And Then It Was

The PoemNot the sunset poem you make when you think aloud, with its linden...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:27:10 -0400

The Poem

Not the sunset poem you make when you think
aloud,
with its linden tree in India ink
and the telegraph wires across its pink
cloud;

not the mirror in you and her delicate bare
shoulder still glimmering there;
not the lyrical click of a pocket rhyme—
the tiny music that tells the time;

and not the pennies and weights on those
evening papers piled up in the rain;
not the cacodemons of carnal pain;
not the things you can say so much better in plain prose—

but the poem that hurtles from heights unknown
—when you wait for the splash of the stone
deep below, and grope for your pen,
and then comes the shiver, and then—

in the tangle of sounds, the leopards of words,
the leaflike insects, the eye-spotted birds
fuse and form a silent, intense,
mimetic pattern of perfect sense.

-Vladimir Nabokov

"It was the eyes that got me,” Rayber said. “Children may be attracted to mad eyes. A..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:18:30 -0400

““It was the eyes that got me,” Rayber said. “Children may be attracted to mad eyes. A grown person could have resisted. A child couldn’t. Children are cursed with believing.” from The Violent Bear It Away, by Flannery O’Connor &”

- Swim Away

The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 01:36:02 -0500

The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English :

confashion:

Ailurophile A cat-lover.
Assemblage A gathering.
Becoming Attractive.
Beleaguer To exhaust with attacks.
Brood To think alone.
Bucolic In a lovely rural setting.
Bungalow A small, cozy cottage.
Chatoyant Like a cat’s eye.
Comely Attractive.
Conflate To blend together.
Cynosure A focal point of admiration.
Dalliance A brief love affair.
Demesne Dominion, territory.
Demure Shy and reserved.
Denouement The resolution of a mystery.
Desuetude Disuse.
Desultory Slow, sluggish.
Diaphanous Filmy.
Dissemble Deceive.
Dulcet Sweet, sugary.
Ebullience Bubbling enthusiasm.
Effervescent Bubbly.
Efflorescence Flowering, blooming.
Elision Dropping a sound or syllable in a word.
Elixir A good potion.
Eloquence Beauty and persuasion in speech.
Embrocation Rubbing on a lotion.
Emollient A softener
Ephemeral Short-lived.
Epiphany A sudden revelation.
Erstwhile At one time, for a time.
Ethereal Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
Evanescent Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
Evocative Suggestive.
Fetching Pretty.
Felicity Pleasantness.
Forbearance Withholding response to provocation.
Fugacious Fleeting.
Furtive Shifty, sneaky.
Gambol To skip or leap about joyfully.
Glamour Beauty.
Gossamer The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk
Halcyon Happy, sunny, care-free.
Harbinger Messenger with news of the future.
Imbrication Overlapping and forming a regular pattern.
Imbroglio An altercation or complicated situation.
Imbue To infuse, instill.
Incipient Beginning, in an early stage.
Ineffable Unutterable, inexpressible.
Ingénue A naïve young woman.
Inglenook A cozy nook by the hearth.
Insouciance Blithe nonchalance.
Inure To become jaded.
Labyrinthine Twisting and turning.
Lagniappe A special kind of gift.
Lagoon A small gulf or inlet.
Languor Listlessness, inactivity.
Lassitude Weariness, listlessness.
Leisure Free time.
Lilt To move musically or lively.
Lissome Slender and graceful.
Lithe Slender and flexible.
Love Deep affection.
Mellifluous Sweet sounding.
Moiety One of two equal parts.
Mondegreen A slip of the ear.
Murmurous Murmuring.
Nemesis An unconquerable archenemy.
Offing The sea between the horizon and the offshore.
Onomatopoeia A word that sounds like its meaning.
Opulent Lush, luxuriant.
Palimpsest A manuscript written over earlier ones.
Panacea A solution for all problems
Panoply A complete set.
Pastiche An art work combining materials from various sources.
Penumbra A half-shadow.
Petrichor The smell of earth after rain.
Plethora A large quantity.
Propinquity An inclination.
Pyrrhic Successful with heavy losses.
Quintessential Mose essential.
Ratatouille A spicy French stew.
Ravel To knit or unknit.
Redolent Fragrant.
Riparian By the bank of a stream.
Ripple A very small wave.
Scintilla A spark or very small thing.
Sempiternal Eternal.
Seraglio Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem.
Serendipity Finding something nice while looking for something else.
Summery Light, delicate or warm and sunny.
Sumptuous Lush, luxurious.
Surreptitious Secretive, sneaky.
Susquehanna A river in Pennsylvania.
Sussurous Whispering, hissing.
Talisman A good luck charm.
Tintinnabulation Tinkling.
Umbrella Protection from sun or rain.
Untoward Unseemly, inappropriate.
Vestigial In trace amounts.
Wafture Waving.
Wherewithal The means.
Woebegone Sorrowful, downcast.

