Write Up My Alley.

Have you ever opened a book, or even an e-mail, and discovered it to have been written by a soul-sister, walking the earth in some distant place or time?

Aren't those glorious moments?

Finding a friend through the written word- someone with whom you may never share a single word of correspondence, but into whose thoughts you briefly step to tread among them and think, "So maybe I'm not quite so alone in the world, after all."

Most notably in my life? Discovering L.M.Montgomery's wonderful Avonlea as a child.

My roommate started reading Elizabeth Gilbert, not even on my recommendation, and would stop every few pages to say, "Chesley. This woman is you. It's so weird."

You know those books that make you laugh out loud? That you read in a single sitting and carry around with you when you scoot to the kitchen for snacks or run to answer the phone because you just can't put it down? 84 Charing Cross Road.

The book that makes you laugh and cry and sigh and smile? (Whoever would have guessed by the title?"

Or the books that have been frosted with magic and just-a-little-bit-larger-than-life dusting of fairy tales for the not-so-common everyday girl?

And the throwbacks, romanticism (in its literary and art historical sense), and still romantic? I mean, with a first line like, "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink," you know you're in for a treat.

Well, call me daft, but I opened up my inbox today and found a lovely little marketing e-mail from J.Crew, that purveyor of all things classic, slightly nautical, casual-chic. And much to my delight, (after falling in love with this delicious looking bag),

I found that kindred spirits don't only write novels. They write marketing copy as well. After reading that "Alison, Editorial Copy Director" for The Crew "singlehandedly keeps thesaurus.com in business" I was briefly reassured that there is a job out there, even for a wordsmithing wit. And that even a girl who likes to "carry around a notebook and writing utensil at all times in case i get inspired to jot down an idea, but it never happens. I usually just end up scribbling down to-do lists that I never look at again" can make it. It gives me hope.

Wordsmithing, scatterbrained, classy, fabulous females, speak out. You are among friends here!

"It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember,

that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside--but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond--only a glimpse--and heard a note of unearthly music."

I've just finished reading a book. A wonderful, whisk-you-way-type book.

Growing up, I relished each book in L.M.Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, both the first time I read them in the fifth grade, and again when I reread them in High School. Needing a romantic, old-fashioned, beautifully written, inspirational escape, I ventured to the library last week and selected a well-loved copy of Emily of New Moon, the first in another series by L.M.Montgomery.

After stealing a few moments to read a few pages despite my other obligations, I had no doubt I would not be disappointed.

"This moment came rarely--went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it--never summon it--never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy, holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writing down a "description" of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty."

photos: Room with a View by Emily Rachel, book in window from auberginesea.tumblr.com, Emily of New Moon cover by L.M. Montgomery, key from dontwanttoseethesunanymore.tumblr.com, Stars all seem to weep by ~Be-at from deviantart

Thursday! It can't be! It's too gruesome!

Darlings! Guess what I'm reading?

None other than Truman Capote's immortalized novella...

Haven't watched the movie in awhile... I'm waiting to see how different the book is. But I also find myself humming MoonRiver while I amble down Pearl Street. (Henry Mancini, you set the 60's to music...).

Holly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?

Paul: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?

Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long; you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

Paul: Sure.

Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

Holly: What do you do, anyway?

Paul: I'm a writer, I guess.

Holly: You guess? Don't you know?

Paul: OK, positive statement. Ringing affirmative. I'm a writer.

Holly: It's useful being top banana in the shock department.

Holly: I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.

Brooding...

The sky is dark and cannot make up it's mind. To storm, or not to storm...

And I, inside, torpid from the incessant heat, have made my retreat.

To pages:

And music:

Wuthering Heights and Vivaldi and Samuel Barber...

A Room with a View

"She began to talk. Her thoughts darted like sparrows. I couldn't follow everything she said."

- from "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Sara Houghteling

I've been whisked joyfully out of reality for a small bit of time.

...That's not strictly true, but sometimes it feels like it.

Friends of mine have decided to jet across the Atlantic for a tour of the British Isles, and have left me in joyful possession of their mountain-top-bungalow house-keys, the temporary surrogate mother of two silly cats (Stormy and Lola, aka. Grouchy and Sneezy). Together, we aspire to be productive. And also to take catnaps in the sunshine whenever needed.

I enjoy evening views of Boulder Valley, which fades into dusk before lighting up like an earthly Milky Way, sparkling in the nighttime hours. Christine left me with a delicious book to devour during my first week here: Pictures at an Exhibition.

For the Musically Inclined, perhaps the name rings a bell, calling to mind the haunting music of Mussorgsky. Here's a bit of Promenade and Il Vecchio Castello:

The book briefly mentions Mussorgsky and the actual paintings that inspired this composition, but spends more time summoning visions of Manets and Picassos and Wartime Parisians. The irony was that I wrote down favorite quotes in a litte art sketchbook that had accompanied me to many museums. Even as I read about Degas' Little Dancer's provocative stance and innocent face, I wrote quotes in a notebook that held sketches of the very same statue. Books are adventures, aren't they?

"It had ceased to rain, though dampness was in the air, and the plaza and its stones and statues were washed and darkened. The sound of the fountain was joyous. The piles of leaves blown against the trees glistened. The sky cleared, as if a hand had brushed the clouds aside and left only stripes of pink against the blue."

