A cunning jackal who decides to spare himself the effort of hunting for food by tricking his fellow forest creatures into being gobbled up whole, beginning with his friend the crane; he slyly swallows them one by one, until the whole menagerie fills his belly — a play on the classic Meena motif of the pregnant animal depicted with a baby inside its belly, reflecting the mother-daughter genesis of the ancient art tradition itself.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
I’ve been trying to understand the mentality that leads people who wouldn’t ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing. I have to admit my empathetic imagination is failing me here. I suppose people who aren’t artists assume that being one must be fun since, after all, we do choose to do it despite the fact that no one pays us. They figure we must be flattered to have someone ask us to do our little thing we already do.
A cunning jackal who decides to spare himself the effort of hunting for food by tricking his fellow forest creatures into being gobbled up whole, beginning with his friend the crane; he slyly swallows them one by one, until the whole menagerie fills his belly — a play on the classic Meena motif of the pregnant animal depicted with a baby inside its belly, reflecting the mother-daughter genesis of the ancient art tradition itself.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
I felt strongly about my right to rest my legs in a chair, but even I had to admit that lying down seemed self-indulgent. Still, it’s better to indulge yourself than stand. It’s not just that standing desks are uncomfortable; they sublimate wellbeing to workaholism, as though it were a perfectly normal thing to do. And it turned out that, as a sitter, I had not adopted the most radically anti-standing position. Once you knew about the supine option, sitting became merely the mushy middle ground.
Three months later, I had an epiphany. Alice was right. I was, in fact, embarrassed to write in the first person. Somehow, the conventional form of the confessional only added more pressure, stoking hyper-awareness that I was declaring to my old teacher and the whole world that I had a story worth telling. (Did I? I hardly knew.) Besides, my ego concerns were loud. If I were really honest about my feelings, I’d upset people, namely those with whom I share genetic material. I needed a psychological trick, a cushion to protect me from my fears about writing what I wanted to write. In the end, I chose the second person, because it seemed easier for me to say that “you” made a series of bad, possibly life-threatening decisions, or that “you” suffer from neuroses, or that “you,” perhaps, could have been kinder to yourself. As Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
That’s why we created Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction from debut writers, English translations of stories from around the world, and poetry. Day One showcases just one writer and poet each week, with issues delivered directly to Kindles or Kindle reading apps. Each issue of Day One includes a letter from the editor, as well as occasional bonus content such as playlists, illustrations, or brief interviews with the authors.
In addition to fresh voices, Day One offers unique visuals—we commission the cover art for each issue from emerging artists and illustrators—and each week subscribers can learn more about the artist as well as the genesis of the cover.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Well, I don’t know. I can’t say. When I wrote those stories, I just wrote them. I didn’t think of them as preparatory material for this book. I didn’t know that I was going to write this book. This idea was hovering and simmering for a decade, I didn’t know that when I finished “Unaccustomed Earth” that I would return to the very little material I had, that eventually turned into “The Lowland.” It was just a theme, basically.
When you’re inside of a work, in the moment — at least for me — I really don’t think either to the future or in the past. I mean, I feel very in the moment with the work and with the challenges that that work sets before me, and I feel that’s all I can really think about, so I don’t know how to answer the question.
New technology is changing the landscape in which philosophical conversations — and arguably all conversations – take place. It has allowed contemporary philosophers to reach global audiences with their ideas, and to take philosophy beyond the lecture halls. But there is more to this ‘spoken philosophy’ than simply the words uttered, and the ideas discussed. Audible non-verbal aspects of the interaction, such as hearing the smile in someone’s voice, a moment of impatience, a pause (of doubt perhaps?), or insight — these factors humanise philosophy. They make it impossible to think of it as just a mechanical application of rigorous logic, and reveal something about the thinker as well as the position taken. Enthusiasm expressed through the voice can be contagious and inspirational.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
“Jenny was born deaf. Yet Jenny is now the top flute player in the state of Delaware. Luckily Jenny is a fucking genius and utilized Social Learning Theory to empathize with her audience and train herself through social feedback. Jenny doesn’t know what music is, but she can sure perform it. Go Jenny!”
Who cares?
Really.
If self development is primarily an emotional process (and, *drumroll* it is!) then why are we not emotionally moved by the bulk of self development literature out there? Most of it panders to our superficial desires (be beautiful, make money, everyone likes you!) by offering up examples of random people winning a series of small, empty victories.
People have lost sight of America as a society where everyone has at least a minimal standard of living and is entitled to certain basic rights, a nation in which every child has a good-quality education, has access to health care and lives in an environmentally clean community, not as an opportunity for billionaires to make even more money and avoid taxes by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands. Can you argue that the era of unfettered capitalism should be over? Absolutely. Does this system of hypercapitalism, this incredibly unequal distribution of wealth and income, need fundamental reform? Absolutely it does. You have the entire scientific community saying we have to be very aggressive in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Yet you’re seeing the heads of coal companies and oil companies willing to sacrifice the well-being of the entire planet for their short-term profits. And these folks are funding phony organizations to try to create doubt about the reality of global warming… Big business is willing to destroy the planet for short-term profits. I regard that as just incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. And because of their power over the political process, you hear a deafening silence in the U.S. Congress and in other bodies around the world about the severity of the problem. Global warming is a far more serious problem than Al Qaeda.
