ma soeur le missionnaire.

Exactly one week ago today my sister Olivia embarked on an eighteen-month assignment to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the France Paris Mission. We'll be posting her weekly reports home over on her blog, and I think you should read it not only because she is my best friend and I'm biased, but because she's also one of the wisest women I know. Her capacity for soul-swelling insight has been a refuge to me my whole life long, a constant reserve of bon mot and savoir faire that never fails to shape and move me. The people of Paris are the luckiest. 

The whole year and a half thing can some mornings feel far too long and more than I'd like, but I'm glad and grateful for this weekly dose of wisdom that is if anything only magnified by her work and calling. 

http://soeur-rhondeau.blogspot.com

On Sunday I went to watch  talk that Elder Bednar gave entitled The Character of Christ. He said that the defining element of Christ's character is that in the midst of struggle, while most people would turn in, Christ turns out. He turns out in compassion and love even when things are tough. This is now going to be a lifetime goal for me—to turn out, when we have the tendency to want to turn in. To help others and focus on the good. Learning about Christ and how to be like him is such a privilege and I need to remember that and really take what I have learned and make it real. Life is all about turning—changing, and turning to goodness and truth and God in order to become better, so that we can better love others.

city of superlatives.

If you know me in real life, you know I'm an easy read. My face is all-access emotion; I live near the surface, if I feel anything beyond the earliest morning's apathy, you'll see it. So it's a really good thing that I only ever had to lie over the phone last week, that when John said see you in ten I replied yes thank goodness can't wait and he couldn't tell I was counting hours, not days. Because there's nothing quite like catching a red-eye and showing up in New York that very next morning. 

He was speechless, as in words no sentence putting together cannot. It was the best thing I've ever done, at least until the rest of the weekend happened—and as for that, I'm still searching for synonyms that go beyond magic. The only thing better than those four days? He's coming home today. As we speak, on a plane, coming. home.

Oh yeah. World: meet the boy I love. Boy I love: world. Good. Okay. Here we go.

1. red-eye sunrise from 17F. 2. the text I sent at 7:15 that morning.

3. bagels for breakfast at a bench on broadway. 4. recreating childhood photos.

5. this storm got the better of us. and by better, I mean best.

6/7. columbia campus tour with my fave alum. 8. taking one for the team at magnolia bakery.

9. learned all about automats at the NYPL's current lunch hour exhibit, which besides being so superbly well done made me a) want to be Doris Day in That Touch of Mink, b) consider a future kitchen with a wall of automat options, and c) hum this all day long.

10/11. library lions, NY state motto. stole it for my own. 12/13. favorites from the met.

14. secretly I only walk through the greek and roman rooms to steal ideas for my jewelry box. I am a gold girl and nobody does signet rings like the ancients.

15/16/17. top of the met. 18/19. sunday in the park with john. 20/21/22. subway shots

23. from the airtrain, which makes me feel probably irrationally futuristic but I'll save that spiel for the ode I will someday write to public transportation, my true city love.

24/25. final portraits from the same time zone; on the streets and JFK.

PS: this blog's been the slow boat to china of late; 

find me on instagram for the everyday-up-to-date.

xoxo E.

a star chart for saturday.

tonight's sky in full size HERE.

bow ties are cool.
THIRTY DAY DRAW 8/30 // FAVOURITE TV SHOW

So the prompt here was favorite animated character, and we should probably talk about this because I'm not sure about favorite, but Maid Marian was certainly the first to come to mind—Disney's Maid Marian, that is, because when I was little I thought she was hands down the prettiest thing on four paws, plus she played badminton, and then Robin Hood slipped that posey promise ring on her finger and I was confident there had never been a better love story, in Nottingham or otherwise. Are you singing along at this point? Love, it seems like only yesterday . . .

But I'm not all into the cartoon scene anyhow, so favorite's a bit strong. There's a whole handful in the Disney drawer: Anita Dearly, Belle, Rajah, that girl who Mowgli falls in love with. 

Still. That's just Disney. And Disney is great, but then there's Samurai Jack. For Samurai Jack, I have no words. In fact, some episodes don't have words. Which is what I'm trying to say here—this show went so beyond animated I hesitate to even put it in this category. Samurai Jack is more a study in cinematography; the animation itself is super simple, but if you take a step back and consider what the series would look like in live action, there are few that could match it in artistic sense. Then there's the storytelling and the styling and the soundtrack. No wonder they cancelled it. What else do the networks ever do with the best of television?

If you've no idea what I'm on about, repent. Then reclaim your childhood and talk to me. May or may not own the entire series.

True story: I fell asleep typing this. And now it's seven a.m. But since this post passed the point of no return long ago, let's go back to Robin real quick and take a minute to appreciate that this happened.

Hey. Saturday morning, y'all. Go watch some cartoons.

PENELOPE'S THEME // NATHAN JOHNSON

favorite movie (one of) // this music is love // not to mention: adrien brody

and I dream about that coat. perfect film is perfect.

FULL SIZE HERE

FAVORITE BOOK: 

I'll read anything by a Russian, dead ones especially. Sure, some people write prettier. Most at least write far more succinctly. But when it comes to raw humanity—that scope of life from gore to glory—there's no comparison.

Thirty years before The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky was arrested together with other members of the Petrashevsky Circle and sentenced to death. After eight months in prison, Dostoevsky was taken out to what he thought would be his execution—only to have the order reprieved at the very last second, blindfolds already tightened, guns at the ready. Instead, Dostoevsky was assigned to four years of hard labor in Siberia, and in a later letter to his brother described the day's turn of events and his new sentence. He wrote what I often feel after reading his writing:

Brother, I'm not depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter—this is what life is, herein lies the task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered my flesh and blood . . . Never until now have such rich and healthy stores of spiritual life throbbed in me.

I loved Dostoevsky first for his words (one commentator remarked that The Brothers Karamazov "seems to have swallowed a small library"). I still love those words, but more now for what they combine to mean: I love Dostoevsky for his grace and his hope, his understanding of both the redemptive quality to suffering and the incomparable experience of life despite all the darkness and doubt and the downright depravity. Like I said, raw humanity. No one does it better.