I plucked this book from a thrift store shelf on Sunday, and finished it last night. It really was compelling. In fact, I have no doubt I will reread it over time, and ponder again the why’s and how’s of these labyrinthine ladies. ~Aimee~
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Courtesans-Catalogue-Virtues/dp/0767904516/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1371680528&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=courtesons
Went away for a long weekend. Hit up a thrift store. This was what my suitcase looked like on the way home. I’m one happy girl! ~Aimee~
My dad was a talented, handsome guy with a lot of problems. I didn’t realize how complicated it all was until I grew up. I’m glad for that. It allowed me to be blissfully unaware when a kid *should* be blissfully unaware. I just wish he had been able to fulfill more of his dreams. ~Aimee~
Honestly, this has made my day. I can’t stop laughing…. ~Aimee~
Weird Tube of the Day: The Best-Worst Phone Conversation in History of Cinema
Check out this awkwardly scripted dialogue scene from an unidentified 1980s South Indian film. It is one of the most dramatic phone conversations in film history.
(Source: reddit.com)
Daydreaming and cloudpinching. I have skills…. ~Aimee~
Coppertone
There I was, a gangly legged teen who had all sorts of notions on what real beauty was. Sprawled on the vinyl folding chairs out on the lawn, I would stretch my pale legs out like white sprouts on a potato, slathering them with Coppertone.
I wanted so badly to be tan. California-Coppertone-Beach-Bunny-Brown. The kind of tan where you could slip a watch off your wrist and see it’s outline in contrast. All the popular girls at school could do that. I would see them at lunch, comparing ‘white lines’. My whole body was a white line, thanks to the endless parade of very pale ancestors who looked on from old pictures with somber, chalky expressions. In class photographs, nobody had to ask where I was placed. They would just follow the glow of my face, reflecting the photographer’s flash.
I was a persistant little cuss. Spreading a blanket out by the lake shore, I immediately started basting myself like a turkey, while my best friend would sprawl in the sun without even worrying. She could grow effortlessly tan in less than an afternoon. I watched as she eventually flipped open her bottle of tanning oil and spread on a thin layer. Jealousy gnawed at me as it made her skin shine…even deepening the tan she already had. No matter how much coconut oil I lathered on, it never shined like that. It just seemed to make me look…transparent. Fish belly. At best, ruddy.
Ruddy! The word that echoed in my head like a donkey bray in a canyon. That pinkish-red hue would forever be ‘my tan’. Of course, it was actually the signal that I had best get my wimpy skin indoors soon, or I was going to fry like a cajun shrimp in that scorching summer sun. But sometimes I would fool myself into thinking I actually had a bit of color, and anxiously run up to my best friend to stick my leg next to hers in comparison. And there it would be… the obvious, flapping right in my face; golden brown, next to pig butt pink. I swear, it would have been good enough for me to simply have all my freckles connect. Individually…they had the tan I was longing for!!! But they taunted me, all sprinkled around, refusing to pony up to the cause.
And so one day the flowing river of Coppertone came to a stop. I put it on the shelf beneath the bathroom sink next to the Prell shampoo and the Aquanet. I let my freckles exist in peace, and started spreading my blanket in the shade while I read the stories of Anne Shirley on Prince Edward Island. Another daydreamer who fancied what it would be like to have exotic beauty…. and I related to every word.
Eventually it became a part of who I was, this pale self all dotted with freckles. “Comfortable in your own skin…” was a phrase realized, and I soon discovered that there were people out there who thought creamy complexions were lovely. I was never going to be Beach Bunny Brown… and that suited me just fine. I wasn’t pale! I was alabastar, or so my grandmother would say. She was an alabastar girl too.
I still use Coppertone, but only because I like the smell.
~Aimee Stewart~
Me today… pure ham and cheese. Black Forest and Gouda. ~Aimee~
"I’ve stopped stealing pages out of poetry books, but last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you but could only find rain and more rain and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, like an orchestra. "
(via insipidexpectations)
Everyone is used to seeing the brightly colored, fanciful work I do… but not all of it looks like that. This is Cloudburst, inspired by a photograph I took in a ghost town not too far from where I live. ~Aimee~
Pretty much my day, every day… ~Aimee~
Oct. 15, 1925: From the Mid-Week Pictorial, “High Art of the Zoo: The giraffe of the mechanical menagerie will stoop to nothing, so the artist must climb skyward to present him with spot No. 203.” Photo: The New York Times
