May 2012
3 posts
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Ditty
(November 1964—Hoboken)
I gave my love a nickel,
A nickel and three dimes,
And sent her out to fetch me
The Sunday N.Y. Times.
But when she came back to me
Her love I did refuse,
Because what she had brought me was
The N.Y. Daily News.
—Edward Abbey, from Earth Apples
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About running (and most physical pursuits)
As much as running is a physical pursuit, it requires a lot of thinking. When my body is involved in what are fairly repetitive movements over long distances, there’s lots of time to consider other things—really, all the other things in my life that are not running—relationships, work, my laundry list of to-dos, the movie/the show I saw last week. This is usually really productive thinking...
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April 2012
2 posts
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March 2012
3 posts
3 tags
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February 2012
2 posts
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“Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so...”
– Pico Ayer, “The Writing Life: The point of the long and winding sentence,” Los Angeles Times
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January 2012
7 posts
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John Steinbeck on falling in love: A 1958 letter...
New York
November 10, 1958
Dear Thom:
We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.
First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical...
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This is what the end looks like. →
There is, we recognize, a historical danger here. Someday, the record of this exhibition might be dug up by a young art historian, or perhaps a blogger like us, or perhaps some sort of future blogger who does things with brainwaves. They’ll see that there was a massive show spread across every location of the most successful gallery of the time, entirely comprised of one of the most successful...
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December 2011
1 post
November 2011
5 posts
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“If you’re a reporter — you, right now — you are going to have 1,000 pieces on...”
– Lawrence Weschler, Asked and Answered, T Magazine blog
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Sometimes you don’t realize how far you’ve gone...
A friend of mine is fond of writing while flying. It’s not a habit of mine, but I like the idea—the not here anymore but not yet there either is so much like writing itself.
There is also this: When traveling, your body usually arrives earlier than every other part of you—just how much earlier is directly related to how fast and how far you went. When you’ve put pen to paper or...
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October 2011
7 posts
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And sometimes:
Sometimes, you will dismiss that one thing, that photo, that drawing, that performance you saw, that you were obsessed with for years. And then, ages will pass, everything else will change, and something will remind you of it and you will see it, know it, feel it again. You will understand now what you didn’t then. And you will know too, that it doesn’t mean that you loved it any less,...
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This is what happens.
Looking, really looking, at art (some might say seeing, some might say feeling) is like this: It is like all the other really amazing things in life. (You know what they are. Everyone has their own. Though, really, there are few things that are exceptionally amazing. This is one of those things.) You do it too much and you forget how good it can actually be. Because there is so much—and not all of...
September 2011
4 posts
“Heaven is long-enduring and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and...”
– Lao-Tse
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All the other things I was thinking about...
…after dinner with Sarah McKenzie, Jen and Jeffrey, and over the weekend, that I could not get into the 20x200 newsletter:
All of those photographers who have taken pictures from the safety of hotel room windows when they are on the road and far from home. The World Trade Center’s architect, Minoru Yamasaki, designed the buildings with narrow office windows, 18 inches wide, to make...
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that was then
I was 21, beginning my senior year at a tiny liberal arts school on the West Coast. I was half-asleep with rhododendrons and Mt. Rainier out the window. The phone in the kitchen had been ringing for over an hour. As I was about to lift my limbs to finally silence it, it stopped. Jeannie, my roommate, came in and crawled into bed next to me. Her face a few inches from mine, she whispered, nearly...
August 2011
4 posts
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July 2011
12 posts
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“You are in the stream of life whether you like it or not. And if you’re...”
– A note to artists from Lawrence Weiner.
And more about responsibilities from Gina Trapani.
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“I picked up the phone and knew immediately it was an unexpected call from...”
– From Fellow Prisoners by John Berger in Guernica, July 2011
“It’s kind of about letting go of that feeling of my 20s, that feeling that I...”
–
Oh no, nuh-uh.
More about THE FUTURE from Ms. Miranda July here.
(I won’t blame you though if you don’t wanna click through.)
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Untitled 1 by J.Otto Seibold
From the 20x200 Newsletter: …finally the stars aligned and J. Otto Seibold and I were in the same place in time and space, meeting at his home in Oakland. After admiring his art collection (I spied two personal photo favorites from across the room—a Sugimoto and a Robert Adams—hung among works of his own and his daughter’s), we set to talking about,...
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