Colleen Taylor

I feel like I have Tweet-worthy thoughts, but if I signed up for Twitter now I'd just be awkwardly, far-beyond-fashionably late to the party.  Not sure what to do about this in general, but for now I'll just post a couple micro-thoughts on my macro-blog.

• My favorite "Wait, what?" sentence from the September 2009 issue of Harper's Bazaar: "Because it's smothered in sequins, making it the perfect wear-anywhere item for our times." 

• I was recently shopping for a petcare gift certificate (my sister's starting a Ph.D. program this fall and would probably enjoy a day or two off of caring for her Yorkie.) Turns out, reading reviews of pet boarding places on Yelp is a sure-fire way to get freaked out. Is this because lots of pet owners are ridiculously over-protective and will never be satisfied with anyone else's care of their pet? Or is it that no matter what cute name you give it (doggy daycare, luxury puppy hotel), it's a kennel, and most kennels just aren't especially nice places?
  

Today I experienced my second major poem finding success story! This one may be even sweeter than the first, since I've been searching for this poem on and off since I read it once in 9th grade--10 years!-- and the difficulty of my quest was compounded by the fact that it was originally written in Spanish.

But somehow, when I randomly conducted my search tonight (a highly sophisticated method I've developed that is basically typing some general concepts that I'd remembered from the poem into Google) it came right up.  Maybe they really are constantly improving the algorithm over there?

Reading it now, I'm pretty impressed that I was so enraptured with this poem at the age of 15 (when I was very naive to romance, as I would remain for a good number of years thereafter.) I suppose it stuck with me so much because it spoke to exactly what I thought I'd want to find in a future ideal beau-- and I have to say, the 15-year-old me was pretty right on the money. 


Amor Sin Amor (Love Without Love)
By Luis Llorens Torres

I love you, because in my thousand and one nights of dreams,
I never once dreamed of you.
I looked down paths that traveled from afar,
but it was never you I expected.

Suddenly I've felt you flying through my soul
in quick, lofty flight,
and how beautiful you seem way up there, far
from my always idiot heart!

Love me that way, flying over everything.
And, like the bird on its branches, land in my arms
only to rest,
then fly off again.

Be not like the romantic ones who, in love, set me on fire.
When you climb up my mansion,
enter so lightly, that as you enter
the dog of my heart will not bark.

On Sunday night, I was craving popcorn and passive entertainment, so I went on a little movie date to see Julie & Julia. Let me just say: I heartily recommend spending the $10 or so to go see this movie in a theater.

It's not that the film itself is so fantastic-- I mean, I liked it and it's cute, but it didn't alter my worldview or anything. It's that something happens about halfway through the movie that you'd just have to see for yourself to believe.  Get this: A very, very visible boom mic dips and lingers into the frame no fewer than three separate times within a couple of minutes. In a scene that includes Meryl Streep, no less!

I'm no A.O. Scott or anything, but even I can tell that that's pretty awesomely bad. I've heard phantom stories of boom mic appearances in, like, Star Trek Season 1 episodes from the 60's, but I'd never actually seen one for myself. And for it to make it into a modern, big budget movie's final cut is amazing. What's most remarkable to me is that I hadn't seen mention of it in any reviews-- how did that happen?

So please, do yourselves a favor and see it on the big screen for yourself, before it's airbrushed out of the DVD version.

The great thing about the New Yorker recently is that no matter what the subject-- whether it's a breezy shopping article by Patricia Marx or a multi-part essay about Ian Frazier's travels in Siberia-- it's really fun to read. Even when a story is hugely informative, reading it rarely feels like I'm eating my vegetables.

And that wasn't a hypothetical thing, the long Siberia travel essay. I actually read Part I last week.  I especially liked Frazier's antecdote about how Siberia and America are similar in that they "both exist as constructs, expressions of the mind" to each other. You know how someone might say he parked "out in Siberia" if the only spot he could find was, say, four blocks from his apartment?  It turns out being "in America" has a very definite connotation in Siberia, as well:

"The time was late evening; darkness had fallen. [An acquaintance and native of Siberia] led us from room to room, throwing on all the lights and pointing out the amenities. When we got to the kitchen, he flipped the switch but the light did not go on. This seemed to upset him. He fooled with the switch, then hurried off and came back with a stepladder. Mounting it, he removed the glass globe from the overhead light and unscrewed the bulb. He climbed down, put globe and bulb on the counter, took a fresh bulb, and ascended again. He reached up and screwed the new bulb into the socket. After a few twists, the light came on.

He turned to us and spread his arms wide, indicating the beams brightly filling the room. 'Ahhh,' he said, triumphantly. 'Amerika!'"