The Quasimodo of Lowell

In honor of this beautiful man's birthday, I present to you an essay I have written about my dear friend, Jackyboy K. 

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A wise man once said, “When I come to Paris in March and get drunk and pass out you may all stomp me to death in the gutters of St. Danis and I will rise going Hm he h eee hee hee he ha ha and be Quasimodo.”¹ This man was the late and great Jean-Louis Kérouac, better known as Jack Kerouac. Yes, the same Jack Kerouac that hitchhiked across the country dozens of times and wrote a novel in three days straight while purportedly hopped up on Benzedrine. The same man that was married three times by the time he was 47, at which age he died of an internal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of excessive drinking. This is the man who has inspired my literary career, who changed my life with endless strings of incomprehensible complete-sense nonsense. A photo of him cradling a kitten holds a four-by-six-inch space on my bedroom wall, and eight (and counting) volumes of his work line my bookshelf at home, making my personal collection 8.25% Kerouac, 91.75% everything else (I calculated that. The percentage is exact).

I've known Jack since the summer of 2011. I will henceforth refer to him as Jack (and perhaps on certain occasions Jackyboy) because we are soul mates and soul mates are always on a first-name basis. When you meet a soul mate, you don't realize it at first. The relationship is fairly neutral. They're just an ordinary friend. But there comes a time when the raw emotion overwhelms you and it becomes achingly clear that this person was meant for you. That there is some tangible, invisible, visceral cord binding the two of you, stretching across time and space and dimensions. That is how it is with me and Jack. When I read On the Road, I wasn't impressed. I was injected with a bit of wanderlust, maybe, but I didn't get it. And because I didn't get it, I didn't get it. I was a member of a sad part of the population that thinks that Jack was a reckless alcoholic womanizer that lived fast and died young, and finds nothing admirable or inspirational about him or his work. It wasn't until I went to a Richard Avedon exhibit at the Gagosian gallery the following summer, which featured several portraits of Allen Ginsberg and his partner Peter Orlovsky, that I was flipping through the exhibition's book at the front of the gallery and stumbled across Allen's (yes, the rule applies to soul mates' close friends as well) poem “Who Be Kind To.” Later that month I stopped at the library and found an anthology of letters written between Jack and Allen between the years of 1945 and 1969, the year of Jack's death. From the moment I left the library, that book and I were attached at the hip. I carried it around with me for weeks. I had to renew my hold on it three times. I carted it all around, whipping it out to show to friends, asking them if they knew who these men were. Most people said they'd heard of On the Road. End of conversation. I'd shove the book dejectedly back in to my bag, silently taking note that this person didn't get it, that there was an intrinsic disconnect between us. When I finished it, I sat on my couch on a Friday night and meticulously typed out every quote that I had dog-eared, culminating in a six-page, single-spaced document. That was the beginning of my love affair with Jack.

The first and inexplicably important thing to note is that Jack is not so much an author as he is a lyrical musician of sorts. His writing is not meant to be read for plot, nor his sentences dissected. His works are like jazz compositions—the reader has to feel them out, ride the rhythm of his syntax and effortlessly absorb the semantics of his word choices. The most common misconception I've found to be believed among the anti-Jack cohort echoes what Truman Capote said about On the Road: “That's not writing, it's typing.” And you know what I have to say to you Capote? Eff you. People like you make me angry. You make me sad, because you're missing out. It's not that you're inferior or stupid (although, Capote, only jerkwads publicly insult people), you're just not getting it. And that's an honest-to-God bummer. Fear not, however; I have reason to believe that the cause of this fault lies not (entirely) in your court, AJCs (Anti-Jack Cohort). I think the discrepancy is rooted in the fact that we are taught, and subsequently communicate through, the Language of Thought. We use dictionaries and spellcheck and we proofread and edit, and before we speak we must be certain that we are right. We rely on facts and data, and we can affirm and disprove each other's statements using facts and data. This is a fair and valid method of communication. The problem is, Jack speaks the Language of Feeling. Dictionaries and spellcheck and facts are completely useless weapons against the cavalry of ostensible absurdity that is Jack's writing.

The beautiful thing, though, is that it's not nonsense, it only seems that way to us, speakers of the Language of Thought, for we are hindered by the rules and restrictions of our dialect, and the society in which our dialect prevails. In Tristessa, Jack wrote: "I realize all the uncountable manifestations the thinking-mind invents to place wall of horror before its pure perfect realization that there is no wall and no horror just Transcendental Empty Kissable Milk Light of Everlasting Eternity's true and perfectly empty nature." Who would have thought to say Transcendental Empty Kissable Milk Light of Everlasting Eternity? I don't think anyone could have. But if we understand what he's saying, we feel it. We know exactly what this looks like. It's synesthetic; if I focus, I can experience the milky white light, and it's...transcendental...and...empty. Try to explain it in a more conventional way and the impact can never be as great, nor as deep. There’s something inherently more tactile, visual, and emotional about the way Jack writes. It’s transportive, almost as though I am Jack and I am the Milk Light and I am the realization, simultaneously. When he said, "Then she was running down the street with her $2, going to the store long before it opened, going for coffee in the cafeteria, sitting at the table alone, digging the world at last, the gloomy hats, the glistening sidewalk, the signs announcing baked flounder” in The Subterraneans, I, too, am digging the world at last. There’s a rush of relief that floods my body when I register what it’s like to sit at a table after coming in from the rain, being chilly but not shivering, just cold enough that my jacket is comforting but not overwhelming; sitting alone, looking around, wide-eyed, absorbing, being aware of how dismal everything is and seeing the unfettered grace of being conscious enough to comprehend the gloom.

