26 Friday Nov 2010
Posted in Fashion, Photography, Reflections
≈ Comments Off on Beautiful Aspirations…
© Moja Ma’at
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. – Henry Ford
Amidst the bustle of holiday festivities and competing obligations, try not to lose sight of what is important to you.
Model – Micha Borodaev
25 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Photography, Reflections, Writing
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© Joan Currie
Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.
W.J. Cameron
At dawn on Thanksgiving I set out on a road trip to pick up my eldest daughter so that she could join us for our family dinner. Although I was not particularly enthusiastic about doing the six hour drive, as I wanted to stay home to prepare food for our big dinner, I decided to make the best of it.
As it turned out, there was hardly any traffic, the scenery in the morning light was breathtaking, and I was captivated by a CD that I had wanted to hear for some time. The return drive gave my daughter and me a rare opportunity for uninterrupted dialog about her life plans and sharing humorous travel tales. To top it off, when we arrived home, her sisters had prepared the entire feast by themselves and all we had to do was sit down and enjoy it. All in all, despite my initial apprehensions, it turned out to be one of my very best Thanksgivings!
23 Tuesday Nov 2010
Posted in Food, Photography, Reflections, Writing
≈ Comments Off on Inner Voice…
Tags
Inner Voice, Lauren DiMarco, Maya Angelou, Moja Maat, Photography, Relationships, Self-help, Writing
© Moja Ma’at
The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Maya Angelou
The inner voice is a beautiful thing. If heeded, it can act like a Geiger counter to detect potentially harmful situations. In really serious situations it may seem to shout, but at other times, say at the beginning of a relationship, it may be perceived as a whisper. Heed it all the same, regardless of the intensity.
Consider this relatively benign, perhaps trite, but nevertheless heartbreaking example. I had the pleasure of meeting a man for the first time over brunch. He seemed smart, savvy, sexy, and we even ordered the same item on the menu – waffles with strawberries. I was so captivated by his charming stories, particularly the one with a spot-on Elvis imitation, that I did not pay attention to my food.
When he paused to eat, I glanced down at our place settings. His plate was perfectly organized – the strawberries had been quartered and arranged neatly in the upper left quadrant while the waffles were perfectly stacked and he was cutting them with the precision and intensity of a neurosurgeon along the grid lines and then dipping them in a small pool of maple syrup that clung to one side of the plate. My plate, on the other hand, was a mess compared to his! It had not even occurred to me to try to impress him by following suit and putting the food in some sort of geometric pattern or order as I consumed it.
At that moment, my inner voice told me that the relationship was a non-starter – that it was doomed to fail. I chose to ignore it, despite the fact that it had never failed me in the past.
Over time we discovered many commonalities, but we also discovered many differences. Our diametrically opposed skill sets might have complimented each other, but in our case his rigidity that I flagged in the first encounter translated into an inflexible attitude toward problem solving and intolerance for other points of view. Close, but no cigar was his assessment of the relationship and he was right! We both chose to pursue other situations, but I regret that I squandered several precious years with him when I might have directed my energies toward finding a better match.
22 Monday Nov 2010
Posted in Photography, Travel
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© Joan Currie - Nantucket Wharf
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
Thornton Wilder
When I lived in Boston, Nantucket was my favorite place to vacation. I liked to rise early to capture dawn’s first light.
20 Saturday Nov 2010
Posted in Fashion, Photography, Reflections, Writing
≈ Comments Off on Gift of Time…
Tags
Beauty, Death, Emily Dickinson, Lauren DiMarco, Memoir, Moja Maat, Self-help, Writing
© Moja Ma’at
Because I would not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Emily Dickinson
I remember sitting at my bedroom desk trying to analyze a poem for a ninth grade English class. As I gazed outside the window for inspiration, I saw that dusk had painted the sky a brilliant conch shell pink and a pale lavender blanket of snow cloaked the ground, save for a grove of birch trees whose silhouette looked like tall paper dolls pressed together in conversation.
At that moment I had the terrifying realization that death would come calling one day. I tried to grapple with the notion that I would not continue in my mind and body for eternity. My view of the world changed on that mid-November afternoon at the tender age of thirteen. Even though I was doomed to see things through the glass darkly as it were, from that day forth, what I did behold was with passion, amazement, and wonder.
At middle age, almost against my will, I have revisited that landscape of my youth. I am grateful for another opportunity to consider my mortality and make choices that will enhance my life as I begin a new chapter.