I happen to believe that a lot of scientific and rational premises are irrational to begin with –...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 12:18:15 -0500

I happen to believe that a lot of scientific and rational premises are irrational to begin with – that the work of much science and academic inquiry is, deep down, merely the elaborate justification of desire, bias, whim, and glory. I sense that to some extent the rational ‘thinking’ areas of our brains are superrationalization engines. They provide us with means and justifications for our more animal impulses. They allow us to justify them both to ourselves and then, when that has been accomplished, to others.

-David Byrne

nevver: From on high

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:14:20 -0500

nevver:

From on high

wnycradiolab: 21 Emotions For Which There Are No English Words...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:30:02 -0500

wnycradiolab:

21 Emotions For Which There Are No English Words at PopSci

I love.

Dreamscent

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:27:05 -0500

Woke up to the smell of burning toast, which slowly dissipated into the air. There was no toast, and no burn, just a dream. Do dreams have smells? Rolled over in bed and remembered that phantom smells are a common symptom of brain tumors. Don’t know the connection but this made me think of Bobby Kennedy. Felt sorry for Ethel, in an oddly despairing kind of way that can only be accessed in the groove between waking and dreaming. Remembered a quote I once read about the Bobby-Jackie affair - “mortals behaving like the Gods.” Went back to sleep and dreamed of Jackie Kennedy and debutante balls.

Jacqueline Bouvier, Queen Debutante of the Year, 1947

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:17:05 -0500

Jacqueline Bouvier, Queen Debutante of the Year, 1947

Goodbye, Faust

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 03:47:20 -0500

Today: brioche toast with ruby dots of plum jam, crispy rice with lime and mint and a fried egg. Octagonal houses and concrete rivers and kumquat trees and tea. A place where I could stand with a foot in the rain and another in the sun. Pine cones the size of coconuts, so big, they barely fit into my hand.

Everything leaves an impression now, the way pregnant women say their sense of smell becomes more pronounced. Beauty is no longer something that needs to be possessed, which it was when my hours were tied up with work, and it felt like the money I had existed for the purpose of buying beauty. And I did - experiences, travel, expensive shoes and scarves and wonderful meals. Art, concerts, mid century dining tables, Eames chairs, Japanese ceramic knives. For years, I spun out and out further like an unguarded event horizon, things and events and people and places getting pulled in to the eye of that endless black hole.

But I must have, even then, known better. Now I can’t walk a block without being transfixed by something beautiful. Especially if it’s fleeting, especially if I can’t possess it. Maybe it’s a byproduct of getting older. Or the truth of paring down. Less money+more time might actually be a luxury, the left-hand truth that we somehow fail to learn when we’re so desperately invested in something else entirely.

Or maybe it’s finally yielding in a way that I refused to for so long. After all, I’m not as obsessed with the Faustian bargain as I once was. Sometimes I’m even arrogant enough to believe that I’ve made my peace with diligence and simplicity. There was a time when those very things frightened me, and felt so lonesome, so austere. But who knows, perhaps I’ll wake up one day, fully returned to my former self.

Was it the paring down that’s responsible for this? The fact that I’m finally doing what I always wanted? Or all the sacrifices that came with it, all the parts of me that were forced to adapt and mold to the changes that came from every direction? The letting go, the discomfort, the pain? Do we ever really change?

