Documentation.

Yesterday was a day at the Races with some good bitches. 

Along with pouring empty wine bottles, grammin' selfies, banter on the male creatures and moments by which only channel can make braces look utterly cool, one topic  has stuck.

That topic is that by 2015 something utterly fabulous will have happened. What that thing is exactly, we are not so certain. But it is the date before anticipated travel between one of said good bitches and I. She will do something out of the blue and I will do something out of the red.

Letters from Famous Authors to their Children.

If you are reading this, you may as well stop.
Just go straight here.

If you're still reading this, then you clearly need more motivation to get there.

There being, Adorable Letters from Famous Authors to their Children.

It is quite possibly the most lovely thing I've seen since watching that french collection clip a while back.

Reading these letters from such authors naturally, have no words to describe them.

You must read away, get lost in them and imagine what life both the child and the author lived in.

 If you're too lazy to go to the link, here's two of my favourite letters:

I would reccomend listening to this while reading them...

From F. Scott Fitzgerald to his 11-year-old daughter Scottie, while she was away at camp, 1933:

La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge
Towson, Maryland

August 8, 1933

Dear Pie:

I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy — but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed pages, they never really happen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs “Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up a Saturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you call me “Pappy” again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?

I will arrange the camp bill.

Halfwit, I will conclude.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about Cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Worry about. . .

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy

P.S. My come-back to your calling me Pappy is christening you by the word Egg, which implies that you belong to a very rudimentary state of life and that I could break you up and crack you open at my will and I think it would be a word that would hang on if I ever told it to your contemporaries. “Egg Fitzgerald.” How would you like that to go through life with — “Eggie Fitzgerald” or “Bad Egg Fitzgerald” or any form that might occur to fertile minds? Try it once more and I swear to God I will hang it on you and it will be up to you to shake it off. Why borrow trouble?

Love anyhow.

From John Steinbeck to his teenage son, Thom, who had written of his feelings for a girl at boarding school, 1958:

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

One simply does walk into Mordor.

I think these creatures are absolutely fabulous. 

A series of amateur youtube episodes dedicated to proving young Boromir's statement...

...wrong.

These two young wannabe Shire folk are a perfect example of what we should be doing with our lives.

And by that I do not necessarily mean travelling to New Zealand to challenge a fictional statement resulting in physically mimicing a story line.

But instead living an unexpected journey by means of whatever inspires you.

Mission from Good to Awesome.

Oh Charlie's, not only do I completely love you for who you are *insert gulp here, but your kind garden-of-eden-esque generosity in Ponsonby Central last weekend, truly made me yours forever.

Experiential campaign or not, I am yours.

ps. I like your font. 

Documentation.

I love documenting moments. I will not stop. No matter how many Nickelback soundtracks are made that make me laugh at myself for how ridiculously accurate such a song can represent how much a digital fad takes over and becomes embedded into my reality.

I just can't help but be a part of something that lets me document every moment and elaborate it to a point where it is close to capturing the real thing. Or in some cases I shall admit probably makes things seem a tad  more delightfully aesthetic then what they seem.

But I'm an ad kid, what would you expect? 

It would be blasphemy for me to excuse new fads out of my life.

Right?