Austria to Hollywood: frequency hopping

We're going to head back in time, some 60-odd years. We find ourselves in Austria. A stunning brunette at the dinner table. Her husband—a brooding armaments manufacturer—plucked her from a modest film career after seeing her nude body in Exstase and set her up in his home. Classic misreading of the depth of the beauty. He is going over some figures with the German Chancellor. She realizes that within five years something rather awful is going to sweep over her beloved countryside. The inner fibers of her brain have cemented a vague outline for a plan, and with that in tow, she flees to Paris and flies to Hollywood. Another classic misreading—to America she becomes one of the lesser known glamour starlets of the mid-century.

But to some, she is a divine combination of refined dexterity.

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An ode to Hedy Lamarr.

Thailand via NYC: via pan seared duck breast

image via Blaise Machin

A thick cut of duck—savory and succulent, swimming in its pungent essence. In the distance I hear a shot as the morsel hits my belly, stillness in the marsh, one drop sends a lotus shivering.

Land Thai Kitchen
450 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10024
United States
+1.212.501.8121

and

1565 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10028
United States
+1.212.439.1616
landthaikitchen.com

Morocco: I choose the sun

posted by Jamila

shopping for carpets in Marrakech

Today I decided would be the day to shake out my carpets after a few months of wear. To the roof of my 6-floor walk-up I mounted, rug over shoulder, and shook the dusts of Marrakech, Iberia airlines, Rome, Florence, and New York in the cool air. My larger standard-sized rug proved to be a greater task than I anticipated, so in attempt to prevent its contact with the dirt of the tar roof I tiptoed, barefoot, onto the thin layer of snow that had otherwise stood still since it fell on Wednesday. I found myself in yet another precarious position (the story of my life): bare legs to the wind and feet numbing on the ice, fire-colored carpet heaped on top of me. The size of the carpet did not allow for much shaking, and its weight made shifting it off of my head and body difficult; I resolved to fold it in half, though its weight prevented me from doing much more than stand in the cold and hold it in the wind.

South of Morocco

Giggling underneath the rug, I recalled the carpets laid out on lines and in grasses in the south of Morocco: wet rugs, I presumed, catching air and sun to be refreshed. And here my rug was, piled on top of a half-nude body on a snow-laden roof in northeastern America, dangling, threads just touching the ice crystals that glinted in the morning light.

Sometimes when I used to think of my rugs—while I was in Europe and they in transit to America—I thought that when I finally made it home to them, I would lay down and cry. Cry for the woman who made them, for every frustration I felt as a woman in a foreign land, for everything I ever wanted in life and did not receive. For a while I longed to cry into my rugs and I never actually did. Rather than choosing to rain my problems onto my precious floor coverings, I chose the sun.


For your Moroccan rug needs:

Belhadj
El Bachir Adbeljalil
Vente des Tapis et des Kilims
93, Souk des Tapis
Rahba Lakdima - Marrakech
GSM: 062 15 37 11