Roaming Wishlist '11

1. Hotel Surazo, Matanzas, Chile.

2. Los Roques, Venezuela. An archipelago national park in the Caribbean.

3. Hapuku Lodge & Tree Houses, Kaikoura, New Zealand.

Freedom. Freedom to what?

"To what avail the plough or sail, or love, or life -- if freedom fail? Freedom. Freedom to what? Escape, run, wonder turning your back on a cowed society that stutters, staggers, and satnates every man for himself and fuck you Jack I've got mine? To be truly challenging, a voyage, like life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea --"cruising" it is called. Voyaging belongs to the sea men, and to the wonderers of the world who cannot or will not fit in. Little has been said or written about the ways a man may blast himself free. Why? I don't know, unless the answer lies in our diseased values....Men are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security", and in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine--and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man really need --- really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in ---and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all --- in the material sense. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they like caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Dedication to the sea is the symbol of migration and movement and wondering. It is the barbaric place and it stands opposed to society and it is a constant symbol in all of literature, too. As Thomas Wolfe said, "It is the state of barbaric disorder out of which civilization has emerged and into which it is liable to return."

----Stearling Hayden, Wonderer, 1964

"Sordid... but at least it's life"

Movie List (*work in progress)

I keep forgetting some of my favorite movies... time to make a list:

JAWS
In its own category. All five films are included.

AMERICAN (INDIE)
* Dan In Real Life, 2007
* Conversations With Other Women, 2005
* Stealing Beauty, 1996
* The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, 1998
* Elephant, 2003
* The New World, 2005
* Paranoid Park, 2007
* Whit Stillman film (Barcelona, 1994; The Last Days Of Disco, 1998)
* Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 1998
* The Loss of Sexual Innocence
* Secretary, 2001
* Boys Don't Cry
* All The Real Girls, 2003
* The Hi-Lo Country, 1998
* Tigerland, 2000
* The Virgin Suicides, 2003
* Lost In Translation, 1999
* The Myth of Fingerprints
* Safe
* Secretary
* High Art
* Laurel Canyon


AMERICAN (MAINSTREAM)
* Last Chance Harvey, 2008
* Rounders, 1998
* Leaving Las Vegas

AMERICAN (OLDER)
* Kramer vs Kramer
* All The President's Men, 1976
* McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1971
* Three Days of The Condor, 1975

AUSTRALIAN
* The Waiting City, 2009
* Japanese Story, 2003
* Somersault, 2004




FRENCH
* La Reine Margot (Queen Margot)
* En Coeur En Hiver (A Heart In Winter)
* L'Heure d'Ete (Summer Hours), 2008
* The Beat That My Heart Skipped, 2005
* Dans Paris, 2006
* L'auberge espagnol, 2002 & sequel Russian Dolls, 2005

OTHER FOREIGN FILMS
* In The Mood For Love, 2005

IRISH
* In The Name of the Father
* The Matchmaker
* Once
* Hunger

SCOTTISH
* Trainspotting
* Shallow Grave

ENGLISH
* Anything by Merchant-Ivory
* 28 Days Later

MOVIES I LOVED GROWING UP...
* An American Werewolf In London
* Dead Poets Society
* The Goonies
* Space Camp
* Trading Places
* Beverly Hills Cop
* Lethal Weapon

love chooses you

"Remember that you don't choose love; love chooses you.
All you really can do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing then reach out and give it away."

(Kent Nerburn)

words and wallpaper

I was flipping through a magazine recently and came across a wedding dress photo spread. Never mind the dresses, what I couldn't take my eyes off of was the design and calligraphy in the background. I kind of want to create something similar in my bedroom... sweeping letters and vintage wallpaper... yum.

heart card

Love this poster design...

Website Design

Love this web design...

K is for Calligraphy on etsy.

Antieco tote.

Beautiful paper boxes from Rie Elise Larsen.

“The message of TV is that everything’s going to be OK. The lesson of modern fiction is that things are not going to be OK, and the lesson of poetry is that life is beautiful but you’re going to die.”

—	Billy Collins.

Lykke Li - Possibility [HQ Audio] from birolehel on Vimeo.

“If anywhere in your travels you come on a man with guts, mark the place. I want to go see him. I haven’t seen anything but cowardice and expediency. This used to be a nation of giants. Where have they gone?”

