echolilia

These are such lovely pictures.

(By Timothy Archibald, via Mind Hacks)

font font font (that's the sound fonts make)

Okay, apparently it is typography week on the internet or something, or possibly it's just one of those things where the interrelatedness of the universe pounds me in the face for a while. Either way, there are letters coming at me from all directions lately. I've just started a class called "history of books and publishing" and it has me doing things like memorizing font families and comparing axes and serifs, and also my host father words at a printing press. Add in the many churches of Paris with their gift shops full of calligraphy kits that I have to resist buying (Do you know how many calligraphy kits I was given as a child? It was a lot. I guess I was just a kid that seemed like I should be writing something.) and perhaps you will understand that at the moment my brain is saturated in words.

So here are some letter-related things that I like at the moment.

Daily Drop Cap is a blog that puts up a new big illuminated letter every day. There's a link to this on here somewhere already, because sometimes I use them in blog posts, until I get overcome with minimalism and take them all out. But anyway, a lot of them are really good. (This is the person responsible for the above image too, look at those birds!)

A video, via Design*Sponge:

Legacy of Letters from Luca Barcellona on Vimeo.

Aughh, where are all my calligraphy pens? (Short answer: in another country) Really though, those things got in my way for years but every time I wanted them they disappeared.

Also from Design*Sponge, typeface contest! I might enter this just to give myself something fun to work on during this break.

Poppytalk does Font Fridays, which are what they sound like. I keep adding these to my computer even though I know I'll never use them.

Font Generator - I haven't actually used this, because I don't have a scanner, but it's been living in my bookmarks for a million years because I feel like I should have the option at all times. You know, for the times when I might really need a font of my handwriting. It could happen.

ABC Button Font - I can't get this to work on my computer, but maybe you can. Pretty cool though.

related to rain:

Slightly related to my last post, in which I mention that I miss rain. This is maybe kind of weird, but I really do love rain. There are not a lot of climatic differences between France and the US, but the lack of proper rainstorms is one of them. And even when it does rain, the lack of grass and leaves for the rain to bounce off of, not to mention the fact that I'm four floors above the ground, leaves it a little unsatisfying.

With that in mind, here are internet noisemakers that sound like rain!

RainyMood.com (a half-hour loop, with some thunder)

Nature Sounds, which is what it sounds like - not just rain but other things ranging from the pleasant (ocean) to the slightly suspicious (children laughing) to the inexplicable (Darth Vader??), so you can combine them however you want. I recommend adding a loon, because loon sounds are just fantastic.

I've never actually seen a loon. Where do they live? I'd like to live somewhere with a loon. I hear that some people find that sound creepy, but I'm quite fond of it.

regarding the trees

Here is a thing that I have discovered: I miss trees.

I am mainly not used to missing things, places in particular. Throughout my life my family has lived in no less than six different houses, and not only has this kind of desensitized me to house attachments, I actually start to get nervous and kind of weirded out when I spend more than two or three years in the same place. When I'm in Northampton I don't miss Maryland, and vice versa. But, as it turns out, I've never lived anywhere that was more of a city than a rather large town. Paris is definitely a city. And, as it turns out, I do miss something. I miss trees.

This isn't the only thing, really. I also miss grass that I'm allowed to stand on and being able to see the moon, and rain that lasts more than fifteen minutes at a time (this was actually really confusing, and my host family seemed rather shocked when I tried to explain that at home, sometimes it rains gently for two or three days at a time). But the most visible thing is probably the trees.

Trees in Paris, I think, are like animals in Paris. They are either in zoos, domesticated and confined, or suspiciously groomed. It's not that you don't see them on an everyday basis, but the ones that you do see seem weirdly isolated, set into squares in the sidewalks or encircled by those little metal cages. In some places, the trees - full-sized trees, mind you, not little shrubby things but big, upwards-of-twenty-years-old trees - are cut into squares. Like they just weren't neat enough before. I find this hilarious.