Nastassja Kinski, Paris Texas, Wim Wenders, 1984

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:38:21 -0500

Nastassja Kinski, Paris Texas, Wim Wenders, 1984

Everyone starts screaming, the plane is making terrible metal-in-distress sounds. Black smoke —...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:33:20 -0500

Everyone starts screaming, the plane is making terrible metal-in-distress sounds. Black smoke — “black like in a Batman movie” — starts streaming out of the fresh-air nozzles overhead. They turn back toward O’Hare, “and there’s that grid of Chicago, and I’m seeing it coming up really fast.” The lights flicker, and the pilot comes on and tells everyone, with panic in his voice, to stay buckled. “And there’s this little 14-year-old boy next to me. He turns to me and says, ‘Sir, is this supposed to be happening?’ “And I remember thinking, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just that one syllable, over and over. And also thinking, You could actually piss yourself. And the strongest thing was the sense of that seat right there.” He pointed toward the imaginary seat back in front of him. “I thought, Oh, yeah, this body. I’ve had it all this time, and that’s what’s going to do it. That right there.” He had assumed that if he was ever faced with death, he would “handle it with aplomb,” he would be present in the moment, he would make peace in the time he had left. “But I couldn’t even remember my own name,” he said. “I was so completely not present. I was just the word no.” Eventually he managed to turn to the kid next to him and say that it was going to be O.K., “though I didn’t think so. And there was a woman across the aisle. And finally — it was like coming out of a deep freeze — I could just reach over, and I took her hand.” That’s how they remained for the next several minutes, waiting to die. In the end, they didn’t crash into the Chicago streets or plunge into the freezing lake but made it safely to the runway, where all the emergency-response equipment was in place but not needed. It turned out, in a detail that could have been lifted from a George Saunders story, they all nearly died because the plane had flown into a flock of geese. “For three or four days after that,” he said, “it was the most beautiful world. To have gotten back in it, you know? And I thought, If you could walk around like that all the time, to really have that awareness that it’s actually going to end. That’s the trick.” You could call this desire — to really have that awareness, to be as open as possible, all the time, to beauty and cruelty and stupid human fallibility and unexpected grace — the George Saunders Experiment. It’s the trope of all tropes to say that a writer is “the writer for our time.” Still, if we were to define “our time” as a historical moment in which the country we live in is dropping bombs on people about whose lives we have the most abstracted and unnuanced ideas, and who have the most distorted notions of ours; or a time in which some of us are desperate simply for a job that would lead to the ability to purchase a few things that would make our kids happy and result in an uptick in self- and family esteem; or even just a time when a portion of the population occasionally feels scared out of its wits for reasons that are hard to name, or overcome with emotion when we see our children asleep, or happy when we risk revealing ourselves to someone and they respond with kindness — if we define “our time” in these ways, then George Saunders is the writer for our time.

We may seem to forget a person, a place, a state of being, a past life, but meanwhile what we are...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:36:00 -0500

We may seem to forget a person, a place, a state of being, a past life, but meanwhile what we are doing is selecting a new cast for the reproduction of the same drama, seeking the closest reproduction to the friend, the lover, or the husband we are striving to forget. And one day we open our eyes, and there we are caught in the same pattern, repeating the same story. How could it be otherwise? The design comes from within us. It is internal.

-Anais Nin

This makes me wonder if the best way to overcome fear is to create, on one’s own initiative,...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:36:58 -0500

This makes me wonder if the best way to overcome fear is to create, on one’s own initiative, the anxiety equivalent of those flight simulators that pilots-in-training use in order to learn how to fly. Nothing is perhaps as bad as you imagine it. Except some things. But maybe I’ve been lucky to not have to face those particular things yet.

One pioneer of the “negative path” was the New York psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died in 2007. He rediscovered a key insight of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome: that sometimes the best way to address an uncertain future is to focus not on the best-case scenario but on the worst.

