mose's day

For Father's Day, my sister from San Francisco came out and Spencer came in from Brooklyn. We woke up this morning, put on the Adele CD and baked and cooked and gave my dad a bonsai tree, some books, and a new radio so he can sit outside and listen to Mets games. Then we all prepped out and went golfing. I mostly sat in the cart and took pictures. Afterwards, we packed our picnic and headed to the beach to have dinner and play Fact or Crap which I won. Now we're exhausted and falling asleep on couches and in chairs.

And this is my master bedroom

Or really the guest room of my parents house. Hey, at least its not the basement anymore! I was getting mold poisoning (my term) or you may know it as a mold allergy (whatever) in the basement so I moved on upppp to the east side/guest room. My parents are getting weary of me redecorating their house with my African treasures so I chose only a few precious items from my downstairs bedroom to bring upstairs with me. I set up my little bedside table and this is the result. You like?

The book pages tacked on the wall are a few of my favorite pages from books that I tore out. I just like to have the words near me. I used to open up my books all the time and re-read these passages and finally one day I just started tearing all my favorite passages out and sticking them to my wall. Someday I will frame all of them in simple light pine frames and cover a wall with all my favorite words. I should probably do this in the bathroom so I always have something to read. Kidding! Not really. Sometimes when I'm supposed to be leaving for work in the morning, I find myself in front of my pages, just reading the words over and over. Each passage is like a delicious dessert I can lose myself in.

Beryl Markham. My hero.

Grew up in the Kenyan coffee fields. Was bitten by a lion when she was 10. Professional horse trainer turned pilot. Kenya's first female aviatrix and first person to attempt to circumnavigate the earth from east to west. Numerous scandalous affairs with the Happy Valley clan. Crashed a plane in Austrailia and survived. West with the Night is one of my favorite books. Her words are like poetry and her life is like a dream. Beryl Markham is my hero.

"I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance."
— Beryl Markham (West with the Night)

"Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home."
— Beryl Markham (West with the Night)

"Elephant, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other."
- Beryl Markham

I cannot wait to play with baby Thai elephants!

Brooklyn Pizza

On Sunday we drove into Brooklyn just for dinner. I live a little over an hour away. We went to Motorino's, known as the second best pizza place on the East Coast. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the pizza. Someday I will live in Brooklyn for a year and go to Motorinos every Sunday night.

"dear africa, you helped me right this by showing me to give is priceless" - K'naan

I miss you Ghana. I see you in my dreams and sometimes I close my eyes and I can smell you. You smell like dirt and fire and mango and baby mixed into one. I'm coming back, I promise.

summer skies and capri suns

Haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately because I've kind of run out of places to take pictures. I live in Connecticut, after all. If I lived in Bali there'd be more pictures than you could handle. I'm going to Brooklyn again this Sunday though and then I'll be on my way to Ireland very soon...oh there's a picture of me sucking on a Capri Sun, another staple for summer.

brooklyn, brooklyn, take me in

My memorial day in Brooklyn.

Highlights: A walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Drinking rose water with lemon and fizz. Hiding out from the blistering sun in a small community garden. Finding the Van Leeuwen ice cream truck, which my brother was offered the job to drive but turned down. I have no idea why. The Van Leeuwen sells yummy ice cream and herbal iced teas from her lemon yellow truck.

I ended the day with a drive by my hometown beach and found this gem: a VW. Then drove by the farm thats a few miles from my house and caught a field picture just as the sun was slipping out. Finally, a bath to wash off my brooklyn grime.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

I love that peculiar human feeling when everything in one day feels perfect even in an imperfect world. Yesterday was one of those days. I slept in, then went with my mom, dad, and brother, to the gardens. After the gardens we went for a delicious late lunch at Al di La where I ate mint raviolis and drank champagne. Later, my brother and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at twilight.
At the gardens, I was charmed by everything I saw. An old couple walking hand in hand. Cherry lane, a row of cherry trees. The Rose Garden, at least an acre of roses sprawling all around you. Bonsai trees so magnificent that they must not know how small they really are.
My favorites, however, were the Shakespeare Garden and the Fragrance Garden. The Shakespeare Garden holds all the flowers ever used in any of Shakespeare's sonnets. I loved that each label included the sonnet. After the Shakespeare Garden comes the Fragrance Garden and this garden was actually put together for blind visitors. Each label is also written in Braille and all the flowers are close enough to smell. I sniffed forever.

long beach

I wish I could give this beach a prettier name than just Long Beach. However, that's what it is. It's a spit of sand that sticks out like a straw into the Long Island Sound. There's a small airport at one end thats really just a small tower and a parking lot of just a handful of colorful Grumman Tigers. I'm actually thinking about taking lessons and getting my private pilots license there in the fall but it's awfully expensive and I'm panicking about my savings. I've been in CT working for about 4 months and have only saved about half of what I thought I'd have by now. Yikes. I really have to lock it down now. Although these pictures are blurry so maybe I really need to invest in some photography classes...

Anyway, on my way out of the spit you drive by some pastel beach houses and I fought it, but my creep nature came out and I took a picture of my favorite one. I like to imagine I live there and that I also drive a creamy yellow 1960's VW bug. In this scenario I am also super tan and my hair is way longer and whips out the window of my bug. Aaaanyway, someday when I decide to actually settle down and have a house I want it to be purple like this one. The picture doesn't do it justice. That front wooden screen door has little moons carved out. The whole foundation is that stone and it just looks like the type of house where sand can get tracked in from the beach and there is the constant slapping of screen doors.

After I went all Swimfan at the beach, I came home, put on my favorite purple batik African dress, put a fat turquoise ring on my pointer finger, poured myself a wine glass of lemonade, and sat back in our living room and began my new book about a white girl growing up in the Congo. Simple pleasures!