Or you can go to the parks, where you are not allowed to touch the grass but the trees are mainly unharmed, and which are about the only places where you can tell that seasons are actually changing. I go to parks a lot, mainly to sit and eat sandwiches, but if I don't go for a while I get kind of a shock when I arrive after a long absence, like, "Oh, dang, it really is the end of october. I hadn't really thought about it like that."

A while back we went to the Centre d'Arts et de Nature de Chaumont-sur-Loire, which is a large garden abutting a chateau and filled with various plant-related art installations.



Needless to say, I had a bit of a love spasm upon discovering the elaborate system of stairs and platforms wandering throughout the wooded part, complete with constant bird sounds and, awesomely, a mist machine that turned on every few minutes and filled the whole valley with dense fog. And I guess this establishes conclusively that I am fated to live in the middle of nowhere like a crazy hermit. I am pretty much okay with this.

I've been painting some.

These are acrylic on sealed paper, which is why they look a little like I painted them by dipping my hands into the paint and then flailing vaguely at the paper. I'm used to oil, and I still have a tendency to put large quantities of one color onto the surface and then expect it to still be wet five minutes later so I can mix something into it.

The class is called "drawing and painting from a model" and is taught by a woman with an English accent and the widest pants I've ever seen.

a cumulative list...

...of instruments I have seen people playing in Paris.

1. Accordion

2. Didgeridoo

3. Acoustic guitar

4. Electric guitar (on the metro, somehow)

5. Saxophone

6. Various wooden flutes, followed immediately by...

7. Bagpipe! Also on the metro.

8. Some kind of... steel drum... thing...

9. Hammered dulcimer (this guy was so awesome I was compelled to give him at least some money, even though I am poor and thus felt kind of stupid giving him the thirty cents that I had at the time)

10. Really epic set of panpipes.

mysteries

oday on the way back from class I came across a mouse flattened on the sidewalk. It wasn't a dramatic, unpleasant flattening, not like a mouse was just sitting and got a piano dropped on it. It had remained mouselike, but been shrunk down heightwise to a few millimeters, like somebody was projecting the image of a mouse onto the sidewalk. It looked vaguely mummified. And this was baffling for several reasons.

1. How does a mouse get flattened on a sidewalk? By an extremely wide bicycle? By the cumulative force of hundreds of pedestrians? Readers: have you ever stepped on a mouse? I haven't. I wouldn't expect a lot of people to step on a mouse. How many people have to step on a mouse before it is reduced to paper? I lot, I bet.

2. What happened to the other 90% of its mass? I will accept that it was probably about 70% water, which is gone now, hence the mummification. But what about the rest of it? I mean, if you mummify a human it's still pretty big, even (I assume) if you flatten it out after the fact.

Anyway, long story short, I saw a flat mouse. It was pretty interesting.

let's look at some sounds

Chladni Singing from meara o'reilly on Vimeo.

Have you seen this? I had not, until now, but OH WOW. This is incredible for the following reasons:

1. geometric patterns
2. a person making really awesome sounds
3. a person making sounds that manifest as geometric patterns
4. I just really like that one shot of her looking serious with all those spoons and things hanging about
5. SCIENCE!

(via the debonaire)

various things

Today:

- slept extremely late.

- bought my fencing glove.

- sent my resume to a dude teaching English at a private high school. I'm hoping he'll maybe give me a job as a tutor so I can be a functional member of this society I'm only vaguely part of.

- ate cheese bread in the park, watched ducks/geese/pigeons/one swan/one strange little white bird. Was caught off-guard by the progression of fall, which is indistinguishable outside of contained Nature Zones.

- was unable to remember my dreams except for frequent and vague flashes. If these are to be trusted, the dream took place partly in my quartier and partly in a metro station, involved a large crowd of people (some of whom were smiling creepily) and an avocado, and was generally unsettling.

- went through my huge unsorted bookmark file trying to decide what I actually needed in there. If you know me on facebook, you may notice me posting a lot of unrelated links in the next few days, this is because I want to get these out of my bookmarks but don't want it to go away entirely/feel I need to show it to people.

