To Do list №16 March

March is the month I was born and I truly love March. Perhaps I am biased? There is something very positive in the air, a peek of spring, colorful flowers and beautiful rains (although here in LA we have been in a pretty terrible drought, praying for more rain!) 

So for March, here is your poem, my favourite poem and poet- Rumi.  Let it move you and help guide you this month as it has guided me since my 20's.

A Great Wagon

Rumi

When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.

In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.

You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside
are lame!

~

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

~

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

~

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

~

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.

But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.

~

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Troop Beverly Hills

The first time I can remember falling in love with fashion was watching Troop Beverly Hills. The puffy sleeves made their mark in my brain and stayed with me forever. While this movie is riddled with problematic themes that would and should never appear in films today, it is still exceptionally nostalgic and funny. It's also an almost exclusively female cast, what a rarity! Even more rare-  a slightly diverse cast in a 1990's Hollywood produced coming of age film.

While it works better as a children's movie it is marked PG due to smoking, and it was ripped apart by the critics (mostly men. AHEM Ebert) I still love it and disagree with many of the reviews, I find it touching in more ways than one. From a young age I was a super fashion loving girly girl who also loved competition, tech, leading groups, building, snails and slugs, bike riding and feminism. It was one of the first films that told me it was normal for girly girls to be multi faceted. "Girly-girl" womxn are incredibly complex, interesting, fun and empathetic. There need to be more stories about girls loving girls, and girls who love fashion!

Head writer, Ava Ostern Fries, wife of veteran producer Charles W. Fries, became the Brownie leader of her seven-year-old daughter's Beverly Hills troop. When it rained on their first camping trip, they really went to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where they roasted marshmallows in front of the fireplaces. After her stories became a hit at dinner parties, Ava was implored to write her stories down.

Carla Gugino was 16 years old when she auditioned for Troop Beverly Hills. She lied and said she was 14. She finally admitted the truth to director Jeff Kanew three weeks into production, knowing it was too late for her role to be recast. "I thought for sure he was gonna be like, 'No big deal,'" Gugino recounted. "But he was like, 'Gasp! I would've never hired you if I knew you were 16.'"

The film was a turning point for Gugino: "I got emancipated that year, so I was a legal adult," Gugino told The A.V. Club. "So I didn’t have to have a chaperone on set, and it was the first time that I made enough money that I could say, 'I’m going to fully support myself as an actor.' So that was the moment I really felt like a real actor."

Dangerous Angels; The Weetzie Bat series

Weetzie made an incredible impact on me. I read the first Weetzie Bat book about 3 years after moving to LA, and it made me fall in love with the city. It was a turning point where LA went from being a strange new world to being filled with magic and stories. This fairytale written by genius, Francesca Lia block, is about a young punk rock LA pixie chick who finds a genie in a lamp. It changes her life forever, and the people she meets along the way will change yours, too. Here are some enchanting quotes;

“He kissed her. A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs.” 

“You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my 'Hollywood in Miniature,' my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up.” 

“What sexual preference do you hope she has?” “Happiness.” Isnt that cool?” 

“My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,' says Witch Baby in a dream.

'Everyone does,' Angel Juan says. 'My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

High Tea

Ok so we can't go to Sketch, London, (unless you are in the London in which case you can support them in this terrible time and have it delivered: https://shop.sketch.london/pages/sketch-at-home) but we can make our own at home! There are so many great recipes for tea sandwiches, buy little cakes from a local baker, pick up some pretty teas or order some from your favourite business to support them, and host your very own high tea with your bubble mate.

Choose wine, champagne or bubbly water pairings to go with it! 

I was just 12 years old when I saw Tracy Emin's bed at the Tate. It was 1999 and I was back visiting England with my mother, we were sharing the art together, turning and studying each amazing installation with wonder. But when we came to The Bed I turned in surprise to see she was disgusted by the piece. "Not art" she declared. It was a turning point for me, a monumental change where something subconscious suddenly became very real- womxn can be disgusting. It is such a simple acknowledgment, it should not be shocking by any means, yet it has been a privilege denied to us since... forever? To suffer, to grieve, to be hideous, to be sexual, to be gross this is a human right! Even as a young girl I understood why Tracy's bed was in a museum, because it wasn't ok to be "dirty" it would be a theme I'd fight the rest of my life, and especially into my rebellious, boozy, "slutty" teens.

Love her or hate her, you cannot deny it makes an impact.

"When Tracey Emin aired her dirty laundry in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, she set a new standard for confessional art. She conceived of the installation, titled My Bed(1998), after a long, bedridden bender following a bad break-up. When Emin finally left her sheets, she examined the mess she’d created. Crumpled tissues, period-stained clothing, cigarettes, empty vodka bottles, a pregnancy test, lubricant, and condoms surrounded her bed.She decided it was a work of art. "

Agreed.

The Water Baby French Puff Dress, Organdy

Dropping tomorrow, for my birthday, It's Selkie's first silk organdy puff. 

This gorgeous, true baby blue French puff dress feels made for royalty. It is 75% soft, crisp cotton and 25% organdy silk for voluminous puffs. Organdy has a slight sheen and vintage 1930's hand feel.