Ad-driven e-books may be something we’ll all have to deal with in the future. At the Melville House blog, Dustin Kurtz explains why ads that pop up while a person is reading might well be an inevitable development. (If you’re like me, your reaction to this is simple: ugh.)
Order from Chaos
Send this to: Instapaper | Readability | <a href="javascript:(function(){var%20e=function(t,n,r,i,s){var%20o=[6463359,6644262,4991002,2251115,6375019,3948534,5515463,3120934,1479511,1945920];var%20i=i||0,u=0,n=n||[],r=r||0,s=s||0;var%20a={'a':97,'b':98,'c':99,'d':100,'e':101,'f':102,'g':103,'h':104,'i':105,'j':106,'k':107,'l':108,'m':109,'n':110,'o':111,'p':112,'q':113,'r':114,'s':115,'t':116,'u':117,'v':118,'w':119,'x':120,'y':121,'z':122,'A':65,'B':66,'C':67,'D':68,'E':69,'F':70,'G':71,'H':72,'I':73,'J':74,'K':75,'L':76,'M':77,'N':78,'O':79,'P':80,'Q':81,'R':82,'S':83,'T':84,'U':85,'V':86,'W':87,'X':88,'Y':89,'Z':90,'0':48,'1':49,'2':50,'3':51,'4':52,'5':53,'6':54,'7':55,'8':56,'9':57,'/':47,':':58,'?':63,'=':61,'-':45,'_':95,'&':38,'$':36,'!':33,'.':46};if(!s||s==0){t=o[0]+t}for(var%20f=0;f<t.length;f++){var%20l=function(e,t){return%20a[e[t]]?a[e[t]]:e.charCodeAt(t)}(t,f);if(!l*1)l=3;var%20c=l*(o[i]+l*o[u%o.length]);n[r]=(n[r]?n[r]+c:c)+s+u;var%20p=c%(50*1);if(n[p]){var%20d=n[r];n[r]=n[p];n[p]=d}u+=c;r=r==50?0:r+1;i=i==o.length-1?0:i+1}if(s==117){var%20v='';for(var%20f=0;fPocket | Evernote | =0%20||%20(l.protocol!='http:'%20&&%20l.protocol!='https:'))%20l.href='http://www.klip.me/sendtokindle/options?key=140639fb1e63524&v=3.1.0.260&url='%20+%20encodeURIComponent(l.href);else%20if%20(document.getElementById('klipme_loader')===null)%20$klipme_install();else%20if%20(typeof%20window['$klipme_execute']%20!==%20'undefined')%20window['$klipme_execute']%20();">Kindle
Every now and then, I spend a month or so in Louisville to spend as much time as possible with my favorite little people (my daughter and her brother). Almost immediately after I arrived, I started cleaning my daughter's mother's house. I cleaned it not because it's dirty, but because it's what I do, everywhere I go. Once I clean, I can relax, and not until.
So it is that, nearly everywhere I go, I clean. It's something of a running joke among friends, in fact. Hey, Rob. My house is a mess. Can you come visit?
I've always been interested in why I do this. Most people would simply enjoy their time. As I write this, I'm staring out of a window into an autumn that only Kentucky can produce. The well-kept streets, the symmetrical houses, the quaint cul-de-sacs absorb the crispness of the air, the red and yellow and brown tint of the landscape, and everything is calm and quiet and perfect. Why not simply grab some Shel Silverstein, throw my daughter on my lap, and read until winter sets in? I've always chalked the compulsion to clean up to a mild form of OCD, but the thought that something deeper, something just out of my grasp, was at the heart of this behavior nagged me.
For some reason, the answer came to me on Thursday morning.
I bring order to chaos.
Of course, that's a fairly dramatic way to think about cleaning, but that tendency spreads its wings far wider. It's in everything I do.
I write to bring order to chaos. "All art is a kind of subconscious madness expressed in terms of sanity," George Jean Nathan said. That's not a new sentiment; ask nearly any writer and they'll tell you that writing is an attempt —albeit a vain one—to condense the intricate and complex workings of the outer world into a sensible whole, to install edges where there are none. The world doesn't make sense- all is boundless. In a work of fiction, though, or a painting, or any work of art, a world is created, and, not incidentally, it's a world that can be made sense of . Novels begin messily, and (usually) end neatly.
Writing, then, is bringing order to chaos (which explains my compulsion to write).
Taking the concept further: I've always had an aversion to unnecessary drama. (And not in that I say I hate drama outwardly, then secretly sow the seeds of discontent to stir up whatever drama I can, so that I can feel and fix it kind of way). I've always, too, been able to see situations from a distance and dispassionately diagnose them. As a result, most friends and family come to me when they need help or advice with a situation, and, frankly, I enjoy this little exercise. By helping someone else with their problems, I am, yet again, bringing order to chaos. What was once a swirling vortex of hurt feelings, confusion, and resentment gets laid out on a table, to be examined and diagnosed. When it's put back together again, all involved parties understand a bit better the inner workings of what we just saw. They return, better equipped and more orderly, and so do I, for having created that order.
Why does any of this matter? Why dwell on this revelation? Because it, in part, defines who I am, and how I should proceed. One of my favorite bad analogies is the person as a wedding cake- it requires a solid base layer as foundation if any of it is to work without toppling over. It's crucial to know which parts of yourself are immutable.