Related: here are some things.

This is something I found last year in my digital media class, and which I like a lot. You can put in places you want to go, and it will show them with a satellite image and cycle through all the places that have ever been submitted. Two of these are mine.

Also, I kind of want to do this. What do you think?

a list of ten things I think should be socially acceptable

1. bare feet in public establishments. I don't actually know what the reasoning behind this one is. I saw a web site or something once where some people did some intense research and figured out that being barefoot inside a store isn't actually illegal in most states. But one time I had to go to the store unexpectedly and wasn't wearing any shoes, and it was maybe the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done.

2. similarly, women taking their shirts off in public. I'm not sure how they're still getting away with this one.

3. adults playing pretend. I just feel like this would make the world a slightly nicer place to live. Also, nobody yell "LARP" at me here, because I am sorry but as much as I like public swordfighting (hello, I am taking a fencing class, did you know that) it is not socially acceptable. Also, this.

4. related: public costume wearing. Now, this is the kind of thing that I feel like I'm going to end up doing whether or not it's acceptable or not, particularly because by my own definition most of my regular clothing counts as costume and it's a slippery slope between "dressed kinda funny" and "pirate costume." But it really does make me happy when, for instance, I see a kid going to school in a Superman costume. I have a deep and undying love for halloween, but I want to be able to get up and go, "Today I'm going to be a pirate. Oh, and I'm going to the library." And! Not but, AND.

5. being extremely blunt. Do you know how much easier my life would be if I could just be like, "Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about." "Do we know each other well enough for me to hug you?" "There's nothing wrong with this food, but I really don't like it."

6. pointing out cool things to strangers. Once I was on a bus with somebody I was sort of friends with, and I was looking out the window and suddenly, without thinking, I turned to her, pointed out the window like a small child, and said, "LOOK, A BIPLANE!" And when rather than being confused and awkward she actually looked, I knew we were destined for greatness.

7. men wearing their hair in two braids. I actually don't know why this should be acceptable. I just think it would be interesting I guess.

8. related: men wearing dresses/skirts. This one's just not fair. If I had to wear pants all the time I think I'd be pretty angry about it.

9. climbing on things. Okay, this is pretty weird, but I do this a lot. I remember my mom coming into my room when I was little and being unable to find me for a few minutes before realizing I was on top of the chest of drawers. In middle school, whenever I got out of class for some project, I used to sit on top of the lockers. I suspect that the only things keeping me from climbing up the exquisitely beautiful lampposts here is fear of getting arrested in a language I don't know that well, and the fact that I'm too short to reach most of them.

10. eating food with your hands. The basic rule in France is that if it's hot, you need silverware. There are exceptions to this (street-vendor crepes, some sandwiches), but generally speaking, you will eat your pizza with a knife and fork.* Which is just silly, because pizza practically has a handle. If I were responsible, I think my rule would be "if it's physically impossible or severely unpleasant to hold, you need silverware." Which pretty much rules out soup and pudding. Pancakes are a matter of choice. And that's how I like it.



*Unrelated story: once in high school I walked by two kids having a conversation and all I heard was one of them saying , "He told me he thought I was gay because I eat my pizza with a knife and fork."

things europe does better: fruit

If you know me, you may know how I feel about fruit. Or you may not, because this is one of those things that most people would try to avoid going around talking about too much. I am a big fan of fruit. Like, seriously. Like I could eat fruit three times a day and never feel like it was too much, partly because there quite possibly more fruits in the world than there days in a year. Since I was maybe thirteen one of my major life goals was to eat every kind of fruit there is.

I thought this was going pretty well, until I got here. Americans, you may not realize this, but your country is bad at fruits. This was a revelation to me. A revelation totally obscured by the variety of fruits suddenly available to me. Let us not expound on the ways that fruits became even more awesome when I got to France.