I’m often told that Jack’s work is something that most people are into as teenagers, but grow out of soon after teenagerdom ends. After Kerouac we pick up Nietzsche and Tolstoy and Dante and we never look back. That’s just how it goes. Jack is like our training wheels—we learn from him how not to be, so that when we grow up we can look down on others in disdain when they romanticize the Beat Generation, scorning their sad preoccupation with immaturity, recklessness, and youth. How unfortunate it is that they couldn’t move past high school. To understand the misconception here, it is critical to note the stark contrast between myself and Jack. I am a vegan straightedge homebody, if I were to categorize myself. My idea of 'experimenting' is trying the oil cleansing method on my face; my average Friday or Saturday night consists of me reading on my couch, or maybe, if I'm feeling up to it, I'll go to a yoga class. Undoubtedly, I am the inverse of everything that he is. And yet, I love him. Why? How? Wherefore? Because, as I said, the plot lines of his novels don't mean much. He may have climbed Matternhorn Peak with Gary Snyder, but the point of him writing The Dharma Bums wasn't to tell people that they should really go out and climb Matterhorn, too. It's the way he tells his ridiculous stories that matters. How he writes “Leave me alone I am so delicate”² and I can't help but feel like I need to hug a crumbling flower. But it's also because he says things like, “But the bushes and the rocks weren't real and the beauty of things must be that they end.”³ He doesn't go off an existential tirade and renounce the world in a flourish of artfully worded cynicism. Jack reminds me gently that we're floating in the middle of nowhere and we won't figure out where we are until we touch down at home base once more, but it's a-OK because there's a beauty to the cycle of life that we are a part of, and it's best if we try to accept as much of reality as we can confirm is real, instead of digging our heels into the ground, fighting death to the last second. In other words, pain is not suffering; it is the resistance to suffering that is painful. When Jack began to vomit up blood on October 20^th, 1969 all he said to his wife was, “Stella, I'm bleeding.” He had to be persuaded to go to the hospital. He had been killing himself for years, and he knew it. But he didn't fight it. I'm sure he and his friends and family wished he had, but that wasn't the way things played out. He contributed to this world all that he did, and then he left. No heel-digging, no suffering.

There's a reason that On the Road is not one of my favorites—and probably why it took around seven years for anyone to publish it—and that I loved Maggie Cassidy, a book about teenage Jack growing up in Lowell, MA, courting his high school sweetheart (Maggie). The beauty of The Subterraneans is that it's exactly what he was thinking, no editing, no bullshit, and that's what makes it so real. It's time that the myth is debunked that Jack's writing was about THROW EVERYTHING OUT THE WINDOW GRAB A CARDBOARD SUITCASE AND HITCHHIKE TO FRANCE ON BENZEDRINE, because (a) that is completely inaccessible to about 99% of the population, and (b) that actually sounds like a terrible experience. I don't love him because him and I have any particular hobbies in common (I had to slug through pages and pages of baseball play-by-plays in Dr. Sax); I actually doubt we would have been friends had we known one another. (A quick pause to recognize the sadness of the previous statement.) I love him because there is so much urgency in his writing, so much honesty, so much unfiltered this-is-what-I'm-thinking-and-thus-who-I-am-take-it-or-leave-it. And that's how he changed my life. He taught me that there's simply NO TIME to be vacillating and tiptoeing around going "hmm haww should I do/say/think it hmmmm I dunno!!!" and he knew that, and that's what part of it's about. And if I hadn't learned that, I'd be in a paralyzed ball in the corner of a white room twitching and crying. He taught me to free myself, to say “Fuck it, and fuck you” to everything that tries to hold me back from realizing my true self, from reaching as high and/or as far as I want.

I have been called out for writing LIFE, in the same vein as REALITY, both of which supposedly indicate that Jack insists that we must, as my caller-outer said, cast off the veil of habit and [insert cardboard-box-benzedrine-France line here]. An understandable misconception, yes, but a misconception nonetheless. I wrote LIFE because once you've tapped into it, once you really get what Jack and his work are about, you can't help it. You really mean it. You feel like you have to make sure everyone knows that you don't just mean "life," as in "a bug's life" or "life is good,” or something mundane like that, but you mean the entire, urgent, honest, pure, everythingness of existence, that life. And in your urgency to make sure people know which life you're talking about—you feel that it is your obligation, as a human bean, to say exactly what you mean or else you would feel as though you were lying—you capitalize everything, hoping that our language's limited characters can somehow convey the difference.

