Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Panko panko panko panko
I'm sick, but for some reason, all I want in the world are chicken cutlets crusted in Panko.
Actually, it's a Clown
This is a picture of the worst, most surreal nightmare I can ever imagine myself having. It's from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's newsletter.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
More John Updike
Again, it's long... skip over if you have to. But I love it.
"At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel... We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies. In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface. Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.
"I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge. The radio was singing 'Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet,' and the speedometer said 81.
"Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the dancer, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose... We made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.
"There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn. This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded btween me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunglight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thing overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life. And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me."
"At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel... We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies. In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface. Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.
"I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge. The radio was singing 'Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet,' and the speedometer said 81.
"Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the dancer, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose... We made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.
"There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn. This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded btween me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunglight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thing overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life. And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me."
This is long but worth it
"Two sensations stood out as peculiarly blissful in my childhood... The first has been alluded to: the awareness of things going by, impinging on my consciousness, and then, all beyond my control, sliding away toward their own destination and destiny. The traffic on Philadelphia Avenue was such; the sound of an engine and tires would swell like a guest of wind, the headlight beam would parabolically wheel about the papered walls of my little room, and then the lights and the sound would die, and that dangerous creature of combustion and momentum would be out of my life... Mailing letters, flushing a toilet, reading the last set of proofs - all have this sweetness of riddance.
"The second intimation of deep, cosmic joy, also already hinted at, is really a variation of being out of the rain, but just out. I would lean close to the chilld windowpane to hear the raindrops ticking on the other side; I would huddle under bushes until the rain penetrated; I loved doorways in a shower.
"On our side porch, it was my humble job, when it rained, to turn the wicker furniture with its seats to the wall, and in these porous woven caves I would crouch, happy almost to tears, as the rain drummed on the porch rail and rattled the grape leaves of the arbor and touched my wicker shelter with a mist like the vain assault of an atomic army.
"In both species of delightful experience, the reader my notice, the experiencer is motionless, holding his breath as it were, and the things experienced are morally detached from him: there is nothing he can do, or ought to do, about the flow, the tumult. He is irresponsible, safe, and witnessing: the entire body, for these rapt moments, mimics the position of the essential self in its jungle of physiology, its moldering tangle of inheritance and circumstance.
"Early in his life, the child I once was sensed the guilt in things, inseparable from the pain, the competition: the sparrow dead on the lawn, the flies swatted on the porch, the impervious leer of the bully on the school playground. The burden of activity, of participation, must clearly be shouldered and had its pleasures.
"But they were cruel pleasures. There was nothing ruel about crouching in a shelter and letting phenomena slide by: it was ecstasy. The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever. If we keep utterly still, we can suffer no wear and tear, and will never die."
John Updike
"The second intimation of deep, cosmic joy, also already hinted at, is really a variation of being out of the rain, but just out. I would lean close to the chilld windowpane to hear the raindrops ticking on the other side; I would huddle under bushes until the rain penetrated; I loved doorways in a shower.
"On our side porch, it was my humble job, when it rained, to turn the wicker furniture with its seats to the wall, and in these porous woven caves I would crouch, happy almost to tears, as the rain drummed on the porch rail and rattled the grape leaves of the arbor and touched my wicker shelter with a mist like the vain assault of an atomic army.
"In both species of delightful experience, the reader my notice, the experiencer is motionless, holding his breath as it were, and the things experienced are morally detached from him: there is nothing he can do, or ought to do, about the flow, the tumult. He is irresponsible, safe, and witnessing: the entire body, for these rapt moments, mimics the position of the essential self in its jungle of physiology, its moldering tangle of inheritance and circumstance.
"Early in his life, the child I once was sensed the guilt in things, inseparable from the pain, the competition: the sparrow dead on the lawn, the flies swatted on the porch, the impervious leer of the bully on the school playground. The burden of activity, of participation, must clearly be shouldered and had its pleasures.
"But they were cruel pleasures. There was nothing ruel about crouching in a shelter and letting phenomena slide by: it was ecstasy. The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever. If we keep utterly still, we can suffer no wear and tear, and will never die."
John Updike
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The View from Mrs. Thompson's
Please read David Foster Wallace's little essay about his experience on 9/11 in Bloomington, IL. He somehow managed to tease out and magnify the truest and most essential elements of whatever he wrote about, and could be hilarious and heartbreaking all in the same paragraph.
The View from Mrs. Thompson's
"Synecdoche
In true Midwest fashion, Bloomingtonians aren't unfriendly but do tend to be reserved. A stranger will smile warmly at you, but there normally won't be any of that strangerly chitchat in waiting areas or checkout lines. But now there's something to talk about that outweighs all reserve, like we were somehow all standing right there and just saw the same traffic accident. E.g., overheard in the checkout line at Burwell's (which is sort of the Neiman Marcus of gas station/convenience store plazas — centrally located athwart both one-way main drags, and with the best tobacco prices in town, it's a municipal treasure) between a lady in an Osco cashier's smock and a man in a dungaree jacket cut off at the shoulders to make a sort of homemade vest: "With my boys they thought it was all some movie like that Independence Day til then after a while they started to notice it was the same movie on all the channels." (The lady didn't say how old her boys were.)"
The View from Mrs. Thompson's
"Synecdoche
In true Midwest fashion, Bloomingtonians aren't unfriendly but do tend to be reserved. A stranger will smile warmly at you, but there normally won't be any of that strangerly chitchat in waiting areas or checkout lines. But now there's something to talk about that outweighs all reserve, like we were somehow all standing right there and just saw the same traffic accident. E.g., overheard in the checkout line at Burwell's (which is sort of the Neiman Marcus of gas station/convenience store plazas — centrally located athwart both one-way main drags, and with the best tobacco prices in town, it's a municipal treasure) between a lady in an Osco cashier's smock and a man in a dungaree jacket cut off at the shoulders to make a sort of homemade vest: "With my boys they thought it was all some movie like that Independence Day til then after a while they started to notice it was the same movie on all the channels." (The lady didn't say how old her boys were.)"
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Recommendations
Bob Dylan - Idiot Wind
I can't stop listening to this. I'm obsessed. It's sick!
Orville Redenbacher Naturals Buttery Salt & Cracked Pepper Popcorn
Now that I've tasted it I don't know why no one thought of this before.
I can't stop listening to this. I'm obsessed. It's sick!
Orville Redenbacher Naturals Buttery Salt & Cracked Pepper Popcorn
Now that I've tasted it I don't know why no one thought of this before.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
I LEGO N.Y.
I LEGO N.Y.
I can't put a picture here but I promise it's worth clicking through, especially if you're a New Yorker.
I can't put a picture here but I promise it's worth clicking through, especially if you're a New Yorker.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Chekhov
"We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds." Anton Chekhov
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