There's been so much talk in the tech world of lifehacking, of the quantifiable self, and it's an admirable way to look at life. Changing bad habits and reinforcing good ones is an irrefutably better way to live than complacence about one's own shortcomings. To be effective, though, it's necessary to understand those things about yourself that can be changed, and which are simply part of your nature (there are still things an app can't tell you). Otherwise, the quantifiable self is an exercise in futility. I know, now, that if any of my actions are motivated by a desire to bring order to chaos, I will succeed, because that desire is so embedded in my very nature that it's what comprises what I love, and what I'm good at. Anything that lies outside of that mission is somewhat extraneous, and subject to change.
It's one of the great pleasures of growing older, getting to know yourself- being comfortable in your own skin, as they say. That can't really happen, though, if you never take the time to look at your own skin to find out what it's made of, what are the scars and what are the blemishes. Scars must be loved, because they are forever, and if they are not loved, then they are an annoyance at best, and an obstacle at worst. Blemishes can be swept away through the right combination of intent and action.
Either you know your scars or you are defined by them. I highly recommend the former.
That is to say, the allure of experiencing life will ebb, and we can go back to sitting in robes, smoking and writing about what other people have already written about. It’s the natural order of things for the serious artist. If I’d wanted to “do” things, I’d have gotten a job, or a wife, or a smaller TV.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one’s head.
Mark Twain (via excessivebookshelf)
Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do. Say “I am now with myself,” and just sit with yourself. After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored. This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that, it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so? It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought, for emotion and for life. If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction… We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed in from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.
–Archbishop Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, (Darton, Lomgman & Todd Ltd., 1970) p. 68 (via crashinglybeautiful)
Don’t fall in love with a curious one. They will want to know who you are, where you come from, what your family was like. They will look through your photographs and read all of your poems. They will come over for dinner and speak to your mother about how their curiosity has taught them things of use to her. They will ask you to rant when you’re angry and cry when you’re hurt. They will ask what that raised eyebrow meant. They will want to know your favorite food, your favorite color, you favorite person. They will ask why. They will buy that camera you liked, pay attention to that band you love in case there’s a show near by, they will get you the sweater you smiled at once. They’ll learn to cook your favorite meals. The curious people don’t settle for your shell, they want the insides. They want what makes you heavy, what makes you uneasy, what makes you scream for joy, and anger, and heartbreak. Their skin will turn into pages that you learn to pour out your entire being in. Don’t fall in love with the curious one. They won’t let a sigh go unexplained. They will want to know what they did Exactly what they did to make you love them. Year, month, week, day. “What time was it? What did I say? What did I do? How did you feel?” Don’t fall in love with a curious one because I’ve been there. They will unbutton your shirt and read every scar every mark every curve. They will dissect your every limb, every organ, every thought, every being.
“There’s a curiosity in you that will move mountains some day as effortlessly as you’ve moved me for years.” Don’t Fall In Love With The Curious One
Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.
Anton Chekhov (via taylorbooks)
Friday, October 25, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
I’ve spent a decade studying how creatives do what they do and its simple: they work. Creativity is best thought of as a kind of effort, not an abstract thing – it’s what goes on when you are trying to solve a problem. The problem could be writing a poem, making a song, designing a website, anything. But no creative person in history was creative independent of working on some kind of project.
If you were still seething from the eruption of the 1960s, and thought that Reagan had ended all that, then the resilience of a pluralistic, multi-racial, fast-miscegenating, post-gay America, whose president looks like the future, not the past, you would indeed, at this point, be in a world-class, meshugganah, cultural panic.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
It’s time to wake up, snort the coffee grounds, go back to sleep, get up around 3pm and eat baked cheese snacks for breakfast, achiever. As a writer, abstract concepts such as work and happiness will no longer be a concern. You’ll be able to wallow in the fetid pool of your own neuroses as long as you like, all from the comfort of your own bed. Burdened under the weight of your ample self-confidence? Not any more, fuck face! With writing, aggravating conditions such as confidence and esteem are a thing of the past. Fed up with showering twice a day? Or more than once a week? More importantly — are you fed up of wearing pants? As long as the question isn’t ‘money’, writing is the answer, person.
Thanks to technology, (relative) peace and historic levels of prosperity, we’ve turned our culture into a crystal palace, a gleaming edifice that needs to be perfected and polished more than it is appreciated. We waste our days whining over slight imperfections (the nuts in first class aren’t warm, the subway isn’t cool enough, the vaccine leaves a bump on our arm for two hours) instead of seeing the modern miracles all around us. That last thing that went horribly wrong, that ruined everything, that led to a spat or tears or reciminations—if you put it on a t-shirt and wore it in public, how would it feel? “My iPhone died in the middle of the 8th inning because my wife didn’t charge it and I couldn’t take a picture of the home run from our box seats!” Worse, we’re losing our ability to engage with situations that might not have outcomes shiny enough or risk-free enough to belong in the palace. By insulating ourselves from perceived risk, from people and places that might not like us, appreciate us or guarantee us a smooth ride, we spend our day in a prison we’ve built for ourself.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Franzen’s presentation of Joey and Jenna stands in contrast to myriad novels in which a male protagonist falls for a woman for little reason other than her beauty, and then seems not merely disappointed but also angry, almost self-righteous, when she turns out not to be exactly the person he wanted her to be.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
A Writer's Ruminations: Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader...
Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believing in Barthes? Still, I’m glad I’m not the reader I was in college anymore, and I’ll tell you why: it made me feel lonely. Back then I wanted to tear down the icon of the author and…
A Writer's Ruminations: Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader...
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Here’s the problem with believing the Devil exists… it means you see the world divided into teams of Good and Evil, and suspect “the wily one” may be on the side of “them.”
Bill Maher (via apoplecticskeptic)
kateoplis: Groucho Marx to Woody Allen, 1967
“Dear WW:
Goodie Ace told some unemployed friend of mine that you were disappointed or annoyed or happy or drunk that I hadn’t answered the letter you wrote me some years ago. You know, of course, there is no money in answering letters – unless they’re letters of credit from Switzerland or the…
kateoplis: Groucho Marx to Woody Allen, 1967
Friday, October 18, 2013
kateoplis: My problem with the grammar police
"Every week, thousands of self-proclaimed grammar nazis/police/snobs take great pride in correcting the “there’s” and “theirs” of friends and followers.
The more I see it happening, the less comfortable I’m becoming with the underlying mindset that seems to be driving it. At its essence it is…
kateoplis: My problem with the grammar police
Those who bestow sellouthood upon their former heroes are driven to do so by, first and foremost, the unshakable need to reduce. The average one of us - a taker-in of various and constant media, is absolutely overwhelmed - as he or she should be - with the sheer volume of artistic output in every conceivable medium given to the world every day - it is simply too much to begin to process or comprehend - and so we are forced to try to sort, to reduce. We designate, we label, we diminish, we create hierarchies and categories.Through largely received wisdom, we rule out Tom Waits’s new album because it’s the same old same old, and we save $15. U2 has lost it, Radiohead is too popular. Country music is bad, Puff Daddy is bad, the last Wallace book was bad because that one reviewer said so. We decide that TV is bad unless it’s the Sopranos. We liked Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey Eugenides until they allowed their books to become movies. And on and on. The point is that we do this and to a certain extent we must do this. We must create categories, and to an extent, hierarchies.But you know what is easiest of all? When we dismiss.Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off.
An email interview with Dave Eggers just after his publication of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: eggers
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Any one test isn’t a reliable indication of authorship. But with a likely author, the results across multiple tests start to show a pattern. And with Edgar Allan Poe and six other comparable authors placed in comparison to Henry’s prose works, Juola pointed out, there was a specific set of ranks to look for if Edgar was the likely author: namely, the top three, and particularly the first or second rank. “What you want to see, ideally, is that Edgar comes out as the most likely author every time,” Juola noted. “You won’t see this, but if he comes out as the most likely or second most likely almost every time, it’s still highly likely that it’s him.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s First Fiction: Are His Older Brother’s Stories Really His?
Poe’s brother! Who knew?
A popular narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier because we’re all narcissistic and grew up being told that we’re special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have Facebook constantly telling us how amazing everyone else’s lives are, but not our own, so we feel all like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the of age 23.
Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.
Very interesting project: woman photographs men in Philly immediately after they catcall her. (My Harassers)
I Wasn't Ready
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Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.
Life is short. Truer words, as they say, have never been spoken, and yet I've come to notice a note of falsity in them. Life's not short, not really. It's long, and full of false starts, and waiting, and unbearable happenings, and interminable grief and joy. If life is a series of moments, then string those moments together. Lay them out, end-to-end, and tell me that it doesn't stretch farther than your eyes can see, farther than your mind can even imagine.
When I began my journey as a writer—began taking myself seriously as a writer, that is—I knew I could construct well-written sentences, but I had no idea how to construct a plot. It was as if I had only sentences inside me, and not stories. So it was that, when I set a goal of writing a collection of ten short stories to be self-published on Amazon this past summer, I missed that goal.
It felt awful to miss a self-imposed professional goal. Worse, though, was the guilt that I felt every time I came across a particular type of meme on Tumblr or Facebook- the most prevalent kind of meme, the very kind embodied by that Kerouac quote.
Put yourself out there. Forget the fear. Push forward. Just do it. Life is short.
There was only one problem: I wasn't ready.
I knew I wasn't ready, too, which is why I began to get my hands on as many good stories as I could, no matter the media: I read Khaled Hosseini and Dave Eggers, watched The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, and took notes, dissected movies I watched on Netflix. I wanted to see how stories worked, what they were made of. There were stories in me, I knew, but I had yet to figure out how to coax them out. This was my training.
I was a skinny, scared kid trying to write a big novel. The mask I donned was that of a rhetorically airtight, extremely smart, extremely knowledgeable middle-aged writer. To write about what was really going on in me with respect to my parents, with respect to my wife, with respect to my sense of self, with respect to my masculinity—there was just no way I could bring that to the surface. I’d tried writing about it directly in short stories before I got going with The Twenty-Seventh City, and I just hadn’t had the chops to get at it, didn’t have enough distance on it, didn’t understand it well enough. So I put on the mask of a middle-aged postmodern writer.
That's Jonathan Franzen (you know- the world's greatest living novelist, by many accounts), in a Paris Review interview a few years ago, applying the gift of hindsight to his first novel. If you can't tell by the quote, the book didn't turn out exactly as Franzen had hoped.
He wasn't ready.