I often wish that people would take the tilde seriously. This ~ is our good friend, Tilde. That little symbol conveys so much meaning that we miss out on by not using it for communicative purposes. When bracketing a word, such as “the ~future~” the tilde invokes a sense of gentle sarcasm, useful in adding a note of lightheartedness to an otherwise serious word or phrase. If used at the end of a sentence: “please help~~~~” the symbol expresses exasperation, as if one is waving one's arms around helplessly. This note about tildes may seem out of the blue or unnecessary, but it's another lesson from Jackyboy. He has helped me realize, as part of the whole cut-the-bullshit-there-is-just-not-enough-time-in-this-life-for-conventions ideology, that we have so many amazing symbols that we use for punctuation or in math or as accents in other languages, but we don't use them except for punctuation/math/accents because conventions tell us that we cannot do this. Theoretically, I cannot write ?????? in a serious piece of writing, such as this one, because we have restricted ourselves from doing so, and in order for my work to be earnestly considered I must adhere to these rules. Look again. Those question marks tell you a lot, possibly even more than words could depending on what I'm trying to say. They convey infinitely more meaning than any well-intentioned “Oh my God!” or “holy shit!” The ?????? is unsayable, accurately conveying how indescribable a deep, whirlwind, neuron-buzzing confusion is. But those goddamn conventions, man. They tell us, “Nope, if you intend to be taken seriously you have to follow all these rules, and you have to make everything clear and concise, and also you can't use tildes or ampersands or all caps.” ...Alright then. I guess I'll have to go join a knitting circle. People don't understand Jack's writing because while everyone else lauds the MLA handbook as the Gospel of the Written Word, him and I are thinking, “What the hell?? Why all these rules when adhering to them overcomplicates things and makes life harder? In reality, things are quite simple and we humans are responsible for constructing the skyscrapers that stand in the way of attaining, acknowledging, and fully expressing our—and life's—true essence.”

“You see how honest-dishonest I am? You see how good-bad the world? You see how we must shelter ourselves from the cold-warmth?” —letter to Allen Ginsberg, December 16^th, 1948

I won't hate you if you give Jack's work a second (or first, or third, or twentieth) try and genuinely don't...gulp...like it. I promise. At least you made an effort. But if you refuse to read any of his writing and continue to dismiss him as an invalid literary figure, I will give you a dirty look. Perhaps even a succession of angry glares. Lacking knowledge is not a sin in and of itself, it's when we have knowledge that we choose to ignore that it becomes an issue. So give him another chance. Who knows, you might just find a soul mate.

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1From a letter to Allen Ginsberg, December 10^th, 1957

2From Tristessa.

3From The Dharma Bums.

A Yawn and a Hose

[A male friend wrote a review about a book; he asked me to read the review and let him know what I thought. In his review he cited these quotations from the book, which was written by a woman: 

"As symbols go, the phallus is a yawn. Tubes that point and shoot and there you have it." 

"A phallus doesn't give you much to play with, metaphorically, and it doesn't lend itself to multiple interpretations. A hose is a hose is a hose is a hose."

He didn't finish the book, finding the writing to be too underscored by misandry. Below is my response to him. I am sharing this here because I thought it was a good example of banter about feminism. The author's name, the book's title, nor the friend's name were used to maintain anonymity.]


I think perhaps you took the author's words a bit too close to heart. Perhaps, as a woman, after years of being told explicitly and implicitly that I must be inferior, it is easier for me to allow a sentence or two insulting the metaphoric value of my genitals to just meander past me, unacknowledged. But for a man, it makes sense that it would be a more difficult feat to not put up a fight with a criticism of your prized phallus--for while the man, generally speaking, tends to identify himself with and in some cases perhaps even define himself by his cock, the woman does not rely solely on her vagina to define or identify her womanhood. However, I generalize; I know that this may just be my humble opinion, because I know that at my unripe stage of life I have not quite been able to grasp the concept of gender. But I do blame that partially on the fact that there are such rigid definitions of "man" and "woman" served to us on rusty tin platters from every angle, that indeed force the man to think that he is naught without his penis and the woman to believe that her physical appeal is the be all and end all of her worth. I have de-conditioned myself of the latter part of that sentence, and I do not care if my hair makes me "look like a lesbian" or that I really should wear makeup, or put on a real bra, etcetera etcetera et-fucking-cetera. All of it is nonsense. But I digress ever so slightly. The woman is taught that she must scrutinize every part of herself and fix what is imperfect and make herself perfect, no matter the physical, emotional, or fiscal cost. The man, however, is taught only to scrutinize his penis, and yes, he may be poked fun at for its size or for inopportune erections, but there is really nothing to be done to "fix" these "imperfections." 

