July 2010
2 posts
“Every story worth knowing is a life story.” — Paul Elie
Jul 8th
Jul 3rd
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
Jun 19th
Poutine.
Mile End.
Jun 12th
1 note
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
Jun 4th
May 2010
2 posts
May 28th
May 17th
April 2010
8 posts
Apr 19th
Apr 10th
1 note
Apr 8th
Apr 5th
Apr 4th
“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...
Apr 4th
Apr 4th
Apr 2nd
March 2010
4 posts
Mar 31st
Mar 30th
Mar 24th
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...
Mar 21st
1 note
February 2010
4 posts
Feb 14th
The Third Thing I'm Thankful For (of Ten):
Tetris. Period.
Feb 9th
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.
Feb 8th
1 note
ListenAfrica (Toto) - Perpetuum Jazzile Ten Things...
Feb 6th
1 note
January 2010
3 posts
Jan 16th
1 note
“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...
Jan 14th
New year, new beginnings.
Jan 5th
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
Dec 13th
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.
Dec 4th
Dec 3rd
1 note
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...
Nov 28th
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.
Nov 25th
1 note
Nov 23rd
People lost at sea. →
Nov 23rd
Nov 21st
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...
Nov 21st
Some words I have been loving lately, definitions...
semaphore tenanted ebenezer amanuensis
Nov 19th
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...
Nov 18th
Having a moment here. Saving it for later.
Nov 15th
“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...
Nov 15th
Further flight patterns. →
Nov 5th
Nov 4th
October 2009
2 posts
Oct 22nd
“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...
Oct 7th
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.
Sep 27th
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...
Sep 18th
Sep 16th
ListenPerson Person - Mirah This one goes out to all...
Sep 13th
26
Sep 4th
August 2009
11 posts
ListenI am nothing - Withered Hand
Aug 28th
Aug 26th