In a recent home and personal style feature, Refinery29.com gave a tour of wardrobe stylist Shirley Kurata’s Los Angeles home including her awesome hat and art book collection that would be the envy of many girls. Although familiar with much of her work, I never knew the name of the stylist behind these amazing editorials. Kurata has done styling for such big designer labels as Rodarte, Oliver Peoples, and Peter Jensen, as well as worked with creative individuals like Zooey Deschanel, Miranda July, and Jenny Lewis. With her 60’s mod-style and mid-century modern home Kurata takes me back to my favorite era. From the great mustard yellow couch sitting atop a large wooden base to the Jean-Luc Godard movie posters, I love every detail in this 60’s dream home.
Bonus: A few samples of Kurata’s styling work for editorials. All photography shot by Autumn de Wilde.
To read the full interview Refinery29.com did with Shirley Kurata and more pictures of her home click here. And to see more of her work go here.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I really listened to some Jimi Hendrix– sadly, it’s been awhile. But in honor of his birthday today I thought I’d share one of my favorite songs of his. I remember several years ago when for a good week or so this song was all I listened to for hours at a time. Listening to it again now I remember why.
“I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
Day after Thanksgiving “I am thankful for” post: The thing I want more than anything out of my life is to matter– to make a small difference in making the world a better place for others. So, this year I am thankful for the people in my life who make me want to be a better person and allow me to be a part of their life.
When I’m feeling especially crappy about the outlook of my live, I like to look at the above note that a friend of mine randomly scribbled for me in class. It always makes me feel better and reminds me that I matter to someone.
Also, I am thankful to you for reading this. Please know that it means a lot to me.
Continuing with my recently renewed interest in poetry, I wanted to share one of my favorite poems/poets. All of Chilean Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” is excellent but I especially like XX: “Tonight I Can Write,” the final poem of the twenty he writes for his lover. Love, whether true, failed, or unrequited, is the central reoccurring subject of all art and here Neruda uses it to write about the pain that comes with the end of a relationship. The poem is simple in it’s delivery but complex in the emotion involved. The theme and emotions expressed in the poem are not quite novel but the way Neruda conveys them is really something beautiful and special.
XX
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
XV
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.
As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.
And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.
Bonus: Brazilian Girls- “Me Gusta Cuando Callas” (inspired by “Poem XV” from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
Fun Fact: Pablo Neruda, whose birth name is Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, would always write in green ink because he associated the color with life and “esperanza” (hope).
To read the full interview Refinery29.com did with Shirley Kurata and more pictures of her home click here. And to see more of her work go here.
iamtryingtobreakyourheart 