I wholeheartedly believe that, considering the enormous hardship it is to be a woman in today's society--hell, in any day's society--from having to concern oneself with one's appearance, and fearing that one may be raped simply for BEING on a street at a certain angle of the Earth's rotation around the Sun, and striving to be considered for the quality of her mind rather than the size of her breasts, and so on and on and on, the author has every right to be snarky from time to time.

I think, and correct me if am wrong, you abandoned the book far too soon after dubbing it misandrist (ha! this derivative of "misandry" isn't even considered a word! "Misogyny" finds its roots in the 17th century, while "misandry" only came into existence in the 1940s) at times, but if every woman abandoned everything that was misogynistic, she would be left with nothing but a white room and perhaps a few pillows and a box of raisins.

On Est Toujours Fatigué

C'est vrai. Je crois que je vais tomber sur la terre dans quelques jours. Dès que j'ai écrit sur la blog la dernière fois, nous avons marché, peut-être, 70 kilometres. Et nous avons voyagé par train ou par bus de Paris, à Avignon, à Les-Baux-de-Provence, à Saint-Rémy-de Provence (le lieu où Vincent van Gogh a peint la plus part ses tableaux plus célèbres), et maintenant, nous nous sommes arrêtées dans une gare à Marseille, attendant notre train à Aix-en-Provence. Nous resterons là pour un jour, et puis nous irons à Cannes, et puis Nice, et nous dînerons à Ventimiglia, en Italie, jeudi soir, et enfin, nous retournerons à Paris. Lundi, on part pour les Etats-Unis, malheureusement. 

It's true. I think I'll fall flat on the ground in a few days time. Since I last wrote on this blog, we've walked approximately 70 kilometers. And we've traveled by train or by bus from Paris, to Avignon, to Les-Baux-de-Provence, to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (the place where Vincent van Gogh painted most of his most famous works), and right now, we're chillin' at a train station in Marseille, waiting for our train to take us to Aix-en-Provence. We'll be staying there for one day, and then we're going to Cannes, then Nice, and then we'll have dinner in Ventimiglia in Italy Thursday night, and finally, we'll return to Paris. We leave for the US on Monday, sadly.

Je suis passée mon anniversaire à Paris. J'ai fait une promenade à vélo le matin, et l'après-midi nous sommes partis pour le cité (mais d'abord l'ami de ma soeur m'a achetée des pantalons à la style d'une pirate à la marché). Nous avons marché des Invalides au Quartier Latin, et selon ma requête, nous sommes allés au Shakespeare & Co., une librairie anglaise située au début du quartier, et juste en face de la Seine. Elle a une affiliation avec City Lights Books, la librairie en Californie qui a imprimé les livres et poèmes des écrivains du Beat Generation (mes écrivains favoris, comme Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et cetera.). Après que j'ai trouvé les livres que j'ai voulu acheter--un livre qui s'agit de la vie et l'oeuvre d'Egon Schiele, et un petit livre des écritures et poèmes écrit par Kerouac--j'ai demandé à une employée de me dire qu'est-ce que c'est l'affiliation entre Shakespeare & Co. et City Lights, et elle m'a dit que Lawrence Ferlinghetti, la propriétaire du City Lights, aimait Shakespeare & Co. et la fréquentait souvent. Elle m'a dit de demander à un autre employé pour plus d'information. Je l'ai cherché, et il m'a dit d'un hôtel qui est pas loin de la librairie où les écrivains Beat sont restés dans les années 50s et 60s. (J'ai visité cet hôtel lendemain, et je suis retournée à Shakespeare et j'ai dit à cet employé qu'est-ce que j'ai vu, et il m'a dit qu'il y a plusieurs choses que je n'ai pas vu, comme la Dream Machine, et autres choses.) Puis, nous avons marché au Marais, où on a trouvé des "thrift shops" et j'ai acheté une longue robe bordeaux en velours pour seulement dix euros. C'est très jolie. Après, nous sommes allés au Montmartre pour dîner près de Sacre Coeur et manger des crêpes. J'ai mangé des escargots et une crêpe avec Nutella et chantilly. Après ce jour fatiguant, nous sommes retournés chez nous, et ma mère m'a donnée des autres cadeaux, une édition de Le Petit Prince (mais en anglais) inclus. Je suis en train de le lire.

I spent my birthday in Paris. I took a bike ride in the morning, and in the afternoon we left for the city (but first my sister's friend bought me a pair of pirate pants at the market). We walked from Invalides to the Latin Quarter, and at my request, we went to Shakespeare & Co., an English bookstore situated at the start of the neighborhood, and right across the street from the Seine. It has an affiliation with City Lights Books, the bookstore in California that published the books and poems of the writers of the Beat Generation (my favorite authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etcetera). After I found the books I wanted to buy--a book about the life and works of Egon Schiele, and a little book of writings and poems by Kerouac--I asked an employee to tell me about the affiliation between Shakespeare & Co. and City Lights, and she told me that Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of City Lights, loved Shakespeare & Co. and still continues to frequent it often. She told me to ask a different employee for more information on the subject. I found him and he told me about a hotel that's not far from the bookstore where the Beat writers had stayed in the 50s and 60s. (I visited the hotel the day after next, and then I went back to Shakespeare and told the guy what I'd seen, and he told me that there were a lot of things I hadn't been shown, like the Dream Machine and some other things.) Then we walked to the Marais, where we found some thrift shops and I bought a long bordeaux velvet gown for only ten euros. It's bangin'. After that, we went to Montmartre for dinner near Sacre Coeur and ate crêpes. I ate snails and a Nutella and whipped cream crêpe. After our ridiculously tiring day, we went home, and my mom gave me more gifts, including an English version of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). I'm in the middle of reading it right now.

