July 2010
2 posts
“Every story worth knowing is a life story.” — Paul Elie
June 2010
3 posts
“Wisdom in literature is the ability to convey not a system of truths which explain life but a certain depth of awareness in which life itself is lived more intensely and with a more meaningful direction.” - Thomas Merton
Poutine.
Mile End.
The Uses of Poetry
This was a day when I did nothing,
aside from reading the newspaper,
taking both breakfast and lunch by myself
in the kitchen, dozing after lunch
until the middle of the afternoon. Then
I read one poem by Zbigniew Herbert
in which he thanked God for the many beautiful
things in this world, in a voice so absurdly
truthful, the entire wrecked day was redeemed.
— Harvey Shapiro
May 2010
2 posts
April 2010
8 posts
“As for the majority of citizens, are they not like the crowd that gathered on Calvary, not to cheer a miscarriage of justice, but also not to protest it? Failing to realize that compassion without confrontation is hopelessly sentimental, the people go home beating their breasts, preferring guilt to responsibility.” — William Sloane Coffin’s Easter Sermon at Riverside...
March 2010
4 posts
The Fourth Thing I’m Thankful For—and I do still have ten—The Weekend:
I know I won’t always have weekends like these—the kind where there’s nothing but time. So yeah I’m thankful for the leisure. But even more than that: I’m thankful for the ability and the security and the community that make wandering, endless, friend- and food-filled...
February 2010
4 posts
The Third Thing I'm Thankful For (of Ten):
Tetris. Period.
Ten Things I'm Thankful For, Thing the Second:
Blogs that make me want to do something, be something, think something differently—instead of buy something, have something, covet somethings endlessly.
Africa (Toto) - Perpetuum Jazzile
Ten Things...
January 2010
3 posts
“If I could wish, toss my penny into the fountain, or better—since wishes are beggars—toss in my three pennies, and name my nine and more wishes for myself as a writer, for my country’s writers, for our literature, what would they be? I’d wish, first of all, to be able to name my wishes, to be able to avow them openly: to name them, to claim them, the better to act...
New year, new beginnings.
December 2009
3 posts
These days
whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle
And the dirt
Just to make clear
where they come from
- Charles Olson
I will be starring as “glasses-wearing friend” in this missed connection posting until craigslist, like, removes it.
P.S. Also preserved for posterity.
P.P.S. I heard a rumor that this is a missed connection success story in the making.
November 2009
12 posts
Very often I email myself quotes with no attribution or explanation so that I can feel a sense of rediscovery two months later when I take the time to track down their sources. Of course then sometimes the sources are lost.
“What more can we ask of a writer than that he draw us into the charmed circle of his obsessions?”
“The whole of social life rests on theological...
10 Principles That Might Make Your Work Better or... →
This article is a little old, but it’s totally awesome. Its ideas are pointed but also malleable enough to apply to any sort of creative practice. They resonate a lot with thinking that I’ve been doing lately about writing and vulnerability. I particularly like:
8. Being too comfortable is dangerous.
9. There is nothing keeping you from doing the sort of work that you wish.
People lost at sea. →
I would like to say a word in praise of lapse. I would like to give thanks for moments when I cannot or will not feel grateful, when I find myself afield and gratitude feels unreasonable, far—flung away like folly or worse, like a feeling irredeemable, alien, and wrong. There is something to a thankfulness recovered from gloom. A gut-punch of gratitude at cooking and eating everyday food; at...
Some words I have been loving lately, definitions...
semaphore
tenanted
ebenezer
amanuensis
Ramble on.
The Rothko Chapel, Houston 2007 - Thomas Struth
This afternoon, a post by a friend of a friend referencing Thomas Struth took me on an epic online ramble so personally resonant that I wanted to set it down here in narrative form. First I stopped at several NYT articles that have been illustrated by Struth’s photographs, including this fascinating piece from a few years ago on political...
Having a moment here. Saving it for later.
“Without a costly commitment to candor among family and potential friends, the possibility of truthful conversation (a prerequisite for the formation of more perfect unions) begins to tragically diminish, and responsible speech that communicates what we’re actually thinking and believing becomes a lost art.” - David Dark, The Gospel According to America.
So David Dark is one...
Further flight patterns. →
October 2009
2 posts
“The conundrum is that the language to describe the ineffable splendors and possibilities of our lives takes time to master, takes a certain unhurried engagement with the tasks of description, assessment, critique, and conversation; that to speak this slow language you must slow down, and to slow down you must have some inkling of what you will gain by doing so.” — Rebecca...
September 2009
5 posts
Saltie
I cannot recommend this place highly enough. Item one: their BLT has a fried green tomato on it. Item two: totally lady-owned.
Musée des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of...
Person Person - Mirah
This one goes out to all...
26
August 2009
11 posts
I am nothing - Withered Hand
