Everyday Thunderstorms.

I'm convinced I never heard real thunder til I moved to the East Coast. A summer storm here is theatrical and earth-shaking, often blowing in out of nowhere on a clear day. With The Cloud, designer Richard Clarkson has created a portable mini thunderstorm for the indoors - a lamp that comes with speakers and sensors, and conjures a storm in concert with its viewers' motions. Amazing.

More on Richard Clarkson's website, here. Happy Wednesday.

Related: frost flowers; cloud gazing; tiny earthquakes.

Friends of Friends.

I was a fan of Berlin-based interview magazine Freunde von Freunden long before I started as a contributor, and it's been an ever-evolving love affair since. I'm such a fan, and am so honored to be profiled today in the site's latest installment of Meet the Contributors. Below, a few pulls from FvF interviews I find especially inspiring, captured by photographers and writers I'm proud to be featured alongside. (Credits below.)

You can find my FvF archive, here. Visit Freunde von Freunden for much more. 

Photos, from top to bottom: Johanna Burke photographed by Grace Villamil; Aviva Rowley's home photographed by Marco Annunziata; Gisele d'Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht photographed by Jordi Huisman; Coltrane Curtis photographed by David Engelhardt; Manuela Sosa photographed by Silvia Conde; photo of Gori de Palma and Laura Gonzalez's space by Rubén Ortiz & Natalia Guarín; photo of me by Jacquelyne Pierson. 

From Above.

Florian Beaudenon's Instant Life captures private moments in homes and work spaces from a birds-eye view: a woman in bed with her cats, a writer surrounded by Post-Its, a man sketching in a notebook. Says the artist, "[Each person has] agreed to share a hobby, a moment of intimacy that is important to them and in which everyone can recognize himself." What would yours look like?

Visit Florian Beaudenon's website, here. Found via My Modern Met.

POV: Presence.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories. 

I spent a recent weekend at a cabin upstate with a group of friends (it was the same cabin, as it happens, that I wrote about last year, with the cicadas, and the indoor soccer, and the haunted house, and the 24 hours of perfect moments).

This year, we spent Sunday afternoon - which was clear and bright and warm - in the front yard, barefoot, half-asleep. The day before we'd worn sweaters; today, we found ourselves squinting in the sunlight, the grass parched beneath our feet. The sun burned our shoulders. Flocks of birds gathered en masse overhead. We stared. Awe-struck, we wondered when it had become summer.

Chutes & Ladders.

This house, located in northern Japan, looks a little like a giant ice cube from the outside. On the inside, it's a real-life version of Chutes and Ladders, with winding steel staircases and wooden ladders leading to various elevated (and un-fenced) floors. And while that play area is almost certainly a terrible accident waiting to happen, it also looks like a very nice place to read, or write, or hang a string of lights and eat dinner on the floor. See more, here.

Designed by Jun Igarashi Architects. Photos by Daici Ano. Found via Design Milk.

Three more links, just because:
-Death Valley in sunset colors.
-A mashed potato chocolate cake.
-Lastly, David Bowie on the uncertainty of the future: "I don't know where I'm going from here but I promise it won't be boring." Yes.

New POV post coming tomorrow. Until then!