On a marché beaucoup (trop, peut-être!), déjeuné avec nos amis de famille, et visité des cathédrales, des palais, et des châteaux. New York me manque un peu, mais je serai très triste de sortir ce pays dans moins qu'une semaine. 

We've walked a lot (too much, maybe), had lunch with some family friends, and visited cathedrals, palaces, and castles. I miss New York a little bit, but I'll be super sad when I have to leave this wonderful place in less than a week.

DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THE SOLE PROVISIONS GIVEAWAY! PLEASE! JE VOUS EN PRIE! 

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J'irai en France

Eighty-five percent of my dreams are about to come true because I am set to hop on an airplane to my favorite country in the world tomorrow. The city of Paris awaits me, with its historic greenery and looming architecture and endless inspiration and beguiling language and everything I ever need. I've been practicing my French for the past three nights, starting at 10 pm and staying up until 2 am conjugating verbs, reviewing grammatical structures, working on speaking quickly by singing along to French pop songs from the '60s (I have played that song maybe 80 times since this morning), and just trying to prep my brain for the culture I'm about to be submerged in for a few weeks. 

My passion for everything French is no secret, but for some reason I feel like this trip is going to be especially important. I feel like I'll be able to communicate more, and more easily, and that it will be amazing to get away from America for a while and experience something new. I used to relish my time at home and spent a great deal of it sitting in my room doing whatever the hell it was that I did. But now my apartment entrenches me in a sort of stale apathy that I can't seem to do much with. It makes me anxious and tired and restless simultaneously. I need a change of scenery. France is exactly the place to go for that. 

I'm also going to be turning 16 while I'm there. After a consecutive sequence of abject birthdays, I can just tell that this one's going to be good. I want to go to Shakespeare & Co. in the Quartier Latin and buy French books, and eat delicious food, and wander around Paris. It all seems so unreal, but at the same time I can't wait. The feeling is inexplicable, which is why I'm doing such a bad job of explaining it. 

We also might be traveling to the south a little bit, which of course I am hella pumped for. I want to buy some orange lipstick somewhere, and get a refill of my perfume in Les Baux, and eat fresh fruit from the market in Aix-en-Provence, and see the Palais des Papes in Avignon, and glide along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. And maybe stop in Italy for lunch. Who knows. 

Here's some photos I gathered off the internet of places I might be going. 

[Photos via Google.com.]

This is where we go running. We run that whole frickin' thing. It's like, 7 kilos. Sometimes we bike it.

The Promenade des Anglais, right on the coast of the Mediterranean

The market in Aix-en-Provence

The Pont d'Avignon

Montmartre, home to the Sacre Coeur and an ungodly amount of Parisian beauty

One of my favorite bridges on the Seine, the Pont des Arts. I'm bringing a lock to put on it this time.

Shakespeare & Co., the store in which I plan to work when I move to France.

The village of Les Baux

I'm not bringing my digital camera with me this time because it's so heavy and I'm worried I'll break it and/or my back, but I just came bought some disposable cameras to use instead because they're very light. Basically what I'm saying here is that there won't be much live-action reporting from France, but who knows if that even matters? I'll probably write about the trip sporadically on here.

Have a blast back in the States. I can't decide if I'll miss them.

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Can I Have Your Closet: Ramona Petrini

This week's subject is one of my near and dear buddy-pals, Ramona Petrini. We met in ninth grade, but became infinitely better friends when she switched schools this year. She's the Kerouac to my Ginsberg, my literary-and-music-and-film-and-bebopping-around partner in crime, and one of the best writers I've ever met. In addition to all of these wonderful attributes, she's got pretty bangin' personal style. The way she described it in her interview is quite on point, but even from the first day that I saw her in my freshman art class when she was the only soul brave enough to answer the questions our teacher posed about a twig, I thought to myself that she seemed like a really, really cool chick. I also admired her courageousness to wear a sheer black shirt (something I still can't do to this day, even though I've got one hanging pathetically in my closet), and I was immediately intrigued by her very distinctive drawing style, and the way she so expertly employed a fountain pen. All in all, she's a fantastic gal, and I've been meaning to feature her on my blog since the first day we met.

Odelia: How would you describe your style?

