yes

Ira Glass, again

The other day, I posted this quote from Ira Glass on the topic of creative work. I really value what he's saying here and though it is mostly along the lines of 'if at first you don't succeed...' it still rings true and honest. I'm trying to be okay with the gap I'm currently in, and though I'm not a writer, a painter, a photographer, etc, I still consider myself a 'creative' person. I'm in this place in my life trying to bridge the divide of what I'm inspired by and enjoy doing (which spans a lot of niches) to focusing my interests on a clearer direction. So though this quote from Glass isn't directly related to my current situation, I like what he's saying. And, in thinking about it, I also came across this video:

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

nobody tells this to beginners

source

its the words

"It's the words that sing, they roar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop...Vowels I love...They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew...I run after certain words...They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem...I catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of them of the dish, they have a cristalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives...And then I stir them, I garnish them, I let them go...I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves...Everything exists in the world."

-Pablo Neruda


via this is water (an amazing blog concentrated on poetry and literary awesomeness)


photo credit

love and travel

This excerpt is from a book review written by Jeff Turrentine of 'L'America' (by Martha McPhee) in the New York Times, June, 2006. It has stuck with me ever since:


"Surely by now some clever scientist has studied the similarities between the human brain in the throes of new love and the human brain while vacationing in a picturesque foreign country. Doesn't it seem likely that whatever chemical causing the rapture we feel after that first, fantastic kiss is the same one making us swear we've never tasted an espresso as good as the one in this little Roman cafe? The sequence is the same, whether we've fallen hard for a place or a person: astonishment (I've never felt this way before); followed by euphoria (everything looks, tastes, smells and sounds so much better than it did yesterday); followed, typically, by a kind of naïve determinism (this was simply meant to be, and it would be wrong, cosmically wrong, not to rearrange my life to make this a major part of it)."


photo credit

inspiration

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

(This piece speaks to my soul)

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

by Charles Warnke

(via thoughtcatalog)

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

a turn on loneliness

"We are all alone, born along, die alone, and - in spite of True Romance magazines - we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely - at least, not all the time - but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness." hunter s. thompson.

photo credit (thank you)