The Whole World and Me

You Should Date an Illiterate Girl

By Charles Warnke

Date a girl who doesn't read. find her in a weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities, Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her int he rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you've seen it in a film. Remark its lack of significance, Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you've unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking, Let the months pass unnoticed  ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn't fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster, Do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate, If she cries, smile as if you've never been happier, If she doesn't, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house, Have two striking children. try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. lapse into an indifferent sadness. have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at you lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contended, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return., or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn't read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret than nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, dos damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled - a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. a vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. a girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses - the hesitation breath - endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. 

Date a girl who doesn't read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. she can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don't date a girl who reads because girls who read are the story tellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the cafe, you in the window of your room, You, who makes my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not, But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece, You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and life worthy of being storied, So out with you, girl who reads, Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Date a Girl Who Reads

By Rosemarie Urquico

(in response to the text above) 

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads, You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. if you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she's kind of engrossed already. lost in a world of the author's making, Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got though the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's just saying that to sound intelligent. ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in petry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she's going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind the words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to an end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. 

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close, When you find her up at 2 am clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours, but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kinds with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a gir who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the world's beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

I was first introduced to the concept of "Gypset" by one of the many amazing people I meet through my job. One of the creative forces behind the label Christophe Sauvat, Filipa de Abreu, presented this lifestyle to me to explain what was the inspiration behind the brand and its collections. Christophe and his family are true Gypsetters and the brand just exudes this aesthetic. You can check their website here (it's worth it!!!!)

I was immediately  in love with this chic, easy-breezy lifestyle where people mix high and low and are as comfortable at the Ritz as they are in an ashram in India. Moreover, when I saw the images of these Gypsetters I was more than intrigued... I wanted to be one of them!

Here are some of my favorite images from two books published about this fantastic lifestyle:

Gypset Style and Gypset Travel both by Julia Chaplin, published by Assouline.

It's romantic, bohemian and carefree. A perfect mix of the hippie days and modern age.

Maybe when I grow up I can join them... who knows?!

Going through a break up in a healthy and mature way seems to be so improbable that most of my friends seem to be waiting for me to fall apart at any moment. 

The questions "Are you ok? But are you really ok?" have been haunting me lately and I just want to say at the top of my lungs that I'm fine, seriously fine! Am I sad? Well, yes. But each day is a new day and things get easier and better. The fact is, I've already had the "bad break up phase" before and so, now, I'm just getting used to my new life and my new routines. 

I think the most difficult thing was really the latter: getting a new routine. But once you settle with a new schedule, things just start to move forward. 

So, honestly, please don't worry, because I'm really fine. More than fine, I'm certain of our decision and comfortable with my new life. I'm in this glorious new  process of finding myself and redefining my beliefs... It's scary, but also exciting. And although my feet do miss him every night in bed :), I'm slowly learning how to take this feeling and use it to move ahead and not backwards.

I love you all for caring so much and for all your worried phone calls and texts, but be sure that I'm really a Catwoman and I always land on my feet (even if I have to lay down on a corner and cry for a bit!). 

I love you and I thank you my dear friends :)

And for all of you out there going through something similar, breathe in and out... It will get easier!

I promise!

xx

This weekend I had great company in my bed: Grace Coddington and her very full life.

From her early years as a model, to her position as Creative Director at American Vogue, Grace takes us into a journey spanning decades and illustrating the evolution of fashion and its industry.

She's honest and direct, writing from her heart and without reservations, which I loved! 

Grace Coddington A Memoir is highly entertaining and very informative, and most of all, a testimony on  how much fashion has changed.  

If you're a fan, like I am, of her work, you will have the bonus of learning how some of her most amazing fashion shoots came to live. From her relationship with the several photographers she works with, like Steven Meisel, to her special relationship with Anna Wintour, this memoir tells it all!

Highly recommended for all fashion lovers!

When it comes to relationships, my whole point of view has changed. Drastically!

I'm a romantic, you know this! But my romantic view of relationships is sadly gone... don't really know if it will return! Furthermore, I've recently discovered that what I really crave in a relationship is not so much the romantic gestures, but real intimacy... something that is harder and harder to achieve.

One of my best friends told me years ago, after a 12 year relationship, that from then on we would never face a relationship the same way. You get hurt and you learn people tend to evolve, and not always in the same direction. And so, even though you may feel your relationship is forever and ever, one day you can realize it actually isn't. So he felt that when he eventually found someone, he would always be "afraid" and guarded, because experience has taught him nothing lasts forever. This doesn't mean he isn't romantic... He is, on his better days!, and very much in love with a gorgeous, wonderful girl. I hope they last forever...

However, now I know where he was coming from all those years ago. He was just playing it safe and wise. 

And that's what is happening to me ... I feel I will never look at a relationship the same way, it's a whole new world people! and nothing will be the same! I truly believed, with all my body and soul, that my last relationship was THE one. I was done. "happily ever after"? Checked! Done! Until it wasn't... 

If I can't trust my own feelings, how can I trust someone else's'? If I was so convinced, if I was so right and so wrong at the same time, how can I even begin to imagine I could ever have a relationship that will last forever?

Well, I won't have it. That's my answer. Forever is now and that's what really matters! We spend too much time planning, thinking we will have time to do everything we want, one day, some day... But that day may never come. So what's the solution? One day at the time, think in terms of "now" and not in terms of "tomorrow". And that's my new point of view... A new found wisdom I'm still trying on...

But one thing I can say with all my heart and mind: I still believe in love. And although I'm not sure when and if I will ever be ready for it, I hope I find it again!

xx