Time is the most valuable, but diminishing, asset I have. I am now very careful about with whom I give and receive the gift of time. I do not engage in personal relationships that are not joyful, loving, or satisfying and I aspire to have at least one positive experience each and every day.
You, too, can give yourself the gift of time – it is never too late to make a change!
© Moja Ma’at
Model – Lauren DiMarco
18 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Art, Photography
≈ Comments Off on Beautiful Aspens & Birches…
Throughout history forests and trees have been places of refuge and retreats from the world where one goes to renew one’s self. There is also a sense of steadfastness that comes from tall tress that will stand the storms that will circle around them. – Sotheby’s catalog
Lawren Harris’s painting, Algonquin Birches, will be offered at Sotheby’s sale of Important Canadian Art on November 23, 2010. It is estimated that Harris, one of the Group of Seven, probably painted this work around 1914 in Algonquin Park about 137 miles north of Toronto, Canada. His color palette of sky blue, mustard yellow, white, purple, dark green and red is stunning.
The birches in Harris’ painting remind me of the smaller and less sturdy aspens that I photographed on a drive through Independence Pass en route to Aspen, Colorado.
15 Monday Nov 2010
Posted in Fashion, Photography, Reflections, Writing
≈ Comments Off on Mitzpah…
Tags
Antonio Genovia, beautiful, Beauty, Fashion Photography, Lauren DiMarco, Memoir, Mitzpah, Oleg Galagan, Omar Sharif, Photography, The Far Pavilions, Writing
© Antonio Genovia
Making love? It’s a communion with a woman. The bed is a holy table. There I find passion and purification. – Omar Sharif
Over the weekend I watched the TV mini series, The Far Pavilions, staring Ben Cross, Amy Irving, and Omar Sharif. Based on Mary Margaret Kaye’s 1978 novel of the same name, this epic romance was set in India during the British Raj or rule.
Early on in the story, the protagonist, Aston Pelham-Martyn (aka Ashok), received a gift of a mother-of-pearl charm from his childhood friend, Anjuli, a half-caste princess. Because he had nothing to offer her, he broke the trinket in half and gave her back a piece of it, promising to return one day and thus making it whole again.
The scene sparked the memory that I, too, had received half of an amulet many years ago. I rushed to my jewelry box and tucked away in a tiny velvet pouch was my part of a silver Mitzpah medallion. I could discern some of the words from Genesis on the back of it, “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from the other.”
Receiving a Mitzpah in college was akin to a pre-engagement promise. There was an expectation that although we might go our separate ways for a time, we would one day be together again and so would the two pieces of our Mitzpah.
Unlike the characters in The Far Pavilions who, despite one obstacle after the other, succeeded in reuniting, our paths never crossed again. For me, the new-found Mitzpah now serves as a touchstone for many wonderful memories from years gone by.
My half of the Mitzpah.
Models – Lauren DiMarco & Oleg Galagan
04 Thursday Nov 2010
Posted in Crafts, Fashion, Photography, Reflections, Writing
Tags
Beading, Crafts, George Elliot, Memoir, Murano beads, Photography, Venice, Writing
© Joan Currie - Murano necklace
These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of. George Elliot
I have a penchant for necklaces fashioned from handmade Venetian Murano beads. The multi-strand emerald and maroon necklace above was made with disc-shaped aventurine beads embedded with speckles of gold.
The more whimsical and delicate necklace below, given to me by my mother, was designed using several cylindrical black Wedding cake beads enhanced with glass overlays of pink roses, gold swirls, and blue dots.
Necklace with Black Wedding Cake Beads
24 Sunday Oct 2010
Posted in Art, Reflections
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© Yanko Tihov – Two Umbrellas
The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The rainy season has arrived in the San Francisco area. I love donning my rain slicker,
Wellingtons, and with red umbrella in hand, walking in the Stanford hills.
© Yanko Tikov – One Red Umbrella
24 Sunday Oct 2010
© Joan Currie
Toque or tuque def: a woman’s small hat without a brim made in any of various soft-fitting shapes.
I watched Love Story again last night after many years. I was still enchanted by the scene in which Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal frolick in the snow in Harvard Yard – making angels, slipping and falling, and kissing (she even licked the snow off his check). I developed a penchant for wool toques after that movie – forever associating them with the beautiful, but tragic, Jennifer Cavalleri character. Shortly thereafter, I learned how to knit and crochet the hats using rich variegated yarns in blue, purple, and red.
The French mohair toques are my favorite and I have collected several over the years from my trips to Vancouver. They are so beautifully crafted that I consider them wearable art.
Model – Lauren DiMarco
Satin & Sand 