peruse: sharks' teeth

 

Sharks' Teeth

Kay Ryan

Everything contains some   

silence. Noise gets

its zest from the

small shark's-tooth

shaped fragments

of rest angled

in it. An hour   

of city holds maybe   

a minute of these   

remnants of a time   

when silence reigned,   

compact and dangerous   

as a shark. Sometimes   

a bit of a tail   

or fin can still   

be sensed in parks.

[photo via marinha | words via poetry magazine]

peruse: your inner french girl, part deux

After posting this excerpt, I spent this perfect Sunday in a park quickly devouring Debra Ollivier's Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl.

“The French girl luxuriates in her free time and fills it intelligently. The TV is hardly on and house-cleaning is rarely high on her nonexistent to-do list. She has museums to tour, galleries to visit, books to read, films to see, antiques to hunt, parks to stroll, gardens to grow, friends to meet and great, sumptuous meals to eat.”

“Find your center and live there. Resist the pressure to be someone you’re not; instead, focus on fully developing who you are. Don’t get thrown off course by the prevailing winds of trend. Engage in real, in-the-moment pleasure, not mindless entertainment. Feed your mind. Cultivate impressions and opinions. Know what you think.”

I'm hoping that some of this wonderful wisdom will soak into my being so that I can exude an ounce of the qualities that give the French woman that je ne sais quoi.

Ollivier also references a laundry list of films and books that I will be adding to my Netflix queue (those that I haven’t seen…) and my Amazon wishlist:

Films:

La Double Vie de Veronique (The Double Life of Veronique)

Trop Belle Pour Toi (Too Beautiful for You)

8 Femmes (8 Women)

La Femme Nikita

Amelie

Venus Beaute Institut

Happenstance

Contes de Quatre Saisons (Tales of the Four Seasons)

Entre Nous

Un Dimanche a la Campagne (A Sunday in the Country)

Jules et Jim

Le Bonheur

Milou e Mai (May Fools)

Babette’s Feast

Chocolat

Ridicule

Cousin/Cousine

Ma Saison Preferee (My Favorite Season)

Red

White

Blue

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)

Un Homme et une Femme (A Man and a Woman)

Books:

French Ways and Their Meaning – Edith Wharton

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

Le Divorce – Diae Johnson

Marie Antoinette: the Journey – Antonia Fraser

Passion Simple – Annie Eranux

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris – AJ Liebling

The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris – Patricia Wells

Mastering the Art of French Cooking – Julia Child

The Wine Bible – Karen MacNeil

The Cheese Plate – Max McCalman

At Home in France: Eating and Entertaining with the French – Christopher Petkanas

The Faneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris – Edmund White

Elle Décor: The Grand Book of French Style – Francois Baudot

The Fragrant Year – Claire Louise Hunt

A Well Kept Home: Household Traditions and Simple Secrets from a French Grandmother – Laura Fronly

Practicalities – Marguerite Duras

The Castle of Pictures and Other Stories: A Grandmother’s Tales – George Sand

Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan

[image found here]

peruse: your inner french girl

"If she can’t afford it, she won’t buy it. If it doesn’t fit (or make her feel good, or flaunt what she’s got), she won’t wear it. If she can’t find it, she won’t compromise. If she loves it, she won’t toss it. She reuses it, rethinks it, lets it age.

When a French girl shops, it isn’t a solitary act of buying something new. It’s part of a lifelong process of editing her environment, making small but meaningful additions to her home, her closet, her life.

When you shop like a French girl, you buy only one of anything – and make sure it’s the best quality you can afford."

Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl


[image wit + delight via pinterest]

peruse: matchbook mag

 i need to get myself to paris...

[image via matchbook mag]

peruse: an object of beauty

"[art is] what lies between our dreams and reality." 

one of my resolutions for 2011 was to read more, so with that my first book of the year was steve martin's an object of beauty. as this review suggests, the novel really did kindle the collector's instinct in me.

[image via nytimes]