As for me, it's time to be more accountably productive...

"I was a work on paper: weightless, sketchy, all impulse..."

photos: Dear Friend, Dear Sparrow from vi.sualiz.us, Sunset photo and lazy cat by Gloriosity Media: Boulder 2010, Pictures at an Exhibition cover - novel by Sara Houghteling, Olaf Hajek image from Google Images, Acqua 4 by Roberto from Flickr, Sketching Hand (mine!) by Eric Ian of ClarityMedia.

Welcome Home, Little Girl.

I'm bursting. There's so much that's been happening. But let me first say:

It's nice to be home.

Granted, the outrageous humidity level in Atlanta makes me feel like I'm swimming. During the drive home from the airport, with the windows down and the radio blasting and my two brothers cracking jokes, I could feel my skin and hair absorbing the moisture like thirsty camels. Forget altitude adjustment. When I get back to Colorado, it's going to take me 3 weeks to get my hair straight again. When I start exclaiming that I feel like I'm drowning every time I take a breath, my brothers look at me and say, "What? This? This is nothing."

And then we pulled in the driveway. Mom and Dad were sitting on the porch listening to the Yanni:Voices CD I burned for them. (side note: Nathan Pacheco, yes, I will marry you.)

Home.

You know that feeling when every cell in your body seems to exhale, unexpectedly, at the same time? That's the feeling I had. And then I smelled the jasmine growing on the deck,

and the big magnolia out back,

and mom brought out chips and guacamole from my favorite Atlanta mexican restaurant (side note: Willy, of Willy's California Style Burrito Bar, yes, I will marry you), and heard the thump thump thump of my puppy's tail against the wicker furniture.

Home.

You know one of my favorite things about being home? Books.

I amass books. I devour them, and then keep them, stacking them or lining them up or squirreling them away. And do you know why? Because my mother does the same thing. As I walked around the house, greeting it after months of being away, I realized that they are everywhere. Everywhere. Absorbed into the decor of the living room,

standing in as a support system for the painting in the den,

challenging the Tower of Babel in the front hall.

I even found my Gardner's: Art through the Ages textbook,

which was not, as I had thought, tucked away in my closet, but had rather been unearthed and put to use.

It seems my mother, like myself, likes to have books around. They remind us what we've read, what we've learned, what we promised ourselves we'd learn more of. They inspire us to keep an open mind, and (particularly the books in our room-scattered-library) show us beautiful things.

My heart beats a little faster when I see a gorgeous coffee table book, filled with pictures of castles, or fashionistas, or movie stars, or art, or shoes. (side note: Manolo Blahnik, yes, I will marry you.)

And as with many other personal idiosyncrasies (including this unruly hair), I blame my mother.

photos: LCTurner Gloriosity - Atlanta, 2010

Art History.

Okay. So I'm starting a little project. I'll talk more about it in future posts.

This project involves diving back into the art books of my past.

And I remember, quite vividly, why I love Art History so much.

So much.

Because of quotes that rise out of my mother's college textbook, the 5th edition of Gardner's Art through the Ages, alongside that musty old-book smell (Why I have my mother's textbook in Colorado with me, while the 11th edition that accompanied me through college is in the attic in Atlanta, I have no idea); words from a column that is almost entirely underlined in my mother's precise hand (you can tell she uses a straight-edge in some parts... something that never dawned on me when I was marking up my texts), with her tight cursive making notes above the images, and this paragraph, where she gave up underlining and simply drew a line down the margin and starred it (I do the same thing when I find a whole section of literary gold.)

"Rembrandt found that by manipulating light and shadow in terms of direction intensity, distance and texture of surface, he was able to render the most subtle nuances of character and mood, whether of persons or of whole scenes. Rembrandt discovered for the modern world that differences of light and shade, subtly modulated, can be read as emotional differences.

In the visible world light, dark, and the wide spectrum of values between them have a charge of meaning and feeling sometimes independent of the shapes and figures they modify. The lighted stage and the photographic arts have long accepted this as the first assumption behind all their productions. What Masaccio and Leonardo had begun, the age of Rembrandt completes."

Poor editing and non-commital use of the Oxford comma aside, THAT is a paragraph.

I love how "Gardner" speaks about the artists like he knew them, and sat beside them, and talked with them. In a way, he did. That's what the visual arts are all about. Expression.

Then I came across a quote in my Italian Masters book. You must understand that I adore Raphael. I'm pretty sure I adore him because Professor McNamara of my Renaissance and Baroque art class adored him. She waxed about the leg of the rejected suitor in Marriage of the Virgin for about 5 minutes, and I imbibed every word. I mean, look at that leg. That's just art.

Anyway...the quote, by the poet Pietro Bembo, inscribed above Raphael's sarcophagus in the Pantheon in Rome:

This is that Raphael, by whom in life

our mighty mother nature feared defeat

and in whose death did fear herself to die.

Because, you see, Raphael saw nature for what she was, and he replicated her in a way that characterized the High Renaissance, taking the methods and successes of his predecessors and making them his own in a transcendent fashion.

Okay. I apologize for the Art History lesson. But I hope you like Raphael's red leg as much as I do.

images: Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son (1662) Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin (1504).