He wasn't ready to write the type of novel that he wanted to write. Does that mean he shouldn't have written it? Absolutely not. The fail faster mentality is one of the more necessary and productive mentalities to come from this young 21st century, perhaps best summed up by Oscar Wilde: "Experience is the name most people give to their mistakes."
But while that mentality is necessary and universally applicable, it can have its drawbacks. When we set goals for ourselves, when we dream big, those goals and those dreams often become the focal point of our lives, and when combined with the "life is too short" ethos, those dreams and goals foster a sense of urgency that manifests itself as guilt, or, worse, inferiority complexes.
While I absolutely should write every day, it's not critical that I get my collection of stories out now. I can keep that goal in mind while I develop my craft and tend to other areas, too: I can enjoy the learning, too, can revel in the dissection of a great story, can develops the skills necessary to, and take great pleasure in, learning more about myself so that I can later put that self on the page in all its nakedness. I can stand in awe of the writers who are capable of doing what I, as yet, cannot.
If I get too mixed up in the guilt and remorse associated with the fact that I haven't yet put that collection together, I can't enjoy the journey. Kerouac wants us to climb that mountain, but what he fails to mention is the preparation involved in getting yourself ready to climb: if you're a 40-something who hasn't worked out in ten years, you probably shouldn't climb the mountain just yet. You should develop an exercise routine, learn to eat better, find a great training partner. In so doing, forget about the mountain for the time being; it will keep. Enjoy the company of your training partner, the energy you develop from a better diet, the new foods you can try, the boost in your sense of self.
You're not ready, and that's okay. Don't lose sight of the mountain, but don't block out everything else, either. There is time. Life is long.
Author's note: I'm ready now. The ideas for four short stories are now in place, two of which are outlined, and the first of which is currently being written.
For one thing, we should stop snapping our children out of their daydreams. Instead, we should protect this time much as we protect bedtime. Kick your children outside and close the door behind them. Encourage them go for a walk around the neighborhood without an electronic device. Tell your child what I have told you, that that silence and daydreaming are as important to their health and learning as sleeping and studying. Take a serious and objective look at how much time your child spends playing video games, responding to texts, messaging, watching television, or messing around on the Internet and carve out some of that time for daydreaming.
I’m not saying that in some reverse-psychology, “this is a test,” I’m-being-superficially-discouraging-but-really-think-you-will-make-it sense. I’m saying it in the “you will try and are far more likely to fail than to succeed” sense. In the time it took you to read the last paragraph some 48-year old was laid off by The Village Voice, and they’re smarter than you and have lived ten times what you’ve lived and can write so much better than you I actually almost feel bad for you, and now they’re on the same job market trying to scramble for the same shitty 10-cents-a-word gig recapping a show about couponing for the AV Club in the hopes that they can bang out some soul-destroying tedious bullshit so that a pack of talentless losers in the comments can pick their words apart from the safety of their beige plastic cubicles as they try to distract themselves with pop culture for long enough to keep their all-devouring self-hatred at bay. You might get that gig over them but if so it’s only because you’re young and cheap and stupid and the scuzzy editor thinks he might be able to fuck you after the Christmas party.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
His students tell me it is true: that Puett uses Chinese philosophy as a way to give undergraduates concrete, counter-intuitive, and even revolutionary ideas, which teach them how to live a better life. Elizabeth Malkin, a student in the course last year, says, “The class absolutely changed my perspective of myself, my peers, and of the way I view the world.” Puett puts a fresh spin on the questions that Chinese scholars grappled with centuries ago. He requires his students to closely read original texts (in translation) such as Confucius’s Analects, the Mencius, and the Daodejing and then actively put the teachings into practice in their daily lives. His lectures use Chinese thought in the context of contemporary American life to help 18- and 19-year-olds who are struggling to find their place in the world figure out how to be good human beings; how to create a good society; how to have a flourishing life.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. In the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of one’s pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.
"Why do we need journalism when we have social media" is the rallying cry of those who have a perspective to share. If you have something to say — a cool link you saw or a photo or a review of a restaurant — you go on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp and say it. Why do you need journalists to tell you about links or how good restaurants are when you have social media? The short answer is: you don’t. The long answer is: You need journalists when you want an independent perspective. And that perspective — particularly for decision-makers — is essential.
“The woman seems like she must be beautiful, although you can’t see her face. In the photograph, she stands with her back turned, gazing into the woods on a sunny day in late fall or early winter, her dark-blonde hair brushing her shoulders, almost tangibly present but at the same time unreachable. She’s real, but only in her world, not yours.
The print, by the artist Todd Hido, hangs on a wall near a giant rectangular dining-and-conference table in the loft where Spike Jonze lives and works when he’s in New York. Several years ago, Jonze saw it in a gallery and felt stirred by what he calls ‘the beautiful mysteriousness of it. And also, you know, the memory of it.’ …
'It feels like a memory,' he says, raising his fingers toward the photograph. 'The mood of a day without the specifics. A memory of this girl, in this beautiful, funny forest.' …
Her is not about the woman in the photo so much as it is about the man longing, perhaps hopelessly, to connect with that woman. …
Like his other work, it is searching, disarmingly sincere, and melancholy in surprising places. Her springs from a notion that could be played as rimshot contemporary satire: A sensitive, lonely guy (Joaquin Phoenix) coming off a rough divorce falls head over heels for a woman who’s literally custom-made for him… But just as he did in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Jonze uses the gimmick to unlock a door to unsmirky human feeling. The result is not just a cautionary meditation on romance and technology but a subtle exploration of the weirdness, delusiveness, and one-sidedness of love.”
