Herrera has given this same advice repeatedly and never considers wavering from her signature look. Her advice to women is always the same:
"Frame the face, limit the prints, accentuate the waist, and cover up the arms. I love white shirts because they feel like a security blanket. You can wear them with anything. It's the person and the way that they wear it that makes it different. I have been designing white shirts forever, but I don't get tired of it. . . . You don't have to follow the fashion of the times, you have to follow the fashion that looks good on you. . . . You have to have a full-length mirror in your house so you can see what is missing and what you have to add to your look."
from an interview with Susan Swimmer
in MORE Magazine (July / August 2008):
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| Autumn Scraps
Backyard Still Life by Cathleen & Ellie |
From Preludes
By T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)
#1
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
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| Our new favorite at the Lady Lever Gallery:
Fatidica (1893 - 94) by Frederick Leighton (1830 - 1896) |
The Goddess Who Created This Passing World
The Goddess who created this passing world
Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction
Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled
Cars & the variously shod feet were born
And the past & future & I born too
Light as airmail paper away she flew
To Annapurna or Mt. McKinley
Or both but instantly
Clarified, composed, forever was I
Meant by her to recognize a painting
As beautiful or a movie stunning
And to adore the finitude of words
And understand as surfaces my dreams
Know the eye the organ of affection
And depths to be inflections
Of her voice & wrist & smile
Alice Notley (b 1945)
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Helen Keller: "Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen."
Oh, what a beauty doth the world put on
These peerless perfect autumn days . . .
with brightly painted leaves . . .
But so exquisitely blended are the lights and shades,
The golds, scarlets and purples, that no sense is wearied . . . [see ~ also]
Archibald MacLeish:
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| Eduardo Oropeza (1947–2003)
Mexican American Artist |
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| @ Scottsdale's Museum of the West |
Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906)
African American Poet
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| "O Thou who has given us so much,
mercifully grant us one thing more: a grateful heart." ~ George Herbert ~ "To those who have hunger give bread; And to us who have bread give the hunger for justice." ~ Latin American Blessing ~ |
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Maybe this explains why I lived in Victorian houses for forty years. But here I am, trying something new: working my way through the transition from a Victorian house (built in 1895) to a Mid-century modern (1956) putting me only fifty years or so behind the times, instead of one hundred and fifty.
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Summer Time Ends
How nice looking up, some cloudy afternoon,
To see that what has fallen suddenly
Is twilight, and an earlier chance to draw
The curtains while you have the energy.
Now everything falls, go down with it and give
Yourself to the gravity, putting up a show
Of warming wistfulness with the last leaves.
Fall hard, and stay there, waiting for the snow.
The nights are drawing in, nothing wrong with that.
The poet says: Darkness cures what day inflicts.*
It is as normal to welcome winter back
As to loathe the spring. Popular interdicts
May forbid that preference, but snow walks are like
Illicit love with no one else betrayed;
Are like the joy, as you step out through the white,
Of the first alligator in the first everglade.
Harden your skin, then, for the rigorous spell
Between October and the April days
When the clocks go wrong again. Live for the thought
Of the bracing dark and the heavenly displays,
On frosty nights, of dotty groups of stars
You may sit and try to specify all night
-- As if there were no tomorrow to dissolve
Their shining in dull anywheres of light.
~ Alan Brownjohn (b 1931)
Poem included in the anthology:
Light Unlocked: Christmas Poems (p 13)
* “For darkness restores what light cannot repair.”
~ Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 96)
Editor's note: in England "Daylight Saving Time" is called "British Summer Time"
Blogger's note: "Arizona and Hawaii are now the only states that don't observe daylight savings time." Indiana used to be on this list, until 2005 or so, when (un)popular opinion dictated that we perpetually align ourselves with New York rather than Chicago.
For a long time, Indiana didn't change, and I loved those years, even though it meant half the year we were on New York time, and half the year we were on Chicago time. Then our governor decided that we needed to be permanently aligned with New York City, so now we have to change to Daylight Time every spring. Bummer! On the other hand, I do love those long late summer & autumn evenings. I think I value them more than a bright waking hour. I don't mind waking up in the dark, but I truly relish the gloaming!
All Souls
Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November—
Remember and forget, forget, remember.
After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited—
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.
May (Eleanore Marie) Sarton (1912 – 1995)
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| Two red roses on my pink rose bush! |
More from Evangeline: Canto II
Such was the advent of autumn.
Then followed that beautiful season,
Called by the pious Acadian peasants
the Summer of All-Saints!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape
Lay as if new-created
in all the freshness of childhood.
Peace seemed to reign upon earth,
and the restless heart of the ocean
Was for a moment consoled.
All sounds were in harmony blended.
Voices of children at play,
the crowing of cocks in the farm-yards,
Whir of wings in the drowsy air,
and the cooing of pigeons,
All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love,
and the great sun
Looked with the eye of love
through the golden vapors around him;
While arrayed in its robes of russet
and scarlet and yellow,
Bright with the sheen of the dew,
each glittering tree of the forest
Flashed like the plane-tree
the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)
