Happy Easter!

I am currently visiting my parents, finishing my last paper and having a good time in general. I will answer all comments upon my return, and in the meantime, I wish you a great long weekend and happy Easter!

Photos: 1 (via This Is Naïve), 2 (via The Snail and the Cyclops?).

At the moment II

Here are some of the photos that inspire me the most at the moment--I hope they will inspire you as well.

Photos 1 & 2: I find the lines formed by the bodies in both photos very compelling, but what I like even more (or equally) are the very clean and sharp hairstyles. I've been keeping my hair around shoulder-length for about six months now, after years of mainly having long hair, and these photos make me want to go even shorter. I probably won't, but these still inspire me to have a more polished but still a bit scruffy (if that makes any sense) hairstyle. The second photo, of silent actress Bessie Love, is definitely amongst my favourites.

Photo 3: This photo of the Bauhaus Dessau school students has been going around the blogs for a while now, and I can't help but stop and stare at it for some time every time I stumble upon it. Of course, it inspires me to dress in a more intersting way, but it also pushes me to be more creative in other parts of my life. On a side note, the blurry woman in the velvet dress, in the center, looks very much like my maternal grandmother.

Photo 4: Do you recognise it? It's the back of Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room. I cannot dissociate Leonard Cohen from the romantic idea I had of Montreal before living there, and I always thought my apartment would look a bit like that (although I recently learnt this photo was taken in Greece). I picked my first apartment because it had large windowsills--that was pretty much the only nice part about it though.

Photos: 1(?), 2 (Scan from James Abbe's Stars of the Twenties ), 3 (Bauhaus Archive, Berlin via The Guardian), 4 (taken by L. Cohen, photo of Marianne Ihlen--yes, that Marianne!).

7 Things About Me

Supah star Nancy (that's what she calls fellow bloggers, I think it's pretty awesome!) gave me the Versatile Blogger Award. Thank you so much, Nancy!

In return, I have to tell you seven things about me. I originally thought I'd tell you about my favourite books, or favourite bands, but that's pretty much all I usually write about... So here are seven things you would probably not guess from reading my blog:

1. I love goat cheese. Not only love, I simply cannot live without it. Every time my parents visit me, they bring me a wholesale-sized package of goat cheese.

2. I have a bit of an odd accent, no matter which language I speak. I was born and raised in Quebec, but I have already been asked if I had a work visa because I apparently had a French accent. When speaking English, I have fooled people many times into thinking I'm Eastern-European. I've deeply disappointed this lovely Polish lady who worked at my favourite fast-food stand in Ottawa (Sasha's, on York St. if you're ever around!).

3. I have an oval birth mark on my right arm. Someone at Summer camp already tried to slap it off thinking it was a fly.

4. I'm an only child, but I come from a very big family. I have so many older (from 4 to 30 years of difference) cousins that I am yet to meet someone my age who has attended as many weddings as me, including two on the same day(!).

5. I have a swallow tattooed on my back.

6. I used to be obsessed with the Beatles, especially in their Hamburg period, which is a bit silly, really, considering there's barely any recordings from that era but plenty of photos!
(On a side note, as I didn't speak or understand English that well when I started listening to them, I learnt all the lyrics with occasional slight variations such as "For the benefit of MYSTIC EYE". I also thought that "fixing a hole" meant staring at a hole since "fixer" means "to stare"...)

7. I can make a mean sucre à la crème with sea salt topping!

And I would like to pass on this award to the authors of the following blogs:

Lola Is Beauty

Fieldguided

Are You Awake?

The Ugly Earring

Ringo, Have a Banana!

Hannah + Landon

Discotheque Confusion

Photo: self-portrait taken with disposable camera. I'm wearing my mum's old dress from the 70's!

At the moment I

I haven't posted series of photos that inspire me for a while here, and I missed it. I thus scoured through the 'Parentheses Images Archives' (and trust me, they deserve such a name, they are quite extensive) and chose the photos that represented what inspires me the most at the moment. In fact, I found so many of them that I'll have to cut this post in a few sections! On with the first series...

I. Bookshelves, or how to organise books

As you might already know, even though my first langauge is French, I am an English Literature student. You might also already know that I live with my boyfriend, who also happens to be an English Lit./Creative Writing student (but he does not speak French fluently hehe). Another thing you might know is that I'm quite a good thrift shopper. Something you might not know is that so is my boyfriend. Especially with books. Whatever knowledge I have of fabrics, he has of publishing houses: I can recognise real wool in miles of acrylic, he can spot the 'good' publishing houses amongst a sea of harlequins. We have no problems storing clothing, that's fine and alright, but we're starting to have a little 'book problem'. This means that we've been attempting to squeeze a third bookshelf in our tiny living room for the past few days, and no matter where we put it, our living room looks like an over-stocked bookstore. I've been thinking about putting shelves up to the ceiling and down the corridor as well, but I'm pretty sure we'll have to move out in a little over a year (our roommate, his brother, might move out) so it probably wouldn't be worth it. Any suggestions (other than getting rid of the books--we do both read and lend them enough to own them, I promise!) about dealing with massive amounts of books would be welcome.

P.S. Does it show I'm almost done all my papers, and have one whole free week to write my last one?

Photos: 1?, 2, 3?, 4?, 5?, 6?. (If you know any of the original sources/photographers, please let me know-I would very much like to give credit where it's due!)

Weather, of course!

Today was one of the nicest days of this year so far. I am slowly getting over my mountain of essays, and writing papers and reading when the window's open and that the air smells like Spring and falling in love really isn't so bad. I stopped at my Uni's library in the afternoon, barefoot in my flats for the first time of the year. Scouring through the film criticism and literature sections always delights me; I want to take everything home with me. This afternoon, to add to my delight, the old books were smelling better and stronger than ever, you could smell them just by quickly passing by the shelves. Anyone else rediscovering everything as the weather gets nicer?

Photo by me!

Two

Two--unrelated?--things I appreciate at the moment: 1. My new coat (thrifted, from the 60's, 'proudly union-made' and 3$!) and its lining:

The lining is too beautiful to hide, don't you think?

2. Graham Greene's The Third Man, the movie. I read the book last summer and recommend it as well. Both the screenplay and the book were written by Greene--he adapted the book from his original screenplay--but while the movie concentrates more on the action and the plotline, the book format allows to give the story more background, more information on postwar Vienna. The movie is available in full on youtube, if you would like to see it: