When Sweetheart and I went down to Puerto Rico for his dear friend’s wedding to a native Puertorriqueña, we made the good choice to hang around for a few days after. Fortified with strange savory pastries dusted with powdered sugar and strong dark coffee on our way out of San Juan, we headed to the interior. Trekking into El Yunque rainforest to spend the night off the grid in a cabin perched atop a mile high mountain that used to be a tropical fruit farm=good plan. Upon our arrival, we each got a crooked walking stick and hiked up the jungle switchbacks, stopping along the way to pick camandula seeds (which the native Taina ladies used to string as necklaces) arriving at our cabin—tin roofed and on stilts—as the sun was setting. Our host- a sort of Apocalypse-Now-Roger-Sterling- showed us the machete (labeled “guest machete”), gave us this map, and melted into the underbrush. We made fire, cooked meat, peppers and rice, drank rum, played backgammon by candlelight, slept in hammocks, took rainforest rainwater showers and, when the nighttime thunderstorms broke into dawn, we followed the map to the Cubuy River falls. Not all those who wander are lost, but it helps if you have a map.
Category: Adventures
Coney Island Love Letter
On this rainy Brooklyn day, what could be better than a little Coney Island Love? I’ve been a believer ever since Sweetheart’s dad bought me my first chow mein sandwich (a bizarre Brooklyn food tradition proffered by a third generation Brooklyner? Perfect.*) after two rounds of re-rides on The Cyclone a few summers ago. Maybe it’s the continued (de)construction, the shuttering of classics like the El Dorado Bumper Cars, or just a pang of tangible nostalgia for a history I’ve only brushed up against, but this lovely love letter seems just the right amount of bittersweet.
*reminiscent of the time Sweetheart smuggled a Yonah Shimmel’s kasha knish into the Sunshine Cinema on our second date. Eating my first knish in the dark, it was sort of like the blind men and the elephant… until he handed me the mustard.
gorgeous video from the brilliant geniuses at Land of Nod. I dare you not to watch, like, all of their videos right. now.
Love Locks
From the amazing team that brought you Murmurations, here is a darling little video about Rome’s “love locks”. A new tradition on a 2000 year old bridge, lovers write their names on a lock, affix it to chains spanning the TIber, and symbolically and grandiosely toss the key into the river. Ahh Rome, how I love you.
thanks to dear Sara for the heads up.
Live Art
Sweetheart’s dear friend Jared is known for throwing legendary parties. Sweetheart and I actually kissed for the first time after one of his rooftop soirees that featured a bamboo forest and a margarita machine. Needless to say, when Jared is in charge, love is in the air. So, when we headed south to his bride’s hometown, Rincón, Puerto Rico, for their wedding, we knew that it would probably be pretty epic. The whole shebang was absolutely impeccable, gorgeous, perfect, and seemingly effortless- from the fresh coconuts macheted open and filled with rum to the (literally) world caliber reggae band to the peonies and frangipani covering every surface to the… live painting. The brother of the groom flew this incredibly talented artist down and she created the painting above during the wedding reception. This was exactly what it looked like- hanging lanterns, orchids, giant copper pool of waterlilies in the middle of the dancefloor, the last of a sunset sky through nesting colonial arches framing the chuppah and going out to sea. Seeing the painting come together during the night was really, really cool. Naturally a wedding in a tropical paradise with a cast of good looking, photogenic, and wild characters makes for a good time, but who knew it made for good art? Maravilloso.
Read more about the artist, Katherine Gressel, and her process here.
Garden Party
Sweetheart and I just returned from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s amazing annual plant sale with this little red wagon load of delectable goodies for the backyard! Early Girls and Kirby Cukes, Packman Broccoli and Medusa Peppers, Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavande de Provence… like all gardeners at the beginning of the season, out wagon brims almost more with hope than with bounty. Luckily my ever-lovin-horticultural Mama is coming next week for any course correction if we city mice have bitten off more strawberries than we can chew.
ps. I always love the Botanic Garden, every time you go it’s different depending on the weather and the season. Today, the bluebell wood was in bloom. 
After last night’s hard rain, the trees were silent except for the occasional drop of water and the flowers were like a quiet sea. It was truly beautiful.