Ramona: It would be like a conjoined twin, or triplet, a conjoined twiplet—triplet [laughs] between my mom in the late eighties, early nineties, Françoise Hardy, and what I imagine the women in F. Scott Fitzgerald novels to dress like, except a little bit, I guess—I don't wanna use the word sluttier, but...risqué. [Laughs] Okay there, that's my answer.

Odelia: Who are your fashion icons and who do admire aesthetically?

Ramona: Again, my mom, late eighties, early nineties. Lee Radziwill, she was a Bouvier sister, she was Jackie O's sister, and her mom was always like, “Oh, you're not beautiful, you're too fat,” when in fact she was really not fat at all. They said, “You're not as pretty as your sister,” and everyone was like, “Jackie O's so beautiful!” But Lee Radziwill, she knew how to dress. I saw all these pictures of her apartment, and she's just an effortlessly glamourous and aesthetically wonderful person. And then also my dad.

Odelia: Where are your favorite places to shop?

Ramona: The first one is my favorite because I don't have to pay money for it, and it is my brother's closet where my mom keeps her old clothes from the late eighties and early nineties! [Laughs] And Beacon's Closet and Salvation Army, and occasionally if you go to Urban Outfitters you can find some pretty weird and cool stuff piled in a pile, in their marked down section.

Odelia: If you could own one or more items right now that you don't have, what would it or they be?

Ramona: I suppose this is kind of corny, but I would very much like to own and never will own, the dress from Breakfast at Tiffany's, the Givenchy one with the long—and how it just sorta bunches at the hips and the waist cinches and it's a really beautiful, well-designed piece of clothing. The other garment would be this pair of socks I saw in a movie. They were just this sheer beautiful black fabric with a little lacy thing at the top and a lavender bow so you can tie it at the calf. It was like, bein'-sexy-around-the-house socks, which are the kind of socks I feel like I really wanna have. Or at least have the kind of lifestyle that would require such socks.

Odelia: Do you remember the movie?

Ramona: No. I don't think it was very good, but the socks were a highlight.

Odelia: Would you say that fashion is a big focus in your life?

Ramona: Well, I'd say that style is. And aesthetic. And colors and textures and everything like that, on people especially. I don't know—if “fashion” as a concept of perpetual visual fixation of humans, and people dressing well, and people carrying themselves well, and everything, you know? If that were how fashion were defined, then yes.

Odelia: How would you describe personal style as a concept?

Ramona: I'd say, first off, that I think it's very important. Not so much that we should put a lot of stock in the way we look, but personal style reflects people. It's corny, but it's true: it's not you wear, but how you wear it. So I'd say that personal style should just be a way of being. So I guess I'd describe it as very...human. And in some instances, very nice.

Odelia: How do you feel that, if at all, high school has influenced your sartorial choices?

Ramona: Whoa. A lot of sartorial choices have been influenced by high school [laughs]. Not totally good influences across the board, I guess at least before I switched high schools. There's this kid at my school, and when I go to school every day, he says, “Hey sexy mama, you look great today.” I think that's been like...well, I wake up every day and I'm like, “If I were that kid, would I call myself a sexy mama and tell myself I look great today?” So I guess that's the most positive and productive sartorial influence that that's had on me [laughs]! 

[Photos by me.]

So smiley and adorable!

She wasn't sure what to do pose-wise, so I told her she could do anything she wanted. So she began an interpretive dance of sorts. 

Gotta love that sweater. 

More dancing. It went on for quite some time.

She's big on satchels and briefcases. At heart, she's a classy business man from the 1950s. 

Hey, notice how she's wearing plaid. Coincidence? I think not.

I mean, also look at her conch necklace.

Also she has some really nice hair. She's got those midi-bangs that I so desperately want in order to fulfill my fantasy of looking like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

Just in case the above information didn't capture the essence of Ramona, here is a short video taken while at her house after we finished up the interview and I accidentally turned the camera back on. 

Okay, I'm being very serious now, Ramona, I really would like your closet and would greatly appreciate if you would relinquish it without much of a fight. Please and thank you. 

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On the Road (Clover Canyon Spring 2013)

I know it doesn't make much sense right now, what with Hurricane Sandy blocking off all mass transit in New York City so that I can't leave my borough, coupled with the fact that the next summer break is eons away, but think about spending hot, adventure-filled days in Southern California. Why, you ask? Because that's what the designers of Clover Canyon wanted us to do when they put out their Spring/Summer 2013 collection that I saw at New York Fashion Week back in September. The collection was called "On the Road," most likely intentionally sharing a name with Jack Kerouac's novel by the same title. If you haven't read the book, it chronicles the author's travels back and forth across the United States over the course of a few years--working on a railroad in California for a few months, hitchhiking to Denver, stopping in New York City for a few weeks, going back out West, over and over and over again. To be honest, it began to feel almost ridiculous how much he backtracked and revisited places, only because I am an extremely systematic person and like to go from point A to point B in a logical manner. But that wasn't the point of me mentioning On the Road. The entire book is about getting up and just leaving in search of a good time. That was basically Jack Kerouac's life (I've been reading a collection of personal letters between him and Allen Ginsberg, a correspondence spanning approximately fifteen years, so I'm getting all the intimate facts about his bumming around in Mexico and sleeping on other people's couches while writing). 