Seneca the Stoic was a radical on this matter. If you feared losing your wealth, he once advised, “set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’ ”

To overcome a fear of embarrassment, Ellis told me, he advised his clients to travel on the New York subway, speaking the names of stations out loud as they passed. I’m an easily embarrassed person, so in the interest of journalistic research, I took his advice, on the Central Line of the London Underground. It was agonizing. But my overblown fears were cut down to size: I wasn’t verbally harangued or physically attacked. A few people looked at me strangely.

Overheard

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:57:15 -0500

“I really think you need to give him another chance. He’s about as well-adjusted you’re going to get in a writer.”

You want to lead in America? Find a way to be entirely utilitarian — to address the most problems on...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:47:00 -0500

You want to lead in America? Find a way to be entirely utilitarian — to address the most problems on behalf of the most possible citizens. That works. That matters. Last night, it mattered just enough to overcome the calcified political calculations of men who think that 47 percent will vote against them because they are victims, or that 53 percent are with them because the rest of us vote only from self-interest and without regard for the republic as a whole. It was a closer contest than common sense and the spirit of a truly great nation should dictate. But unless these white guys who have peddled “normal” for so long — normal as in racial majority, normal as in religious majority, normal as in sexual orientation — unless they have a hard moment of self-reflection and self-awareness, well, it will not be this close again.

Rear guard actions will be fought at every political crossroad. But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable. A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point.

Fall

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:09:00 -0500

I took time off to coil myself inwards, as though into my own shell. I needed the protection of something I could roll myself into, I needed to consider the elements first, and then watch the world. I walked everywhere for months, and noticed everything - the way the pavement is broken, or shoots up into concrete pyramids at every turn in Los Angeles. Trees overtake every surface that is hard and man-made, like in Havana, that persistent set of roots and branches that overtook an entire apartment building.

On the way back from Forage, an old Jeep with a towel over its windshield, probably recovering from a headache, a moist toilette over its eyes. I understand this, my sinuses have been reminding me of their existence with sharp nudges, the constant change of weather, and what do I even have to complain about? I live in LA, no hurricanes, no gusty winds and snow. No blizzards of my youth, the constant digging out your car early in the morning.

I came to LA for a variety of reasons, but when I think about The Big Picture, I came here because I was lucky, or my life wanted to be, or it knew how to be. Maybe it still does. It must, I sometimes think? Being lucky is not something the body forgets. It’s sentiment stored in muscle memory. It would be like forgetting how to do a push-up.

“Girls can only do push-ups on their knees,” he said. And when I asked who told him that he said his high school gym teacher. This only reinforced my long-held sentiment that high school gym teachers only exist in the world to spread large doses of misinformation.

I’ve never counted the number of push-ups I do in a day, but maybe at least 30 in any given yoga class, and no, not on my knees. I am not athletic. I am surprised when my hand goes up to deflect things flying in the air. I have instincts, but like most people who value their more cerebral parts, I only rely on instincts when absolutely necessary. This is unfortunate, as my instincts might be the best thing about me.

October is my favorite month here, but this year I felt cheated. Few bright blue skies, but instead, an abundance of pounding, startling heat. And now it’s already November. Today, at Fix, everyone has a beanie and a jacket. I am forever in sandals, I barely believe in shoes. Not that I deny their existence, but if I were a runner, I’d run barefoot. And I’d complain about running still, I’m sure.

“Bring a jacket!” Art says as he takes off with his laptop. This has become my office, and offices have that sense of community. People pipe in, they offer kind, but unsolicited advice. Others stop by your workstation, and sometimes you want them to distract you and share news - good and bad, and other times, and with specific people, you just want them to get the fuck away from you. It’s strange how all things strong eventually become tenuous, and how all things tenuous eventually take a stronger hold on you than you might have ever imagined.

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable."

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:18:50 -0400

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

- Mary Oliver (via modernhepburn)

"The present you ignore eventually becomes the past you cling to."

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:12:41 -0400

“The present you ignore eventually becomes the past you cling to.”

- Magnificent Ruin (via nevver)

Photo

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:16:22 -0400

8:00 AM Earthquake

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:10:52 -0400

Like the roof of your house cracking its back before it gets up in the morning.