What Possessed Me

Before bed

So tired from work work work all the live-long day followed by too many oysters and too much Chablis and too much mint chocolate chip ice cream. Too much is never enough.

So tired that I barely noticed autumn this morning, but came home with the scent of it still in my hair. It's turning.  You can tell by the girls in silky sundresses whose cardigans drip from their shoulders. They sit in Bryant Park at lunch, lapping up the lastness of the season.

Suddenly, I want to hop a plane. Stay in this beautiful apartment. Eat blood oranges and sip espresso standing up at a counter. Buy soft opera-length leather gloves in improbable colors. Throw a coin into a fountain.

I think it would be nice there this time of year.

Photograph of Naomi Campbell via Tatielle.

Eye Break: Sophie Blackall

In her blog Missed Connections, Brooklyn artist Sophie Blackall writes:

Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I'm trying to pin a few of them down.

What a wonderful idea for this series of witty illustrations. Having a rather unhealthy obsession with Missed Connections myself, I love Sophie Blackall's tender appreciation of the humor and the fragile humanity and behind these anonymous love letters. 

See more of her work here and on her Etsy shop.

Lonely. Lovely.

Two bored, lonely, nameless people meet at a wedding in New York. As the reception draws to a close, they persuade each other - and themselves - into (and then out of) bed. It's some time before we realize that Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart, the stars of Conversations With Other Women, have met ten years before. We see them throughout the film on a split screen, which, in addition to an ocean, marriage, children and bad break-ups, divides them, and then, for a few brief moments, brings them together.

I love this film. Aaron Eckhart is a fine actor, handsome and full of charm, and Helena Bonham Carter can do no wrong (thanks be to God that she got past that deeply unfortunate goth phase). It was a lovely Saturday night discovery.

Another discovery was the Italian former supermodel, Carla Bruni (I'm know I'm late here), whose tender, rueful voice accompanies the film. Anyone who's followed her recent marriage to that toad, Sarkosy, knows that she is a vision of loveliness and an icon of style. But her music is a lovely surprise - soft and passionate and appealingly raspy.

Here's a clip of her song, "Quelqu'un m'a dit"



I'm liking her first album (of the same name), which was a massive hit in France, and only slightly concerned that I share the same taste in music as thousands of Johnny Hallyday fans. Ewww.