This past summer, the Rookie Mag team did a cross-country road trip, starting in New York and working their way west to California. It's just another example of a group of friends spending time together in a van, eating junk food and driving endlessly for miles and stopping at deserted burger joints off the side of some midwestern interstate that only their car and a few assorted pick-up trucks are traveling on. It's not just about going somewhere just to be on the move and not necessarily having a set destination. It's about freedom. The bright colors and scintillating prints in the Clover Canyon collection emulated the youthfulness and fun of a road trip. The brand's clothing is manually patterned, cut, and sewn on the premises. They refer to it as "old world craftsmanship," an aspect of their company that gives the collection's allusions to "candy-colored muscle cars," "wood-paneled motel rooms," "surf shacks," "disco balls and rodeos," and "cannabis leaves" a whole new meaning. [All of these quotations are taken from Clover Canyon's show notes.] Road trips, above all, are about fun. Even though I'm still just a kid, I know how tough it is as an adult to enjoy yourself the way teenagers do. They have responsibilities and obligations that jobless students do not. In Clover Canyon's collection, the juxtaposition between "boyish soft suiting" and fluid shapes and fabrics realizes the idea of adults trying to let loose and truly act like kids again. 

The show was presented in the form of a box presentation, meaning the models were standing around the room and posing for the photographers. Luckily, I was a photographer, and some of the girls got really into it. I mean, it is their job, but I felt really grateful that they were posing for lil' ol' me, so I smiled at all of them after I lowered my camera, and some returned the grin, but others were slightly taken aback by my act of courtesy. 

You'll see how cool some of these girls were in their super cool clothes. 

[Photos by me.]

Imagine going to work in that suit. 

Way out, dude! 

That was my impression of a surfer. 

That print is pretty intense. 

Am I seeing cars? Am I seeing Aztec buildings? What am I seeing??

The Road. 

This reminds me of a ceramic sculpture I recently made inspired by adobe architecture.

Fun fact of the day.  

Try and tell me it doesn't look like the models are going to be sucked into a black abyss. 

She was smizing up a storm. If you can smize with your body...?

Can you spot the illegal drugs in this photo? 

When you don't have a cool '50s Cadillac to drive around town...wear one on your torso! 

The hair and the print on the jacket are screaming Grease mixed with the "SB-129" episode of Spongebob.

The cutest person ever. 

Don't tell anyone, but she was my favorite. 

Look at them smize. They make it an art form. 

This model even made her feet look all fancy for me. Wasn't that nice? 

That jacket is made of sequins. 

Yeah. 

That just about wraps up New York Fashion Week! Well, actually, it wraps up New York Fashion Week. Straight up. And it only took me, like, two months!

If you guys were seriously affected by that bitch Sandy this weekend...you probably wouldn't be reading this blogpost right now, because you probably wouldn't have power. Luckily I wasn't, as in my apartment didn't lose power and my neighborhood suffered minimal damage, but I know so many people who weren't as fortunate. The subway will be shut down for the next four to five days, which means: a) no school, and b) no going anywhere at all. So it's good but also fairly sucky. Hang in there, guys!

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We Are Infinite

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky at the end of 8th grade, around the same time I began this blog. I started this website for many, many reasons, one of them being that I needed somewhere to throw my obsessive thoughts and make my preoccupation with fashion real, and the internet seemed like the prime place to do that. This book and blogging were the two things that returned me to my natural human state (to an extent. I have a theory that I was secretly born as an old-man-puppy-fish, and that doesn't sound too natural to me) when I was strugglin' so hard. I read it once and fell in love. I read it again at the beginning of my freshman year of high school because Charlie began high school in 1991, and I was starting in 2011, so I read each of his letters on the same date in real life. Since that made no sense, let me clarify: if he wrote a letter on November 9th, I read it on November 9th. It was so weird how events in each of our lives occurred at the same time, twenty years apart. ...Even though Charlie is not real. When I found out that they were making this fuqin' amazeballs book into a film starring Emma Watson, aka the absolute love of my life, I had a major mini heart attack. 

The '90s is (are?) easily one of my favorite decades culturally, musically, and sartorially (followed closely by the '60s and '20s), so I was mega pumped for the costumes, props, sets, and soundtrack for the movie. They didn't disappoint. If you combined Sam's (Emma Watson) and Mary Elizabeth's (Mae Whitman) clothing, that would be an accurate representation of how I try/want to dress every day of my life forever. It's like a funky mix between grungy '90s lumberjack casual style and a gypsy witch that has a fascination with stick-on jewels, sweaters and their multitudinous variations (ie, poncho), bizarre skin adornments, and copious ear piercings. Das me! 

Hopefully you can feel the ridiculous amounts of spiritual/sartorial inspiration emanating from the following pictures, because if you do that means we are brain siblings. 