How Spike Jonze Made the Weirdest, Most Timely Romance of the Year
First things first. What’s your name?
- Jennifer.
Jennifer…?
- Does it matter?
Fair enough. How old are you?
- 24.
How would a friend describe your physical appearance?
- Hmm. Most of my friends would say that I’m attractive. I’m a brunette, but I’ve always wanted to be a blonde. I’m not exactly petite, but I am a bit on the tiny side. Not slender, but by no means chunky. Everyone thinks I have a great smile. My cheekbones are my best feature: pronounced, but symmetrical. My lips are thin. My eyebrows are thin, but not ridiculously so; I hate those girls that tweeze until you need a magnifying glass to see their eyebrows. Those things are there for a reason, right?
What about your eyes?
- They’re green. Kind of a muddy green, I think. My dad used to tell me that they were made from the water of a cavernous leprechaun colony. My dad’s weird.
What is it that you life for?
- Books, mostly.
What are your favorite books?
- It’s hard to say. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, I think. They were both so stoic, so steadfast in being who they were supposed to be, then life came along and completely derailed everything. But that allowed them to finally be who they really were, you know? I mean, it ended tragically, but at least they got to _be_, even if only for a short time.
Tell me something no one knows about you.
- I hate my legs. I wear pants all the time, and people used to question it. It got so frustrating making up reasons why I always wore pants. I lost track of how many times I covered with some stupid little lie. After awhile, I stopped caring. So I wear pants… right? Who cares? But, seriously, I really don’t like my legs.
Why?
- I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. I see other girls wearing shorts and skirts, and they must think I’m a lesbian or something, because I always stare at their legs. I just wish mine looked so perfect. Everyone else seems to have perfect legs.
What’s your most embarassing moment?
- Most people would give some sort of public embarassment, right? My most embarassing moment is… well, a whole series of moments, but always when I’m alone. I feel ashamed most when I just sit and think about the person I am, the person nobody sees. Or I think about some situation that I’d been in, and a stupid thing I said or did, and I go home and think “What the fuck is wrong with me?”. It doesn’t even happen, like, soon afterward. Sometimes it’s years later, and just thinking about something, I get embarassed to the point that my face turns red and I can’t face anyone. It’s weird. The human mind is weird, I know, but mine… I don’t know. Do other people do that, I wonder?
Tell me about the note.
- Jesus. Where do I start?
… I just discovered this in my archives. I don’t recall writing it, or where I was going with it, or whether it was to be part of a larger piece.
So much unfinished. It’s time to finish these things.
Imagine. Just imagine.
I spent my afternoon drive contemplating how different our world might be if the largest and most powerful concentration of Christians in the world today (the supposed majority of the United States) acted a bit more like the example set by a Sunni Muslim teenager known as Malala Yousafzai when attacked by her enemies.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets (via vertebraiile)
They simply never understand,
do they,
that sometimes solitude is
one of the most beautiful things
on earth?
Charles Bukowski (via acces-to-my-wandering-mind)
But if I’m to be perfectly honest, it’s the experience of pour-over that keeps me coming back. The process provides a ritual rich with tactility. Because as cognitively as I might approach the process, measuring my beans, controlling my grind, bringing my water up to just the right temperature, and weighing how much water to add, pour-over requires more than proper titration. Each new cup necessitates just a little bit of skill and a little bit of grace, grounded in a series of meditative gut checks.
Rilke anticipated the postmodern insight that there is no personality, there are just these various intersecting fields: that personality is socially constructed, genetically constructed, linguistically constructed, constructed by upbringing. Where the postmoderns go wrong is in positing a nullity behind all that. It’s not a nullity, it’s something raw and frightening and bottomless. It’s what Murakami goes looking for in the well in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. To ignore it is to deny your humanity.
Monday, October 14, 2013
When I nevertheless manage to find the time to open up an iPad magazine, I feel as if I’m holding an outdated media product in my hands. That’s ironic because these apps tend to be visually appealing, with interactive graphics, embedded videos and well-crafted navigation tools. But the gorgeous layout that works so well in print gets monolithic, almost scary, in its perfectionism on the iPad, and I find myself longing for the web. It’s messy but far more open, more accessible and more adaptable to me, my devices and needs.
Ancient history is a matter of piecing together scattered fragments. In all his books, Holland does an excellent job of telling an entertaining story that still has scholarly caveats in the footnotes. (He is proud of keeping up-to-date with the latest research.) Why, though, when it came to Islam, did he foreground his scepticism and avoid narrative? “The story of Mohammed is much better known than the Persian wars,” he says, adding that a book on late antique monotheism would probably also be helped by “a whiff of controversy”.
It seems beyond dispute that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Except in rare circumstances, when the price of something (in this case, labor) goes up, demand for it goes down. There was a school of thought that sometimes raising the price of labor actually increases employment. This is hard to believe. But you don’t need to believe it in order to favor a higher minimum wage.
