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Tag "Idaho"

All winter I ruminated on the past like a dog rolling over in something dead.

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Tentative mountains springs teach us that there is a boundary zone between the old life and the new. Snow clings on peaks. Lupine blossoms in the sage when it’s still cold enough for fox fur.

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In a sage forest the witch casts her spell.

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That some people will die before we can see where they came from.

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April in Hailey, Idaho. You can rock in the red chair on the front porch of the house Ezra Pound was born in.

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The Parallel is an imaginary line, invoked by signage. On one side we are closer to Helsinki, on the other side, Kuala Lumpur.

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In May we test the mountain roads. They are almost passable.

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And spring arrives like a Cymbalta ad, full of hyperbolic promises.

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turquoise sweatshirt: James Perse; teal green jeans: Russian Market, Phnom Penh; wool hat: Calvin Klein; Thai silk top: vintage; turtle amulet: Amulet Market, Bangkok; black cargo pants: Paige; black coat: Made in the Ukraine; Spanish riding boots: Frye; fox fur collared coat: charity shop, London

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Screen shot from lat34north.com:

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Photography: Ned Evett

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The FU Manchu ladies are back after a long winter’s nap! For three months we’ve been pigging on polenta fries and popping tags like Macklemore. But if you think not having a pot to piss in means looking bargain basement, think again.

Check out our YouTube for a peek at coming distractions from FU.

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Nothing beats a tea party to cure me of a bad case of March ides. For this shoot I grabbed two bolts of my best Balinese batik and headed out to Eagle, Idaho, to meet Ms. Kelly Lynae on her favorite horse ranch.

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And I’ll be damned if that girl doesn’t know her way around a safety pin! Kelly took my vintage batik swathes, procured from a tiny shop in Ubud, Bali, and swaddled the two of us in torqued elegance. I cast my bra aside because it’s April and time to let the minimalist fashion games begin.

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This was the moment I decided to hell with scarves. I transformed the natty red scarf I’d been tortoising around all winter into a plunging halter top. Kelly styled me in thrift store belt and then we tried our hand at interpretive dance.

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Why? Because we live in Idaho. Because I don’t own a TV or a salad spinner and most everything in the great Gem State, including entertainment, is DIY.

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And here are the lessons I took from the long, harsh winter:

1) You will fail along the way to creating something new.

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2) What other people think of you is none of your business.

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3) Do what you love every day. The secret to any great performance, after all, is muscle memory.

 

vintage Indonesian batik from Ubud, Bali; cotton scarf-cum-halter: India; 100-year-old Turkmen necklace: Armor Bijoux

Photography by Kelly Lynae

Videography by Ned Evett

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For her there were only two times: dawn and dusk.

At dusk she would take her insomnia to the old post office. She was dead tired of striving and crisis! She wanted to live in the land of Blake-light and emptiness, of PO boxes stuffed with gold doubloons, of civic hallways in which only her footfalls echoed back.

For her, the illogic and moral relativism of fairy tales had long felt true to life. The bony witch is named Esmerelda. You will find a cat that will try and scratch your eyes out–you must give it some ham. You will find hounds that will try and eat your feet–you must feed them some rolls. Having her expectations upended is what kept her moving.

Forward, backward, under, over. She had been waiting her whole life for something good to happen from which there would be no turning back.

“The creative struggle, my heart to your cause,” his text message read.

Hands were both alien and sexy. She worried she could not focus on more than one thing. She could either sleep or await his letter.

The deep lines in her face were from looking away. Suddenly, they were getting shorter. When his letter arrived it wasn’t a letter at all but a wax cylinder. There were two short lyrics penned on the plain brown wrapper: “They blew on the wax while I was singing. They blew on it and my voice stayed.”

Photography by Bethany Walter

hand of Fatima necklace: Morocco; batik skirt: vintage 70s, Jakarta; cashmere tanktop: charity shop, London; ballet flats: J. Crew; gold ring: who knows

 

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