[Photos via imdb.com and google.com.]

Sam's room + Charlie's suit + typewriter = this is what I want most in life. I'm actually on the hunt (a quest, if you will) for a typewriter and a cheap tie, so if you see either one, let me know.

Patrick (Ezra Miller) is not even human, I swear. And then there's Mary Elizabeth (bottom left), being a total badass. 

This was easily one of the best scenes in the whole movie. They are at a school dance when all of a sudden a good song comes on, and Patrick and Sam are like, "Living room routine. Right now." So they shove their way to the center and just start dancing like maniacs. It is amazing.

Mary Elizabeth!!!!! Wearing red!!!!!!!!!! My favorite color!!!!!!! 

Emma as Sam as Janet. 

I want Sam's jacket and her hair, and Patrick's face to stay like that forever. 

If you have not read this book, drop everything and read it right now. If you haven't seen this movie, don't drop everything, but go see it anyway. That's enough unauthorized book promotion for today. 

One last thing: I made a playlist out of the mixtape Charlie made for Patrick for Secret Santa so you guys can fully immerse yourselves in the world of the book.

Have a jolly Sunday! 

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The Transitive Property (Lela Rose Spring 2013)

Lela Rose's runway show took place on Sunday, September 9th, at 11 am. Bright and early. Delightful. I took my seat and began perusing the front row from afar. When I spotted a perfectly coifed top knot and a set of familiar cheekbones, I asked the woman sitting next to me if that was in fact Lauren Conrad seated over there. My hunch was confirmed. As much as I hate to admit it, my sister and I did watch "The Hills" more than a few times at a suspiciously young age. 

Enough about LC and her California gurls. Onto the fashion show. As I mentioned in my video a few weeks ago, I didn't think that Lela Rose's collection was particularly visually cohesive. However, that is because it was based on "the frailty of the human experience." Wowza. Not to go all philosophical on you guys (don't get me wrong, I love going all philosophical; it happens at the most inopportune moments, actually. Or are they really the most opportune moments??? Whoaaaa), but life is not cohesive, so by my trusty friend--and the only useful piece of information I got out of my freshman geometry class--the transitive property, neither is Lela Rose's Spring 2013 collection. In the designer's defense, the collection makes a lot of sense conceptually. She was inspired by the work of the artist Jim Hodges, whose pieces references nature a lot, often in the forms of flowers and webs. Lela translated that into fabrics and prints, incorporating floral patterns, lace, and metal chains into her S/S '13 show. She used Hodges' entire oeuvre as inspiration for the collection, which resulted in a bit of a mish-mosh of ideas that didn't really seem to string together too well. There was camouflage and tweed and lace and lots of bright colors and metal(lic) accents...oh my! It may have been a better idea to just zero in on a few aspects of the artist's work, but perhaps if she had the collection would not have been as large, nor would the pieces be as sellable as they indisputably are. 

Below you shall find the best photos of the bunch from this show. 

[Photos by me.]

Highly constructed pieces and emphasized seams make for an interesting contrast.

Orange, why do you keep showing up season after season? Are ya done yet?

Isabella Melo. Mere feet from my body. Wut. Also neon t-shirts paired with coral skirt-jacket ensembles. Wut.

So content. Whatchu lookin' at, grl? 

Bam. Visual assault, in the best way possible. 

The Man Repeller would be proud of this dress.

Spidery and spindly, reminiscent of this piece by ol' Hodges.

...But like somedays, when I get like a crumb of food, that's a good day, so is this one.

Lacey-lace and lavender. Alliteration rox my sox.

The metallics I mentioned before. 

Also, the model definitely experienced a UFO sighting at this moment. That is the only explanation for such an intense glare. 

Isabella Melo, part 2. 

Laurenzo Conrad! All bedazzled and stuff. That man interviewing her shoved me a lot in an effort to get to Lauren first. We can call him Gopher Man. Don't look so serious, Gopher Man. 

Sorry for sporadic posting, ballroom dancing got in the way. Once. That's right, you heard it from me, I am taking a few ballroom dance lessons with my mother and two foreign instructors. High school auctions are the absolute best.

Would you all be devastated if I didn't do Fall/Winter 2012 trend reports? I know, I know, I just think I missed the deadline; I would be starting far too late for it to be of any help. I'll do the Spring ones instead, and I'll do Fall instead of Pre-Fall over the summer! Yay for compromises! I'll do a few of the good ones for this season, of course, because we can't pretend that the trends don't exist.

Have a mighty fine weekend, friends. Go see "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" because it's amazeballs. Expect a post on that soon, that's how much I love it. (It got almost 8 stars on IMDb! Good Will Hunting got only three-tenths of a star more. That is how awesome this movie is. Plus the author (Stephen Chbosky) wrote the screenplay, so you just know that nothing could go wrong. Except for that they left out the poem Charlie gave to Patrick, but after contemplating it for a while I forgive Chbosky.)

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