1. Plums. What, you say, we have plums in America. Yes, we do. But we do not have these plums. Our plums don't have names like Reine Claudes or Mirabelles. And while this might seem like by-any-other-name territory I'm venturing into, believe me, there is a difference. I'm not sure what it is. But a Mirabelle is not a "strangely tiny yellow plum." It is a Mirabelle, and it is probably grown in the gardens of magical fairies and then if you eat one you can never go back to the human world, and I ate a tart made of them. Sorry, humans.

2. Figs. I said this one before in my General Food Post, but I am going to reiterate. I had never eaten a fig before I got here, mainly because I had never actually encountered a fig before. I remember, as a child, reading a short story in a Highlights magazine in which a kid visits his grandfather and they have mundane male-bonding adventures like drinking buttermilk (?) and eating figs, which is apparently a male-specific activity, the reason given being that "girls don't like figs because they're weird and squishy." Figs, not girls. Though from my experience the description fits the girls better.

Anyway, I remember finding that oddly fascinating, because I had never seen a fig, and it was tricky for my mind to come up with a fruit so unpleasant that an entire gender would reject it. As it turns out, whoever wrote that story was just a crazy person because figs are neither squishy nor unpleasant, though my mother did once describe them as "weird." They are like mulberries except huge, and except for the fact that fig sap is mildly irritating and once when I ate one without washing it my lips were somewhat numb for the rest of the day.

3. Juice. I love juice (I'm pretty sure everyone does), and being here is making me suddenly realize just how limited the juice selection is in most US stores. Apple. Cranberry. Grape. Orange, tangerine, grapefruit, orange-tangerine, orange-tangerine-pineapple. And maybe one lonely pomegranate. I remember wondering why nobody made peach juice, or straight pineapple juice. But here it's another thing entirely. Apricot! (apricots are everywhere for some reason) Kiwi! (a freakish green color that I haven't tried yet but am looking forward to) Apple-raspberry-lychee! Something called "seasonal fruits" which had a picture of a fig and a pear on the front! Boggles the mind.

4. Applesauce. Well, this probably doesn't count so much, because the applesauce was pretty much applesauce, I don't think there's a lot of room for error. But: applesauce in little juicebox-type pouches that you suck out through a tube! I can't decide if I feel like a five-year-old or an astronaut. Also, once I came home and my host father was like, "Oh, hi, I made applesauce." As if it was something that you just do once in a while. Maybe it is, I have no idea, but it was pretty awesome.

So there you have it. In addition to bread and cheese, I now have fruit to be mildly disappointed about when I get back home. Do you think a fig tree would grow in Maryland?

Chenonceau

An Italian queen paved the floor in monogrammed tiles,
and now I walk over the eroded remains of her name in my worn sneakers.
In the spiral staircases the half-loosened soles catch the dip
where the king would have stood, where his feet and mine
took pieces of dust as souvenirs.
They never refinished the painted floors--
the gold cowers in the corners, backed up against walls,
defending itself against time--
but the front tower is shrounded in canvas
printed with its own image, and if you look hard you can see through
to the scaffolding bones where they remake, remake.

Now it is october and the vines on the arbor over the terrace
are going yellow and sparse,
and I am thinking from beneath them that this
is how it should be.
I am wearing yellow and still the smaller fish flee from my shadow
as I walk by, and this is okay,
the way the water climbs up the white bricks and descends again
with a grain or two of stone to remember this day.

Maybe someday the rain will come in the windows
and collect in the hollows of someone's initials,
run down the stairs in arcs and turns, a spiraling, carved-out throat,
and catch in the basement,
fish weaving through the window bars.
I think of the swallows' nests hanging lobed and papery
under the lips of the high towers--
will the pigeons huddle in the rafters in Louise's bedroom?
Will they nurse their children on her tears,
knit the crowns of thorns into nests of tapestry fiber?
Someone has scraped their initials into the sand in the garden path,
and now they are gone, and so will be their signature,
and they do not mind this.