The Muji Store In Nyc Is So Cute

We dream in colors so vivid, bright hues shade our thoughts. Vibrant tones seep into our voices and my words seem to be tinged blue.

“Sad” remnant-thoughts (via remnant-thoughts)

Luna Lamp by Acorn Studio

Taiwanese design firm Acorn Studio has created a series of 7 different size lamps clled Luna, which mimic the beauty of the moon. Similar in color and shape, Luna is a hand crafted dimmable halogen light, which contains adjustable luminosity settings. 

The aim of the lamp and its symbolic representation serves to set an atmospheric setting in every room it is placed.

Chemistry Crayons Represent the Hue of Each Chemical Element

Independent boutique Que Interesante prides themselves in creating a union where art and science meet. The artist’s goal is to create an everyday children’s object into an educational and fun experience. She gives each color, its designated chemical element label under the flame test. For example, when lithium undergoes the flame test, it creates a red flame; thus the red crayon is renamed to “Lithium,” the color of an apple.

Instead of naming each crayon after the ordinary colors we have come to learned since childhood, she instills a chemistry experiment, where color theory is far more fun and intelligent. With chemistry expertise and careful attention, she appoints each crayon’s color its appropriate chemical label.

She confesses: “Children play and draw with crayons practically every day, so why not make the experience more educational? This listing is for a set of 48 labels to stick in the crayons in a basic 48 pack of crayons so that while children are coloring, they are also exposed to the names of chemicals that will make those colors! So instead of thinking ‘I want green’ they will think ‘I want Barium Nitrate Ba(NO3)2 Flame’ and then when they take chemistry in high school and their teacher sets some gas on fire and it makes a green color and they ask the class what chemical it was your student will know it was Barium! Genius!”

Find the entire collection of crayons in her Etsy shop.

Toad Words

            Frogs fall out of my mouth when I talk. Toads, too.

            It used to be a problem.

            There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.

            So I got frogs. It happens.

            “You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”

            I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.

            Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.

            Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.

I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening.  I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.

            Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.

            Toads are masters of it.

            I learned one day that the amphibians are going extinct all over the world, that some of them are vanishing. You go to ponds that should be full of frogs and find them silent. There are a hundred things responsible—fungus and pesticides and acid rain.

            When I heard this, I cried “What!?” so loudly that an adult African bullfrog fell from my lips and I had to catch it. It weighed as much as a small cat. I took it to the pet store and spun them a lie in writing about my cousin going off to college and leaving the frog behind.

            I brooded about frogs for weeks after that, and then eventually, I decided to do something about it.

            I cannot fix the things that kill them. It would take an army of fairy godmothers, and mine retired long ago. Now she goes on long cruises and spreads her wings out across the deck chairs.

            But I can make more.

            I had to get a field guide at first. It was a long process. Say a word and catch it, check the field marks. Most words turn to bronze frogs if I am not paying attention.

            Poison arrow frogs make my lips go numb. I can only do a few of those a day. I go through a lot of chapstick.  

            It is a holding action I am fighting, nothing more. I go to vernal pools and whisper sonnets that turn into wood frogs. I say the words squeak and squill and spring peepers skitter away into the trees. They begin singing almost the moment they emerge.

            I read long legal documents to a growing audience of Fowler’s toads, who blink their goggling eyes up at me. (I wish I could do salamanders. I would read Clive Barker novels aloud and seed the streams with efts and hellbenders. I would fly to Mexico and read love poems in another language to restore the axolotl. Alas, it’s frogs and toads and nothing more. We make do.)

            The woods behind my house are full of singing. The neighbors either learn to love it or move away.

            My sister—the one who speaks gold and diamonds—funds my travels. She speaks less than I do, but for me and my amphibian friends, she will vomit rubies and sapphires. I am grateful.

            I am practicing reading modernist revolutionary poetry aloud. My accent is atrocious. Still, a day will come when the Panamanian golden frog will tumble from my lips, and I will catch it and hold it, and whatever word I spoke, I’ll say again and again, until I stand at the center of a sea of yellow skins, and make from my curse at last a cloth of gold.

Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…

Raise your hand if you started off as an overachiever and now you’re fighting off crippling anxiety and depression as you watch people catch up and surpass you while you watch your own grades slowly slip

oh my deary have i done something wrong that i have lost all your affection

have i wronged you or have i wronged myself

Abandoned Castle Photography by Martino Zegwaard 

Martino Zegwaard’s recent photography series Castello di S explores the beauty of abandoned castles and their majestic architecture. He has kept the locations of the heavily ornated buildings anonymous to heighten the mystery and luxury of each design. Although the rooms are empty, the sculpted ceilings, arches, opulent rooms and stunning mosaic designs reveal an obvious magnificence and luxury through architecture alone. 

His eyes loosely focused on the stoplight, but I knew he couldn’t care less when it turned green. “I’m getting tired of this,” he said still looking at the red in front of him. He wasn’t talking about the light anymore; the colors were going to change, but we both knew she never would.

excerpt from my life #52: my dad keeps wondering when things will change // a.c. (via bye-starlight)