Archive for the ‘photos’ Category
christmas. three things.
that catherine girl. and the abbey.
Whenever anyone mentions Westminster Abbey around Steph she gets all crazy-eyed and shouts out LONGSHANKS! It has to do with her obsession with William Wallace and a kind of temporary Tourette’s.
London is a pretty camera-friendly place, but there’s no photographs allowed inside the Abbey. Unless you’re Steph. She’s a bit of a ninja and can sneak a shot anywhere. I think she might be posting some of them on facebook tonight, in honor of Whats-His-Face and that Catherine girl and how they’re getting married there tomorrow.
The Euro and I have decided to get up at 5:30 in the morning for a slap up British breakfast. Since Katie Couric and those lot are a bit annoying, we’ll be watching the BBC stream the nuptials. The best part…we’ve even got in some lovely chocolate HobNobs in honour of the royal wedding cake.
jane eyre, the movie. and this silly limited release.
Jane (Mia Wasikowska) and Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender)I am, quite frankly, aghast that the movie Jane Eyre is only on limited release – 300 theatres nationwide, or something ridiculous like that. I never was much a fan of Jane Austen. I read her entire library in middle school, because that’s what you do when you’re a teenage girl obsessed with all things British. But I never rated her (Colin Firth notwithstanding). Not the way I did the Bronte girls. I thought Anne a better writer than Emily, even though I had a teenage crush on Wuthering Heights. But it was Jane Eyre that I fell so passionately in love with. Flynn and I saw the film separately over the weekend and we both agree, it’s wondrous. The novel itself is just under 400 pages, so it’s probably no surprise that a moment or two in the film seemed rushed. But these bits were brief because the actors were so compelling and believable in their passion and reserve. Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska are perfect as Rochester and Jane. Throw in Jamie Bell and Dame Judi Dench and …. you get a limited release.
Makes absolutely no sense.
If you can find a cinema showing it, you really need to get out and watch it. If you can’t, then beg for it. In the meantime, some Bronte inspired photos for your viewing pleasure.
West Yorkshire Countryside
West Yorkshire Countryside
Charlotte Bronte’s Manchester lodgings, where she began writing Jane Eyre.
The new 2005 sign reads: In 1846 the Reverend Patrick Bronte came to Manchester for cataract surgery accompanied by his daughter Charlotte. They took lodgings at 59 Boundary Street West (formerly known as 83 Mount Pleasant). It was here that Charlotte began to write her first successful novel, Jane Eyre.
The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire
The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire
The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire
The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire
Path leading from the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, to the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels
Clergy Daughter’s School attended by the Bronte sisters.
Clergy Daughter’s School attended by the Bronte sisters.
a sort of harem
The Euro spent some one-on-one time with his folks back in the autumn and I’ve just gotten around to downloading the photos from his trip. One of the things I love about the man is this: the way he loves books. One of his prize possessions is a copy of the Apocrypha printed in Italy in 1681 – bought at auction back in 2004 – and a beautifully illustrated Book of Knowledge that hit the presses in the North of England in 1764. My own collection isn’t as illustrious. A first edition Artemus Ward, signed by the man himself, which I bought at my favorite Oxfam Bookstore on Marylebone in London. A superbly old and beautifully preserved novel by Mark Twain, compliments My Darling Steph. And a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, circa 1934, without its dust jacket, sadly, found laying in a nondescript antiques store in North Carolina for a mere eight dollars.
van lear, baby.
Buffy: Do you have weekends off? I want to visit soon. I need a muse. If I don’t get these revisions finished by my birthday, I’m cutting off my ear.
Flynn: Yes! Every weekend off, and after the first week of May I’m free and easy, baby. PLEASE COME. Together we will find the cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler.
Buffy: Can we really find the cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler?
Flynn: We can! And her brother will give us a tour for five bucks.
Buffy: This is why I love you. And your awesome taste in footwear.
(P.S. I stole these photos from a Man Named Max. He does clever things with microphones.)
disparate images. didion.
Mother on the Moors
Sandburg’s Sink
Brethren Baby
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy; will lead the children into the sea. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. – Joan Didion
i’m asleep. that’s what i am.
“I’m asleep. That’s what I am. I’m always asleep.”
My grandmother has dementia. I spend my weekends with her. On Sunday she had a pensive moment and when I asked her if she was ok she said “I’m asleep. That’s what I am. I’m always asleep.”
She looked so sad and so done with caring, it broke my heart.
My grandfather, a stoic man, saw it and saw me reacting badly to it and sat down beside her and took her hand in his and this is what he said:
“You know, when you love somebody it don’t get old and fade away when you do, or when things change. I love her more now than I ever have. I fell in love with this little girl the first time I laid eyes on her. I was twelve years old and if you would have told me then that I’d ever love anybody more, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I do. I love her more. Now. And that’s the truth.”
I cried. Because that’s just what I do.
bunny and poodle
When we were young we used to write letters to one another from aboard Venetian gondolas and beneath Cambodian crypts. Flamboyant and fabulous. All the places we will be from.
On Thursday, this arrived in the post.
Hang in there, yeah?
and in the end, despair
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” – C.S. Lewis
Yesterday was the first day I ever thought it. Something horrible.
She knew. She must have known.
We never spoke about it. Just didn’t seem the thing. Out of respect? That’s what we told ourselves. Denial? Some of us did that too. We never said its name.
But maybe she wanted to. Maybe she needed to. Maybe we were the ones who couldn’t cope so we told ourselves she couldn’t either.
Where’s the comfort in that?
