February 2010
“If there is any good reason to leave Paris (other than the daily pain it imposes...”
– Five years ago tonight, I called you from a splurge hotel room in Accra. A little box with no windows but generous hot water and a dingy television that showed CNN. I went for a long walk through the streets to find a second hand English bookshop someone told me about, a papaya and real candy that...
January 2010
“Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.”
– — Paul Bowles
Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly in the bell jar, rabidly independent or enormously elated, I’ll write some message to myself across my stomach or arms. Put on several layers of clothes and go about my day, inscribed before the oblivious world. This morning,...
“In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled fresh,...”
– “The Reader” - Bernhard Schlink
1 tag
The Great Pacific
A little light
less than lead
in the years since
A cigarette hung
from your mouth
while letting out the main sail
the Horse Latitudes
the great Pacific
The doubt pushed away
the depth and density
measured
We were made
in likeness
we were made
to traverse so many
un likenesses
before coming
to our senses
I heard you moved away
Just in time for the flood
The down of a thistle
in...
“Eight years later, I would find myself on a first date with a man who tells me...”
– diana vilibert: On Girls and Boys (Who) Like Holden
Diana Vilibert, with whom I fell a little in love today.
“D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you...”
– The Catcher in the Rye
I don’t just feel like Salinger died, I feel like Holden did. And I guess I am one of those silly, predictable girls who is tremendously sad at that. I feel protective, apologetic for this book. Still so defensive of its merit and voice in the face of today’s...
thecaleb asked: What do you do for a living?
Resolved.
Wake in an instant, like the upswing of a blink. Contemplate the ceiling fan, whose artificial air movement I dislike, let my mouth fall loose into a half smile, a test. Stretch and arch across this plain of sheets and down, pull one pale feather from my hair, less tangled today.
Sink into the bathtub, cold-shouldering the clock, tipped back 45 degrees into this porcelain lap. Make a modest list...
Upon a lover leaving town
I had no incentive to get you back to the terminal on time; Between an afternoon lingering in bed and word games over margaritas, I came within five minutes of passively causing you to miss your flight. But not close enough.
This apartment wasn’t empty before you came, you know. The whole time you were here, I tripped over your damn shoes and learned to walk around you in the doorway, to...
Asunder
On the fire escape of your rented room we sat and felt the empty city sweat and fret we passed a cigarette back and forth as once we passed words like these between us without hope of keeping Now I write without hope of answer to say that what we gave each other nakedly was too much and not enough to say that since we last touched I am not empty I hear...
Bird-Understander
One of the best parts of Tumblr? When someone like Ben reads what you write and then sends you a poem he thinks you need to have. You were right Ben, this poem keeps cracking and patching up my heart every time I reread it.
******************************************************
Of many reasons I love you here is one the way you write me from the gate at the airport so I can tell you...
1 tag
ebbnflow
I wake up when you normally wake me, lie in a quiet room back home, still waiting to catch a cold. I slept with a two-year-old all weekend, lay beside his little body clammy with fever. And he’d clamp one model scale hand on to my cheek and watch me through delirious eyes and your texts came some time in the night. But what does a text mean compared to this?
Every time I think I know. ...
Accident
odayaka:
This is how it happened. Yesterday on my way to work. I stepped on a dead toad…. Your face came/ in a flash Unbidden memory. An electric shock/ of sorts… Buckley, I will never hear your voice again. So please play this one last. Soft, so we can hear the men cry. You become so small. A stamp or a xerox copy. You/I never know when to heal.
By mushr
““
“The future is loud and close. Love is loud and close. And many things are...”
– — Johnathan Safran Foer on “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”
Mostly in life, I just want to have a triple date dinner party with JSF & Nicole Krauss and Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman.
Coming and Crying: real stories about sex from the... →
“Meaghan O’Connell and Melissa Gira Grant (or, “we”) met because of the internet and writing, and writing about sex (and blogging about writing about sex). Almost since then, we’ve been talking about how we need to do a book like this: a collection of stories (and photographs) from the messy, awkward, hilarious, painful, and ultimately true side of sex.
“As...
Tell my friend Amber to do the right thing:
From An Amber Colored Life:
“And yes, this is totally about Brian Stricker, Kris. Sorry we made out at your wedding. I look great in brown satin. Sue me.”
What’s the statute of limitations on deleting a guy’s phone number from your phone? Like, let’s say that you maybe haven’t spoken to them in two years, and they live in Montana, and the last time you saw...
Conversations at a Country Club Luncheon, part one
Octogenarian: You have a husband and a family?
Me: No.
Octogenarian: Why not?
Me: ....
Octogenarian: ...
Me: So tell me about the sand and gravel business!
I can't stop listening to this. →
hipsterdiet(via @thisrecording)
2 tags
“Anthony Bourdain is a smug, self-satisfied son of a bitch. But I respect him as...”
– Tonight’s conversation with the funniest guy I know sprawls into unexpected territory. Turns out this man, this well armed massive fortress of machismo is openly, unabashedly afraid of Anthony freaking Bourdain. By the time he was done explaining his logic, I was a little uneasy too.
...
Music for Landing Planes By
We drive Highway Q with no lights
Millions of miles away, the stars
make visible energy, send it without expectation of return -
there’s nothing but air rushing past the window.
Somewhere far from here, I can imagine remembering this night.
In your car, the radio
tunes half static. It doesn’t matter to me
what gravity takes, only
the long, impermanent drop -
over the...
Google Pullout from China: In their own words →
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to...
1 tag
I wanted to mention that.
A friend wrote me an email about architecture and the art (curse?) of feeling so foreign right at home. And he closed with a summary of our recent political conversation: In retrospect, he said, I was pretty pragmatic. He unveiled it like a resigned, grownup lesson for himself. And even in writing, it had this gonging echo of disappointment around it; This echo I can’t unhear. And it...
tesslynch:
jens lekman — a postcard to nina
...
ksquared asked: Dear Been Thinking,
My question to you is this: when will you start a book, which I can read with my very serious glasses on, in my favorite coffee shop where they have seen me cry before? (I mention the last bit because I can only assume a sweet novel by yourself would be just as moving as the rest of your shorter entries). Also, when you sit down to write the first words of said...
My question to you is this: when will you start a book, which I can read with my very serious glasses on, in my favorite coffee shop where they have seen me cry before? (I mention the last bit because I can only assume a sweet novel by yourself would be just as moving as the rest of your shorter entries). Also, when you sit down to write the first words of said...
dirkashlyknoedler asked: any idea when you are headed to india? i am thinking of going too.
"Nil by Mouth" by Roger Ebert →
I saw a snippet or two of this somewhere, but then my friend Marchelle sent it to me and I finally took time to read it entirely. And was surprised to find it much worth the effort. I was caught off guard by its slow cantor, its carefulness. As though his losses have grounded him into patience, presence. I was surprised by the point and purpose of nearly every word. What’s the opposite of...
1 tag
hipsterdiet:
The Cure - Close to Me
A...
In which spammers don't know me at all
FYI: The subject line “New Flirts Are Waiting for You” makes me sweaty and anxious.
I am not your target market. Carry on.
1 tag
“Does happiness strain credibility? Is there something in the human spirit that...”
– “In the Lake of the Woods” - Tim O’Brien
iveneverheardofyou asked: what are your obsessions?
chula asked: What are you reading ..currenlty