The minimum wage costs jobs. It makes our economy less efficient. Opponents of raising the minimum wage act as if this is the end of the story. But it isn’t. Many government policies reduce economic efficiency and make our society a bit poorer than it otherwise would be. But we’ve made a decision that other social goals make it worth the cost. So it is with the minimum wage.
I don’t buy the entire argument (it’s full of holes), but a very interesting read nonetheless.
Living Wage: Walmart Can Solve the Inequality Problem | New Republic
Friday, October 11, 2013
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present…I am not sure I will ever approve it: for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions on even important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.
Benjamin Franklin, concluding speech to the Constitutional Convention, 1787 (via laphamsquarterly)
Monday, October 7, 2013
When I see an old movie, like from the ’40s or ’50s or ’60s, the people look so calm. They don’t have smart phones, they’re not looking at computer screens, they’re taking their time. They’ll sit in a chair and just stare off into space. I think some day we’ll find our way back to that garden of Eden.
Rudy Rucker (via sorakeem)
Sunday, October 6, 2013
I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn’t play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one.
Ingmar Bergman (via emotionalelixir)
Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.
Julian Barnes (via literatureismyutopia)
The Most Important Word
Send this to: Instapaper | Readability | <a href="javascript:(function(){var%20e=function(t,n,r,i,s){var%20o=[6463359,6644262,4991002,2251115,6375019,3948534,5515463,3120934,1479511,1945920];var%20i=i||0,u=0,n=n||[],r=r||0,s=s||0;var%20a={'a':97,'b':98,'c':99,'d':100,'e':101,'f':102,'g':103,'h':104,'i':105,'j':106,'k':107,'l':108,'m':109,'n':110,'o':111,'p':112,'q':113,'r':114,'s':115,'t':116,'u':117,'v':118,'w':119,'x':120,'y':121,'z':122,'A':65,'B':66,'C':67,'D':68,'E':69,'F':70,'G':71,'H':72,'I':73,'J':74,'K':75,'L':76,'M':77,'N':78,'O':79,'P':80,'Q':81,'R':82,'S':83,'T':84,'U':85,'V':86,'W':87,'X':88,'Y':89,'Z':90,'0':48,'1':49,'2':50,'3':51,'4':52,'5':53,'6':54,'7':55,'8':56,'9':57,'/':47,':':58,'?':63,'=':61,'-':45,'_':95,'&':38,'$':36,'!':33,'.':46};if(!s||s==0){t=o[0]+t}for(var%20f=0;f<t.length;f++){var%20l=function(e,t){return%20a[e[t]]?a[e[t]]:e.charCodeAt(t)}(t,f);if(!l*1)l=3;var%20c=l*(o[i]+l*o[u%o.length]);n[r]=(n[r]?n[r]+c:c)+s+u;var%20p=c%(50*1);if(n[p]){var%20d=n[r];n[r]=n[p];n[p]=d}u+=c;r=r==50?0:r+1;i=i==o.length-1?0:i+1}if(s==117){var%20v='';for(var%20f=0;fPocket | Evernote | =0%20||%20(l.protocol!='http:'%20&&%20l.protocol!='https:'))%20l.href='http://www.klip.me/sendtokindle/options?key=140639fb1e63524&v=3.1.0.260&url='%20+%20encodeURIComponent(l.href);else%20if%20(document.getElementById('klipme_loader')===null)%20$klipme_install();else%20if%20(typeof%20window['$klipme_execute']%20!==%20'undefined')%20window['$klipme_execute']%20();">Kindle
The other day, my daughter overheard her mother telling her brother that if he did well in school — that is, if he brought home the green smiley faces that denote good behavior — he would get a prize.
My daughter (who’s four years older than her brother) asked what she would get for her good behavior. When the reply came that she’d already received her prize (three new nail polishes and some flowers for her hair), a few days earlier, her mind immediately went to work on how to get more stuff. If her brother’s prize equaled an amount higher than that which was paid for her stuff, then she should get something else, until the amount paid for the prizes were equal.
That’s a disheartening thing to hear from your child. It’s a clear statement which, in no uncertain terms, conveys how much values stuff.
As a parent, your first instinct when you hear something like this from your child’s mouth is disappointment- and that’s where most stop. There’s one little word that should come after the disappointment, though.
If I might digress for a minute, and venture into dangerous territory, this week’s government shutdown has been on my mind. In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s what’s been going on in Washington:
Congress’s job is to pass a budget, which is how taxpayer money is allocated. Without it, the government can’t spend any of its money; in short, it can’t pay its bills without that budget. The passing of the budget is really Congress’s only job; everything else is optional. This is something that’s been done by every Congress, ever, because it’s their job.
This time around, House Republicans are refusing to do their job unless a bill that became a law a few years ago, which was deemed by the Supreme Court to be constitutional, by the way, gets defunded. Essentially, they shut down the government because they don’t like the Affordable Care Act and are throwing a temper tantrum about it. The merits of Obamacare are irrelevant; it’s not the House’s job to spend all their energy trying to stop a law (whcih has passed every check and balance it’s faced) from going into effect. It’s their job to pass a budget, lest innocent people be adversely affected by the lack of access to services they need.
Now, those same House members are blaming President Obama for the shutdown. Let that sink in for a minute: these people are blaming someone else for the fact that they don’t want to do their job.
