Be extraordinary.
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What does it mean to be human, at this time, in this country? I believe it means practicing a radical generosity and empathy, especially when it’s a struggle. You must look around in the soft darkness of your waking life, which is the partner of your dream life. You must understand that accompanying you always is your animal, primal, complicated, desire-driven, calm but desperate, brutal and brilliant self, blinking and breathing gently in the dark, waiting for you to let it into the light.
From Emily Rapp’s essay “Someone to Hold Me,” published on Salon.com on July 11, 2012. In it, Rapp deals with the coming death of her two-year-old son Ronan, who suffers from Tay-Sachs disease. You can read it in its entirety here.
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(via mollyollieollie)
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I found out last week that a kid I went to high school with was shot and killed a year ago that day.
Life is so fragile.
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This isn't so much a question as it is a declaration of my undying love and the excruciating pain that it is to miss you. Please come back to me. Thank you very much.
Straight out of an Austen novel, you are! Right now, my plan is October, as you know, but finding a way to plan a trip around everybody’s schedules is proving extraordinarily difficult. But since I’m coming to a city I’ve lived in for the past four years and have only recently vacated, there’s really no need for people to entertain me. As much as I love DC, this time, I’m coming for the people, not the city. The city is just a wonderful bonus.
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These are my people. And I miss them very much.
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Here are some things I think about:
- Why does the possessive “its” not have an apostrophe? If we’re saying “the dog” or saying “it” in reference to the dog, both are nouns, right? (OK, noun/pronoun/whatever.) Still, they’re things. Why, then, can we say “the dog’s” but not “it’s”? I will never be able to wrap my head around the logic behind that decision.
- Who made that decision anyway?
- Pets are so weird. They’re just animals that live with us and that we trust won’t attack us in the middle of the night.
- How can the diet Snapple I’m drinking possibly have fewer calories than an apple?
- To all of the people who enter a large and nearly-empty bathroom yet insist on choosing the stall right next to the person already in there: why?
- It really should be “Somebody Who I Used To Know.”
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In October 2010, astronaut Douglas Wheelock posted on Twitpic this night view of the Nile River winding up through the Egyptian desert toward the Mediterranean, as seen from the International Space Station.
This gives me chills. I love everything about space exploration and being able to see our world from up above is thrilling.
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“You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.” — Mignon McLaughlin -
Abecedarium. What a fantastic word.
I had no idea what it meant when I came across the website W+K 12. But of course, like any good host, they provided the answer to me with only one click:
What the hell is an abecedarium, you ask? In the simplest of terms, it’s an ABC book. For us, W+K 12.8, it’s also a tool to help navigate the uncharted waters of this coming year. We don’t know what to expect, just that there’ll be a whole lot of learning involved. And what better way to start this process than by going back to the basics!
It’s a fascinating collection of graphics, photographs, and video footage.
Based in Portland, Oregon, the group describes themselves as “an experiment disguised as a school disguised as an advertising agency. We are thirteen artists, writers, designers, poets, entrepreneurs, and schemers working together on a range of creative and client-based endeavors.”
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I’ve started a list of films that I plan to watch in the next year. I’m hoping to get the list up to 52 films in 52 weeks.
Talk to me in a year and then we can discuss how far I’ve gotten.
