Magic

Braid your hair. Chalk the sidewalk with Mr. Sun and colour blocks. Jump rope. Carve soap. Clean behind your ears and get 170% of your daily Vitamin C. Eat oatmeal raisin cookies. Replace the bronzer with catnaps in the sunshine. Wear too much blush. Party with pinatas. Finish the greens on your plate first. Put on your helmet. Double on bike rides to the outskirts of the city. Make messy piles of pretty clothes in your room. Frame pictures your friends have drawn for you and hang them on your walls. Invest in a good set of pencil crayons. Go to travel agencies and take brochures for exotic places (then sit cross-legged on your best friend's bed all night and tell each other stories about what you would do if you lived there). Get a dress-up box. Put stickers of flowers on everything you own. Say 'please', 'thank you' and 'good morning' to strangers on the street on Sundays.

I don't care what he says, because if being five years old on the inside feels this good then I'm pretty cool with never growing up.

I'm always losing to win.

Aren't you so pleased with yourself, being out every night
with drugs and chalked love on the sidewalks outside
rejecting cabs that pass by?

Do you want to play dress up and mess up my room?
Do you want to lie down but put a line down instead?
Do you want clear skin and clean hair, not an ounce of waste anywhere?
Do you want tiny reminders to remember you were there?
Red and orange paints,
sleep all days,
dead phone calls,
new-old sweaters
fur hats and panic attacks?

What do you want?

All I can give you is
all the same words
on all the same days
stranger than the ones that came before them
and likely no stranger than the ones that await.

The Girl in the Dirty Shirt.

Old favourite Oasis songs and these ridiculously pretty Christophe Kutner photographs (which, FYI, are making me a little nostalgic for my uber-blonde hair) make uneventful Wednesdays far more enjoyable than they would be otherwise. Can this week just be over yet?

If I may be so bold that I just say something

come and make me my day.

The clouds around your soul don't gather there for nothing

but I could chase them all away

Why'd you need a reason for to feel happy?

Or be shining for the rest of the world?

Give me just a smile, and would you make it snappy?

Get your shit together, girl.

You've got a feeling lost inside it just won't let you go.

Your life is sneaking up behind it just won't let you go.

No, it just won't let you go.

Here's what I'm trying to say...

Is would you maybe come dance here with me?

Because to me it doesn't matter if your hopes and dreams are shattered.

When she says something, she'll make me believe

In the girl who wears a dirty shirt

She knows exactly what she's worth to me.

If you ever find yourself inside a bubble,

you've got to make your own way home.

But you can call me anytime you're seeing double.

Now you know you're not alone.

You've got a feeling lost inside it just won't let you go.
Your life is sneaking up behind it just won't let you go.
No, it just won't let you go.
Here's what I'm trying to say...

Is would you maybe come dance here with me?
Cos to me it doesn't matter if your hopes and dreams are shattered.
When she says something, she'll make me believe
In the girl who wears a dirty shirt
She knows exactly what she's worth to me.
And now I see.

What dreaming used to be.

Snow White.

Between the pages we've colored of fairy tales (that we've known for a long time are not and never will be true), she asks me if it's the prince who will kiss you when you're already dead that's the one worth waiting for. Dead, in the glass coffin that those who have loved you built, and he'll have enough life in him and love in him to save you both. She knows I don't know the answers either, so all I can offer is "don't build the glass coffin in nights upon nights of convincing yourself that the prince who has no life left in him is worth it. Princes with nothing to give to even themselves...your half-dead self won't be able to save them."

But then, I think another thought and it's down the rabbit hole again, spilling onto the pages as another drink spills soundlessly in the kitchen.

What kind of a prince is the one who wants you when you're dead? You're nothing but doll parts to him, to his kiss, when there's nothing left of you to begin with. And that's exactly why he loved you, didn't you know it all along? When you had no needs, all he needed was you.

So April showers will surely bring something in May, but what? We're not yet sure. For the time being we've got gloomy days of wearing glasses with blurry gazes at smoke stacks, photographs, pockets jingling with change and the change in the weather which has come so soon. We've got empty e-mails that mean more than millions of words. We've got last night's words about beautiful bed frames and driving out of this city in cars that we don't own, with licenses that we don't have. Visa debts, work visas to get, and scuzzy Los Angeleno sunsets playing out of our stereo with daydreams of surfboards and drugs we haven't done yet.

And we've got the sense that maybe neither prince is very good at all.

I Think I'm In Love.

Nah, this post's title isn't a reference to a Spiritualized song (for once), it's about this goddamn Marni collection that is quite literally making my brain implode with awesomeness. It's wearable yet cerebral, playful and profesh, luxury for the slightly loopy at its absolute best. I thought I was 'over' fashion, what with having recently disbanded Thee Fashion Blog That Shall Not Be Named, but Consuelo Castiglioni has quickly changed my mind on the matter and deftly weaseled the love for colour, proportion and sky-high platform shoes back into my cold, black, 5-outfit-redundant heart as of late.

The woman of the venerable Italian house's Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection is, in my mind, the lovechild of Margot Tenenbaum (kohl-eyed, scrawny-armed former prodigy with a depressive streak from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums) and Howard Roark (sexy power-tripping genius architect from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead). Marni's marriage of Roark's egomaniacal intelligence and Margot's fabulously eccentric heiress shtick basically renders me speechless, and wanting nothing more than to be this Roark-Margot hybrid with a wardrobe filled with nothing but the following outfits...in my brilliant skyscraper penthouse, of course.

This one below would be for lazy Sunday shopping; I would totally pick up a box of chai tea, a brick of Camembert, some graphing pencils and a carton of Marlboro Reds in this splendid mish-mash of an outfit. I've no doubt my Cantonese convenience store clerk would be a fan of the jaunty hat.

I would wear this next one when taking public transit. Because even though my father is a massively loaded architect and my mom is a playwright heiress mess, I still like to keep it real and tell my driver to fuck off every once in a while. The massive workman gloves seem awfully functional re: poor people germs, as does the breastplate-like beaded vest thing (seriously though, what would you call that thing?) But I digress.

A navy blue fur coat is obviously one of the most badass articles of clothing one could possess, and as such this ensemble would naturally adorn me while conducting my daily badass activities, whatever those may be.

The cape hearkens back to a time when men were chivalrous and women were ladylike and people actually gave a shit about what they looked like before they walked out the front door in the morning; in sloppy modernity, however, the cape-wearing individual has, by and large, been relegated to something of a crazy person. But no matter, because this is exactly what I would want to be wearing while taking a stroll down Fifth Avenue with my pet pig on my way to hot yoga.

The jacquard overcoat, printed knees socks and outrageously high open-toed wedge sandals are obviously perfect for attending my Thursday afternoon Sartrean Existentialism class at NYU, and having coffee and a heated debate about the true beneficiary in Wagner and Nietzsche's friendship with my dashing T.A. on a nearby park bench afterwards. Obviously.

The perfect party dress for when my attendance is required at yet another dreadfully boring Saturday evening gala. The jeweled bib-front is questionable/quirky enough to pique the curiosity of the more conservative individuals in my socio-economic strata, but inoffensive/expensive enough to keep their comments at bay. Also, it's sexy without being restrictive in such a way that would make climbing into the town car difficult after a few too many bottles of champers, the importance of which is not to be minimized.