Ghost Party
For Miss McKay’s birthday she threw a Ghost Party in the sea islands. All in attendance were asked to choose and channel one of the many spirits of Cumberland, the most mystical and undoubtedly magical tide and mist limned island of the lot. This was certainly cause for a most unearthly celebration. We went to the boneyard and gathered armadillo skulls, deer jawbones, and miscellaneous backbones from the woods, and, like all good ghosts, everyone had a bone necklace and placecard.
We went into the saw palmettos, foraged mossy branches and long fronds and festooned the room with bones, vines, and spanish moss.
We dressed as timacuan squaws and revolutionary war generals, the ghosts of great great uncles and bastard octoroon daughters, as ghost dans, zoave blockade runners, french pirates, notorious brides, and wayward travelers. The birthday girl herself went as fierce and beautiful Aunt Lucy who answered to no one and rode her horse with a crow on her shoulder, and Miss Mia made our portraits. 
We ate shrimp and grits, drank champagne and rum, and played music and danced mystically into the night. It was perfection.
So much love and supernatural joy to Miss McKay on this occasion of her birthday.
And infinite thanks and sharkteethbrujaja to the divinely talented Miss Mia Baxter, timacuan squaw and photographer extroidanairess, for the majority of these stunning images.
And We’re Off!
Ta Ta For Now, dear ones! Sweetheart and I are heading to tropical locales, turquoise waters, and sweet funky and spicy rum cocktails. So, I’ll bid you adieu for a bit…
In my absence and in the spirit of adventure, exploration, wanderlust, and the ever quickening pulses we’re all feeling due to the rising temperatures of summer, please enjoy a MIXTAPE I made you guys. A Feather by Feather first, this one is meant to be played with the windows down, wherever you are and wherever you’re going. It’s called Breezes Kiss Collarbone. Click to download and please share! Besos!
awesome porsche image from here.
Getting The Spirit
Up several flights of stairs into a small but airy blue sanctuary with high windows, the singing hasn’t started, but the drums and organ are warming up, seats full and pews stocked with paper fans from the local funeral home. Needless to say, getting the spirit raises temperatures. Amen. This Saturday I met Carrie up in Harlem for the fourth annual gospel choir festival at the Elmendorf Reformed Church. Our friend Laura was singing, the proceeds went to autism research, and the noise promised to be joyous unto the lord and anyone else who might be listening. The church itself (now in its fifth home uptown) was founded 350 years ago, and, as the MC Elder Kevin Spooner said “it feels like some of us have been here that long”. Amen. Four choirs. Organ, piano, bass, drums.The crowd instructed to sing out if the spirit moved us, and moved we were. And afterwards, we waltzed out into the warm Saturday Harlem night to Sylvia’s for fried chicken. Amen. 
Sayings of a Jewish Buddah
My Mama sent this along, equal parts bad cocktail party joke and it’s-so-simple-it-just-may-be-the-ultimate-truth brilliance:
Sayings of a jewish buddah: Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
Trying to live it. Shantih Shalom.
ps. isn’t that just what a jewish buddah would look like?
pps. big doins in the backyard, the JB and I drove to Westchestah yesterday to pick up a long wooden trestle table with benches…for free! Will keep posted. In the meantime, stay zen.
New York, I Love You
This weekend we have dear friends visiting from down south, a pair of bon vivant and raconteur travelers who’ve found themselves in the flats of Iowa, the mountains of Virginia, and the deep pines of Athens, Georgia- all for the pursuit of knowledge. Though they live among the rolling country hills right now, the countdown is on for the end of their bucolic tenure and their subsequent carbetbag transatlantic move to London. There couldn’t be a better time to show them our New York. She’s tricking herself out in flowers and opening her arms as she always does for spring wanderers. And, in making plans for their arrival, I’m reminded that the best way to fall back in love with your own city is to show off her best sides to someone you love.
On the docket: Sichuan in Bay Ridge, a visit to MoMa, a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and a brown bag picnic at the carousel, dinner at Roman’s, The first session of the Brooklyn Flea back outdoors, the opening of the Dekalb Market, Passover Seder with Sweetheart’s family, lunch at Spumoni Gardens, a trip to Coney Island to ride the soon-to-be-closed-Sweetheart’s-childhood-favorite Eldorado AutoSkooter Bumper Cars, A trek either to Arthur Avenue or to Staten Island for Italian delights, and Michael Daves at Rockwood.
Chag sameach, thank you New York, and may everyone have a marvelous weekend.
Gorgeous top image: Ernst Haas, Central Park, Spring, 1970
from the awesome ICP photography blog.
Feather By Feather 