Toss me in the deep end

I am not a "deep" person. I once read this article in Elle about "deep" and "shallow" people, which I can't find again for the life of me, and I would probably consider myself the latter. Though highly educated, still not deep. Right now I'm reading a "deep" book- "Saturday" by Ian McEwan (also the author of "Atonement"). I am loving the book, but it is "deep," something I probably should have expected knowing already the author's writing style, along with the fact that the plot-following an ordinary man's life for a single day-stretches on for 289 pages. The book makes me feel "deep" after spending enough time with it. Though I have tagged many pages (an old habit when I read a quote that really speaks to something in me), one of my recent tags reads:

"He wraps each species of fish in a several pages of a newspaper. This is the kind of question Henry liked to put to himself when he was a schoolboy: what are the chances of this particular fish, from that shoal, off that continental shelf ending up in the pages, no, on this page of this copy of the Daily Mirror? Something just short of infinity to one. Similarly, the grains of sand on a beach, arranged just so. The random ordering of the world, the unimaginable odds against any particular condition, still please him."

So, while on the bus today, inspired by the gorgeous fall weather and this novel, I tried my hardest to think my own "deep" thoughts. This is what transpired.

*What if the city you lived in had exactly the opposite climate that it experiences now? Would the people be the same? How would this affect business and crime?

*Why is it that every leaf on the same vine can be a different color? Are leaves like people, each one individual?

*If you came across the slightly automated person who makes the bus/train stop announcements, or the elevator calls, would you recognize their voice?

And so went my shallowly "deep" afternoon.

{Photo}

Cat's out of the bag

My beloved cat, Friskers, gets me the best birthday gifts. This year I received from him the book "Homer's Odyssey," which on the cover reads "a fearless feline tale, or how I learned about love and life with a blind wonder cat." Friskers is currently at least 17 years old and pretty much blind in one eye, so yes, it's funny, ha ha. But I absolutely gobbled up the story, written by a fantastic writer about her life and adventures raising an eyeless cat. If you love cats, you seriously must read it.

{Image from www.gwencooper.com}

Visit www.gwencooper.com for more pictures of Homer and more Homer info.

To donate to a good animal cause, visit this website. My boyfriend is raising money by running the Chicago marathon for a local no-kill animal shelter.

la bella vita

I can hardly believe that it has been four years since I spent the most beautiful summer living in Florence, Italy. I can still sense that love. I can still taste the vibrant flavors of the gelati (which added a few pounds to my frame and happily gave my dentist two cavities to discover and fix). I can still feel the thickness of the heavy Italian red wine that I drank with dinner every night, even though it was 95 degrees outside and it made my mouth pucker with dryness. And I can still imagine the feeling of freedom and anticipation that came with exploring such a foreign, storied city and documenting it through photograph. One of my favorite places to spend time was at the San Miniato al Monte cemetery, an often overlooked oasis at the top of the tourist-trodden Piazzale Michelangelo. That adventure has been on my mind lately, as I just completed an iPhoto book of photographs of my summer in Italy for my mom for her birthday. Below are a small sampling, accompanied by quotes from one of my favorite Italian-setting books, "A Thousand Days in Tuscany" by Marlena de Blasi.

"I can make you feel loved but you can't make me feel loved. No one can. And if you try too hard, I'll bolt. I'm a runaway, after all."

"Under the weight of lesser or greater fortunes, I think what happens to a great many of us is that we really don't know what we want or with whom we'd like to have it. Nothing seems real until it's already gone. Until it's sealed up tight, out of reach. Until it's dead. Be it a person or a dream. And then the light comes, and so we mourn."

"Most of the pain in life is caused by our insistence that there is none."

"And I wonder why it is that, of all the thousands upon thousands of people who pass through one's life, most leave not a trace. Into abandon and oblivion they are consigned, as though they were never there. And more curious, why do those few, only those few, stay somewhere safe, dying, even, but never entirely so, engraving the heart, deep and smooth? The cut of the eyes, some voluptuous sting, one exquisite phrase, a voice like chocolate just before it melts, a laugh like thin silver spoons chinking across a marble floor. The way the see crashes into crisp champagne pools behind him as he kisses you. A hand resting on a hip. One mesmeric glance, brown or black, green, topaz. Blueberry."

"You trust risk more than comfort. I've always been afraid of comfort, too. Bring on the pain, because during those moments when I can neither see it nor feel pain, when it's quiet, I know it isn't really quiet at all but only gathering force. Better that pain stays where I can keep an eye on it. There's risk in comfort. There's comfort in risk."

"Each couple has a child: the Florentines a daughter, probably not yet four, the English, a boy of six or seven. The handsome blond boy seems to have caught the eye of la fiorentina...Dispensing with all other preliminaries, she says, 'Allora, baciami. Dai, baciami, Joe. Forza. Un bacetto piccolo. Well then, kiss me. Come on, kiss me, Joe. Try. Just a small kiss.' Stella has learned young to ask for what she wants."

"Maybe it's true that life is a search for beauty, for the harmony that comes from the mingling of things. Maybe life is a search for flavor. Not the flavor of food but of a moment, or a color, a voice - the flavor of what we can hear and see and touch."

"It's sensations rather than things I'm after. Only the mysterious is eternal. I prefer to feel this life rather than to grow foolish enough to believe I own it."

Note: These are all my original photographs. If you would like to use one please message me first and credit appropriately. Thanks!