for your listening (and viewing) pleasure. {and for mine}.

i know, i know. another one.
(another noah and the whale related post).
and yes, i know, i understand why many think this third album isn't as good as the first two.
but the thing is...
well.
the second album was one of such deep heartache.
and i know that. that sadness that swallows you whole.
so this third album--one of great hope and resiliency and coming back to one's self and realizing that life is even sweeter...well, maybe that's why i love it. the bliss of it. the bliss that comes after the fallout.

so yes. i'm sharing this video. because it's one of my favorite songs on the album.
and because lately, i've been thinking, that i'd do just about anything to be seventeen again, driving the winding roads to school in my volvo station wagon, listening to john mayer (before he ever released his second studio album and we learned far too much about his personal life in the tabloids). to be seventeen, immune to heartache, and feel like anything at all is within a fingertip's grasp.

ps: doesn't the drummer just look like sun is shining down on his face?

a change in wardrobe

everyone's begun to panic that i'm not dating anyone.

(any by everyone i mean my mother. though maria said i have only two years before i reach spinsterhood--two years being her mark because she was twenty-seven when she tied the knot).

on my first day home i sat at the counter watching the television as i chomped down on my omega bread and peanut butter. my  mother slid a j. crew catalog in front of me. flipped to a page with an abundance of strapless dresses. see these? i think, you should think, about wearing one of these to the wedding this summer. 

i have a wedding to go to this summer.
my mother thinks i should wear a strapless dress.
point of fact: my mother thinks a strapless dress will snag me a man.

oh, that's all it takes? okay then. 


it became the joke of the week. strapless dresses: the panacea for my life.


i don't know why i haven't dated anyone seriously. maybe i'm picky. too picky? sure. maybe i've chosen poorly in the past. maybe the timing's been off. maybe, as it turns out, i'm quite shy. maybe i want the guy to make the first move. maybe i fear a broken heart.

honestly, maybe i just don't know.

but i'm willing to give the strapless dress thing a go.

a week at home. just not long enough.

new york's winter this year was so long and so hard that i began to pine for time in texas months ago--my body literally craved it. so i gave myself a week. a whole week. and yet i blinked and it was over.

i wish i could bottle the time. stretch it. make it last. but as quickly as it goes there is no way to measure the value of dinners at home or time spent in the car with my mother--trying out the restaurant of my father's choosing, or just perusing large air-conditioned stores.

last night we invited our dear, dear friends maria and gail over for dinner (maria took care of me when i was just a wee of a thing). maria took a look at me, tilted her head, and in her lilting italian accent asked if i'd fallen in love. it was the loveliest compliment.

maybe time at home, dinners outside, time with the people you love most in the world--maybe those are the next best things to actually falling in love. i can't wait for that day when they all intersect.

l. frank baum

the wizard of oz

this week i traded the manhattan skyline for home.

the last photo is of an old bulletin board in my closet at home. there's a sheet of white paper on which i've written "because sometimes i like being friends with you so much--i can't breathe." i was nineteen, in love, and it came to my in dream. six years later it's still there--the post it note, that is. always makes me smile when i see it.