(Source: weissesrauschen)

The pencil can be a mighty, mighty instrument. These fine writing implements come clad in black in a troupe of ten, now on the shop. Sharpen and spellbind the page, scriveners!

The Self Evident Truths Project aka iO Tillett Wright visited Portland yesterday in the quest to photograph absolutely anyone and everyone who falls on the LGBTQ spectrum in any way. Here’s one now, beaming away. Follow them around the country and see if they’re stopping in your town soon.

The grand old families of Long Island — the Buchanans of ‘East Egg’ — and their disdain for the flamboyant nouveau riche of ‘West Egg’ are the kingpin of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As you’ll know if you’ve read the book, or if you see the Baz Luhrmann adaptation — for which he wrote the screenplay in a loft suite at Ace Hotel New York — premiering today, West Egg’s prince of thieves is represented by the Prohibition-era rumrunner with an inferiority complex and a broken heart of gold, Jay Gatsby. Why would generations of Americans below tycoon-status be so drawn to a story in some ways so remote from their own lives, dealing as it does with an obtuse schism between rival factions of the over-privileged? Likely, it’s due to Jay Gatsby’s humble origins, and the shame he felt about them, coupled with his unrequited love — both of which make him universally relatable. He’s a prototype for the conflicted American social climber, most eloquently expressed today in hip hop. We don’t begrudge him his excess because he feels like one of our own. And none of it — the fancy cars, the lavish parties, the jazz orchestras imported from Harlem — can salve the wounded soul of this striver anyway. His hopeless inner struggle humanizes him. Even after the robber barons of the Jazz Age drove the country off a cliff there was still a place in America’s heart for Jay Gatsby.

The Gatsbys and Buchanans of today’s West and East Egg are less nuanced. The rumrunner tycoons are all gone. They’ve been replaced by investment banks that bundle predatory loans and sell them to your grandparents’ pension funds, then short sell against those same loans, to make a killing when families get foreclosed on in Jamaica, Queens or Cleveland, Ohio, and your grandparents lose their life savings. You know the story well — its choose-your-own-misadventure variations are nearly endless.

In our Gilded Age, if you’re more than a few rungs up, there’s little or no social consequence for ethically dubious schemes, as there was for poor Gatsby’s rumrunning. When a Gatsby of 2013 gets busted, he settles for pennies on the dollar and celebrates by treating himself to a Picasso. Our East and West Eggers’ soirées still depend upon the fruits of creative labor. Without artists, the party would be a drag. Even acute protestations end up on the penthouse walls.

As Luhrmann’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby hits screens today, we’ll face an invitation to inquire into how history repeats itself — how are tensions between landed gentry and lottery winners, between philanthropists and studio-squatters, between the desire to be an object of envy and the deep human need to struggle toward our fantasies, ideals and visions — how are these the sheer force by which a developed and developing world orbits? We’re human, imperfect, compassionate, greedy, and full of yearning. It looks good on the big screen — it’s fucking beautiful. Good sugar with a bit of vinegar between the lines of the great American novel.

Lowell is our new favorite spot in Portland. Buy a trinket for your altar and cloak your shoulders in a storied, kinesthetically-fulfilling textile from far yonder. Maya and Dino are the purveyors, curators and charmers at Lowell — stop in and see them some time.

Photographs by Laura Dart

What modern sporting event can match the intensity, comradery and balletic athletic prowess of the Puma Table Tennis Tournament aka PT3, matching New York’s fiercest topspin artists in the creative business? If there is one, we don’t know about it. To the Ace team — Migmar, Gorgo, Michelle — may your rackets anticipate your opponents’ every volley. We’re with you, today and always.

Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When

Long before he was first endorsed for presidency this day in Decatur at the 1860 Illinois Republican State Convention, Abe Lincoln was penning verse in his sum book.

On this day in 1979, The Cure released its debut album Three Imaginary Boys featuring “10.15 Saturday Night,” “Subway Song” and “Fire in Cairo.” It’s incredible that they traveled so far back from the future — their true time — in the time machine pictured above.