John Steinbeck

chrissie loves you

UK illustrator Chrissie Abbott

Baptiste Debombourg made this mural (Air Force One) of Icarus with 35000 staples. Debombourg’s works derive from the relationship he draws together between everyday things and his experiences with art. For the most part his works are sculptural, but he also creates performances, drawings, photographs, and videos. The diversity of means and materials relates to the way he creates artistic tropes out of ephemeral matter — slave objects we use and throw away, like packing material Styrofoam and cardboard, shopping catalogs, cigarette butts, staples — and support materials — the things we take for granted, like walls, security glass, and furniture, which he treats as if they were precious.

Beautiful handsewn expressions by Rachel at Cornflower Blue.

spring fever

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!" ~ Mark Twain

''Go after her. Fuck, don't sit there and wait for her to call, go after her because that's what you should do if you love someone, don't wait for them to give you a sign cause it might never come, don't let people happen to you, don't let me happen to you, or her, she's not a fucking television show or tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I'd be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy and flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can't just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone's idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways because that is beautiful and that is generous and that is what loving someone is, that is raw and that is unguarded, and that is all that is worth anything, really.''

"The love that we will never make together is the most beautiful, the most violent, the most pure, the most heady."

(Serge Gainsbourg)

lehel kovacs

Just stumbled across Lehel Kovacs work. Lehel is a freelance illustrator based in Budapest, and his hand-drawn line works are usually combined with digitally created colors (he also makes screen prints). In one online interview, when asked how he got started in design, Lehel answers "When I was a kid I just loved the taste of pencils, so that was a first impression which made me fall in love with it and it's still my favorite medium to work with."

Illustrated with technical pen, frame by frame. Created by Parkour, a graphic design degree student living in Singapore.

not knowing is most intimate

Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"

Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."

Dizang said, "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"

Fayan said, "I don't know."

Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."

Days With My Father

A record lovingly kept by Phillip Toledano. Beautiful.

Last time I was in London I made the usual pilgrimage to Magma Books on Clerkenwell Road. They had these really great postcard sets by Yellow Owl Workshop. A set of (4) designs, screen printed by hand on recycled cover stock, presented in a matchbook-style cover. I highly coveted the Analog set (above), but resisted the urge...

yeah

the road is hers

Amylin Loglisci is an artist and photographer with wanderlust.

When she's not on the road, she can be found in her home town of Istanbul.

now this topic is the only thing

Reza Abedini is a highly acclaimed Iranian designer and professor of graphic design and visual culture at Tehran University. Not enough good things can be said about the work that he does. A couple of years ago Reza edited the book, New Visual Culture of Modern Iran.

"I have been thinking about graphic design and visual identity for some years and its relevance to Persian graphic design. Now this topic is the only thing that keeps my mind busy. I have studied different ways and solutions for modern adaptations of Persian type and typography. I also studied Persian visual traditions and painting. But most important for me are Persian type and typography. I think Persian type has been almost ruined over the past years, although it has a glorious history. I hope I will be able to discover ways to use the Persian script in graphic design in the best possible way and bring it back to its glorious days and height. I believe that is the only way Persian graphic design can find its own true identity." -- Reza Abedini

hedi slimane

Just stumbled across this photograph by Hedi Slimane and it stopped me in my tracks. And if you don't already, know about him.

buddhist tendencies

My friend Robert is an architect and teaches architecture. He recently set his students the task of designing a structure for 'a buddhist with modern tendencies' - an assignment that kind of caught my fancy. Being more of a decorator than a designer, I'd be up for taking a shot at the interior/exterior, even though it's oh so difficult to avoid some of the cliches that are often associated with the practise. Needless to say, the materials would be eco-friendly and the home self-sustainable, incorporating recycled surfaces.

1. Corrugated apartment block 2. Suspended fireplace 3. Tiled hole in the wall 4. Girl cave 5. Outdoor bath tub 6. Bare plaster walls 7. Maui chairs by Terry Dwan for Riva 1920 8. Indoor shower with mosaic Bisazza tiles 9. Outdoor bath tub 10. Lamper Head in South Devon 11. Padded couch 12. Grass tiling 13. Stockholm Kallbadhus* 14. Love Changes Everything 15. Shaker weave & joints

*Stockholm Kallbadhus is a proposal for a public outdoor bath which is completely passive, iconic and sustainable (and located in the central harbour of the city).

Gocco art print by Orange Beautiful on Etsy.