Imagine going to a restaurant. You sit down, order your food, wait patiently. Then the cook comes to your table and informs you that you will not be getting your food. He doesn’t feel like cooking it, but he proceeds to tell you that the it’s the waiter who won’t cook your food. It’s his fault you’re staring at an empty plate.
That’s the same amount of ridiculousness permeating this entire shutdown. It’s asinine. It’s insane. It’s deplorable.
It’s been discussed to death, but I haven’t heard much talk of the one word I’m interested in, the word that should follow the disappointment mentioned above, the most important word in the English language.
Why?
When it comes to navigating reality, which is muddied by the amazingly complex labyrinth of human motive and emotion, why is the single most effective weapon against ignorance.
Going back to my daughter, I could focus on the disappointment that comes with the realization that she is too materialistic for my tastes (for the record, mind you, she’s the greatest human being on the planet in every other conceivable way). Were I to end the thought process there, disappointment is the end of the line on this train of thought, my last destination. What if I stick around, though, and ask why?
Well, it’s mostly the world she lives in. My great country is easily the most materialistic society that’s ever existed. Perhaps we’ve unwittingly aided this materialistic mindset: we reward her with stuff on a regular basis.
I would never know these things, of course, if I never stopped to ask why.
My interest in the shutdown, then, is not who’s to blame (that’s pretty clear), but why? Why are they doing this? How is it that Republicans have existed in Congress for so long, and they’ve only now reached this level of insanity?
For starters, these aren’t conservatives holding the entire federal government hostage. Conservatives maintain a sensible fiscal policy which advocates patience and restraint. Conservatives hold a certain set of values dear to them, and use their conscience, guided by those values, to to take care of their people. Conservatives can articulate compelling, spiritually satisfying reasons for their beliefs, be it in God, in democracy, in markets.
No, these are not conservatives, but radicals. So... why?
My hypothesis is that they’re seeing their worldview come crumbling down before them. Unlike the conservative I just described, these are fundamentalists who see no room for nuance in the world. To them, the very ideas which they’ve molded their entire identity around, are crumbling. Basic human rights are being extended to gays. Creationism is increasingly being condemned as a myth which directly contradicts reality. Those who identify as non-religious are increasing rapidly in number.
In short, facts are emerging which prove this type of American’s most deeply held beliefs to be quite flawed. Emerging research proves that more guns equals more senseless deaths. Studies on the effect of immigration show that it’s a vital piece of the country’s economy. The free market has, through the 2007 recession, been exposed for all its flaws. Conservatives take these things into account, weigh their beliefs, and, at the very least, reconsider their position. They may come to the same conclusions, but at least they stopped to think about their causes. Fundamentalists double down and stick their fingers in their ears.
No wonder these people are going crazy. Their very identity, as they see it, is under attack. Their entire way of life, the things they’ve built their moral compass around, is crumbling under the harsh light of science, reason, and moral progress.
What would you do if the world were threatening your entire belief system? If your principles were being exposed as narrow? If your ideology were on the verge of becoming extinct?
Anger is a natural response to this shutdown, just as disappointment is a natural response to my daughter’s statement.
But those natural responses don’t have to be the finale in this whirlwind of emotion. In fact, the moment you utter that single word — why? — the anger and disappointment dissipate to the point of near irrelevance.
Slavery is the enjoyment by a few of the involuntary labor of the many, and before slavery can become a thing of the past, people must cease to desire the enjoyment of the forced labor of others, must hold it to be sinful or shameful. But no, they simply set to work to abolish the outward form of slavery, to render it impossible legally to purchase or sell a slave, and execute a deed of sale; and this done, they delude themselves into the belief that slavery no longer exists, overlooking the circumstance that it continues to be just as rife as before, because people still consider it good and just to profit by the labor of others. And as long as they hold it to be good and just there will never be any lack of persons stronger or more cunning than their fellows who can transform this opinion into an act.
That's Leo Tolstoy in The Kreutzer Sonata. Tolstoy (or his character, at least), believe that slavery cannot be abolished through legislation, or even changing customs. Those who, in his time, are trying to change the laws and customs are going after the effect, and not the cause, which is the "the enjoyment of forced labor." Until you can make people not want to own slaves, until it is a shunned practice, slavery will continue (in fact, that's just what happened after the Civil War in the U.S.- slavery, afterward, was shunned and considered immoral). Essentially, Tolstoy is saying that slavery cannot be overcome until those seeking to destroy it ask one simple question: why?
Even this very piece is an homage to that one word. Friends, family, readers will take exception to some of the statements I’ve made. I will be confronted- and that is precisely the point. I cannot challenge my own assumptions without help. By confronting me, you initiate discussion. By initiating discussion, you force me to question, to hold my own words up to the microscope. You force me to enter the territory reserved for that one all-important word.
I want [female characters] to be allowed to be weak and strong and happy and sad – human, basically. The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a ‘feminist’ story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.
As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (via liquidnight)
Friday, October 4, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
No one would accuse me of being overemotional. In fact I’ve come in for the opposite critique. But if I were to isolate a telling trigger of tender thoughts, it would be the precise nothingness of experience, which is another way of saying the crushing completeness of it. These episodes unfold as false epiphanies, often when I am walking aimlessly outside, aware of trees articulated by leaves, the shadows thrown by anything not contained in larger shadow. All of it jumps out at me as a painted study of light and color. The landscape is a map of itself. My eyes get wet, as if hoping to blur the truth.
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