes, kit foxes, fleet foxes and meine gedanken sind wo die Fuchs und Hase gute nacht sagen geblieben.

also, modernists; particularly poets, cummings and eliot and thomas and pound plus whitman and sylvia and edna, too. (sun moon stars rain)

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Yet another page from The Essential E: A Pocket Guide.

daily.

In my backpack, besides the necessary textbooks and occasional laptop, extant of the obligative pencil case and always wallet, I carry with me:

+  two Pilot P-500 pens, extra-fine, back-up in case my other three Pilot P-500s fail me or in the event Staples decides to discontinue (again) stocking the Only True Pen in the Known Universe, a fact that I know because you don't just spend half of your high school life testing ink fluidities and line variations for nothing.

+  a pack of post-its, the small half-size sort, orange--which is unfortunate because I prefer the classic yellow or neon pink if absolutely imperative, but these were given as a gift and so I have to use them but mostly they look worn and warped and weary of two months travel in the front pocket without much play (yes, people gift me post-its).

+  four bobby pins, the usual black but actually quite miraculous seeing as with four bobby pins you can twist any amount of hair up into the perfect party bun, which is not only the latest Parisian trick but the answer to every bad hair day you've ever had.

+  two safety pins, the genesis of which I question but imagine will be a smart thing to have eventually.

+  a red pocket-size Moleskine, college-ruled, in which I write ideas when they strike (occasionally this actually happens) or notes on gathering the universe, like "Ernesto Miranda was killed in a knife fight. Police used a Miranda card from Miranda's own pocket to read his killer's rights." And "The first typewriter was called a 'literary piano.'" Or "What if you had a dramaturgue for your own life?" Which is a good question, because who doesn't want someone exploring and researching and understanding all the ins and outs and throughs of what makes something work and succeed and shine?

+  my Oyster card for the London Underground. In case of emergency.

+  Burt's Bees beeswax lip balm, classic Vitamin E + Peppermint because nothing else is ever so minty-fresh and moisturizing (do you hate that word as much as I do?), and also kissable because you just never know (really, you don't).

meet the family.

(2) parents (3) siblings (1) dog (1) cat

steve+susan, elizabeth olivia naomi daniel, truly, mr. knightley

(respectively)

Also there are rabbits and once there were chickens, plus gerbils I DID NOT KILL, DAD, and in New Zealand there were Max + Rupert, two sheep that snorted willow leaf in the paddock around from the dove cote where one time there was a rogue pigeon that we tried to catch ourselves with cardboard boxes and such but in the end we just called a bird whisperer and that was a whole lot faster.

doing, did, done.

Other than those three days spent with and without a voice, dreaming in fevers, and wondering if it's possible to overdose on cough drops, most of my week was that mad culmination of major projects hitting deadline and the subsequent all-nighters. The Essential E was one such project, my response to a midterm prompt asking for a visual autobiography in my Rhetoric + Design class. Three weeks of thumbnails and paper-piecing, one serious-sketch mock-up and a straight thirty-six hours later . . . et le voilà. Plan on a page-by-page in the days to come, but for now: sleep. Is such a good idea.