DANCING WITH WOLVES

AnOther Magazine F/W 2006 by Venetia Scott

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:47:41 -0400

AnOther Magazine F/W 2006 by Venetia Scott

secret sauna in the woods… stillness and sage, silence and...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:49:02 -0400

secret sauna in the woods… stillness and sage, silence and steam.

move into the woods in the middle of winter, part I

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:44:00 -0400

1. Leave your friends in the city. Rent a cabin deep in the woods down a dirt road that curls and winds like smoke. Your closest neighbors will be basket-weavers who own two pigs named Thanksgiving and Christmas. Their house is over a mile away.

2. The day you move in, a cold white skin covers the ground and the sky burns Indian blue. You are overtaken with a kind of naive nameless excitement.

3. Weeks go by and you experience countless dark nights and sunless mornings vacant of human contact. Have a potluck with friends on a rug next to your wood stove. It will be a feast: homemade rosemary biscuits, hummus, curry lentil soup, quinoa and kale salad. Light candles and pass a bottle of whiskey around the circle, telling stories freckled with nostalgia. Realize that when you have good friends, you have everything. On this night, you’ll have everything.

4. If you think you have enough wine at home, buy more. Snow comes without warning. So does loneliness.

5. On Valentine’s Day, drive through flurries to buy bar-b-que and a bottle of rum. Sit on your cold wood floor in your underwear. Smoke a cigarette. It is your best Valentine’s Day yet.

6. Do not let yourself get sentimental about your discarded skins. Put them in jars and turn your back. Grow quickly.

7. Your google searches will include “how hot is too hot for a wood stove,” and “how to stop a fire in a wood stove,” and “what do i do if i think i’m about to have a chimney fire.” Your paranoia will be exhausting. Wake up one night in late February to the sound of shrieking and wailing. Be convinced a band of cannibals have escaped the pages of a McCarthy novel and are walking up your driveway. Acknowledge and begin to accept the end of the world. Turn on your front porch light and move the window curtain aside to see three coyotes stalking your front yard. When you fall back asleep, you will dream of hairy half-men-half-animals with long whip-like tails living up in the trees behind your house, swinging from limb to limb like monkeys.

8. Two months in, become resentful. Feel anguish. The overwhelming, awful and hellish loneliness will literally be sickening. Hate knowing the local grocery store employees by name. Hate going out to your wood pile to get more kindling when it’s below 20 degrees. Hate the sound of nothing. Play your music as loud as possible to offend the silence. Hate not being able to watch scary movies. Hate when songs or people or poems or articles talk romantically about heading into the hills and hiding in the mountains. Hate thinking about how YOU used to talk that way. Hate being stranded inside on snowy weekends and miss trashy television, oh god, miss television and become sick of being single and independent and so fucking ALONE and want to want to go out dancing and have sex with someone you just met and god damn it just TALK to other people. Hate the effort of making a fucking fire every time you come back home and then stroking it and banking it and opening the flue and closing the flue and just want to be able to flip on some damn electric heaters. Hate not being able to hear a single thing except a stream when you walk outside when someone from out of town visits you and says, “You live in a retreat. People pay money to spend a week in a place like this,” all you want to yell back is, “YEAH, BUT NO ONE WANTS TO LIVE IN A RETREAT PERMANENTLY.” Hate how saying this makes you feel guilty.

9. A new lover will come to visit. Together you will drink Bird Dog blackberry whiskey and say Spanish prayers as you light a candelabra from Mexico and salt each doorway, wishing ghosts farewell. You will smoke cigarettes on the front porch and it will begin to snow. Back inside you’ll talk about Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez and he’ll say that one of the best things in this world is the sound of a ukulele in the “C” chord and you’ll want to kiss him.

10. See sprouts coming up in your vegetable garden, like little bright green inch worms. Notice days become longer, mornings warmer. A familiar smell fills the air. Feel the promise and the ache of a new season.

11. Something inside you stops. Something begins.

—GRACE REFF—

Photo

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:23:15 -0500

"In 2013, I’d like to do better at balancing my need for solitude (essential for writing) and my need..."

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:07:51 -0500

““In 2013, I’d like to do better at balancing my need for solitude (essential for writing) and my need for companionship (essential for the psyche). For the past two years, I spent more time alone than is healthy. It was good for my work—I wouldn’t have finished my novel if I hadn’t turned down all those social invitations—but the loneliness led to despair. I need lots of head space for writing, not just during the daylight hours when I’m composing at my desk, but at night, when I’m mulling over character choices and plot details. But I also need to spend more time with people, especially the ones that know me well enough to understand when I need to be by myself.””

- Elliot Holt (You Are One of Them)

"But curiosity without direction can be a taxing and ultimately unproductive endeavor. Choice is how..."

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:34:22 -0500

“But curiosity without direction can be a taxing and ultimately unproductive endeavor. Choice is how we tame and channel and direct our curiosity, where we choose to allocate our time and energy, and ultimately, what we choose to pay attention to.”

- Maria Popova

jennilee: klaus rinke

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:29:32 -0500

jennilee:

klaus rinke

untitled on Flickr.

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:10:02 -0500

untitled on Flickr.

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:23:29 -0500

untitled on Flickr.

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:37:11 -0500

untitled on Flickr.

peachbee: onyxearth

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:32:56 -0500

peachbee:

onyxearth

Ólafur Arnalds - Near Light (Living Room Songs) (by Ólafur...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:28:43 -0500

Ólafur Arnalds - Near Light (Living Room Songs) (by Ólafur Arnalds)

"Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people..."

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:14:12 -0500

““Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people cannot be fixed, because they should not be fixed. You’re aboard a ship setting sail, and the other person has joined the inland circus, or is boarding a different ship, and you just can’t be with each other anymore. Because you shouldn’t be.””

- C. JoyBell C.

nhmcelroy: (via OPS)

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 08:33:34 -0500

nhmcelroy:

(via OPS)

"A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith..."

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:20:30 -0500

“A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and moods, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people.”

- John Steinbeck (via theweightof)

Adam Gnade: THE DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE TO FIGHTING THE BIG MOTHERFUCKIN' SAD

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 17:36:52 -0500

Adam Gnade: THE DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE TO FIGHTING THE BIG MOTHERFUCKIN' SAD:

gnade:

This is an excerpt from my zine The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad. You can get that at Microcosm Distribution here.

I GOT SOME FRIENDS WHO
1) have seen the world because they goddamn wanted to; because their will was that strong.
2) are living their dream…

(horizoncatcher)

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:59:41 -0400

(horizoncatcher)

efedra: Les encastrés, 2005 by Agnès Geoffray

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:08:07 -0400

efedra:

Les encastrés, 2005 by Agnès Geoffray

meganmcisaac: “I look at my yesterdays for months past, and...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:43:42 -0400

meganmcisaac:

“I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all. The hours that made them were good, and so were the moments that made the hours. I have had responsibilities and work, dangers and pleasure, good friends, and a world without walls to live in. These things I still have, I remind myself— and shall have until I leave them.”

- beryl markham, west with the night.
i highly recommend this book if you’re seeking a good read…

sfmoma: “A Brief History of John Baldessari” The epic life of...

Wed, 30 May 2012 19:39:09 -0400

sfmoma:

“A Brief History of John Baldessari”

The epic life of a world-class artist, jammed into six minutes. Narrated by Tom Waits.

Commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” honoring John Baldessari and Clint Eastwood.

If you watch anything this afternoon, let it be this.