“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” —Pablo Neruda

May
25

Swings on BART

From y3rdua’s photostream.

May
6

“In the sedate neighborhood where he now lived, everyone was old, more or less. For years he had watched the neighbor to his right, a widower, slowly deteriorate, his stride becoming a shuffle, his house and yard gradually growing shabbier and shaggier, inch by inch, season by season, in increments so small that only a speeded-up film would show the process. The two men would converse across the fence from time to time; Fanshawe once or twice offered to do some pruning for his neighbor. ‘No, thanks,’ would be the answer. ‘I’ll get to it, when I’m feeling a little more lively.’ We look ahead and see random rises and falls; the linear diminishment so plain to others is invisible to us.”
—John Updike

Apr
9

“I tell them dance begins when a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom. I tell them it’s the body’s reaching, bringing air to itself. I tell them it’s the heart’s triumph, the victory speech of the feet, the refinement of animal lunge and flight, the purest metaphor of tribe and self. It’s life flipping death the bird. I make this stuff up.”
—Lorrie Moore

Mar
31

Skateland USA in Greensboro, NC

Skateland USA in Greensboro, NC. From Jessica Rolland’s photostream.

Mar
19

“No facts exist inside the building, only opinions.”
Steve Blank (via Avery Pennarun)

Mar
18

“Composers mostly don’t wait for rain; they invent their own water. In the slow movement of the Archduke Trio, for instance, I feel Beethoven created the theme in order that he could simply swim in it. It’s a current which carries him, and the measure of his success is his surrender.”
Jeremy Denk

Feb
22

“Should I sign my songs? Or do my songs show signatures in the way that they are sung?”
—Phil Elverum

Feb
19

Ludacris and She & Him: Sentimental Mouths

View this post on the site to use a flash player.

Oh man. (from The Hood Internet remix blog)

Feb
14

In between the stopping and starting of the fan, when the train switches power outside the tunnel, someone’s pinning down quiet notes on a uke. It’s missing a string. The second car slides out of the tunnel and it’s pouring again; at the station, a slight Chinese woman asked me for directions to 19th Ave. I was still in Los Angeles, and repeated back to her several times, “La Tijera?” Eventually I motioned that she should follow me, and we sat together on the orange plastic seats, and I poked at each stop on the line in turn, a bouncing ball at one syllable after another.

I opened the front door and took off my shoes, and walked into the bedroom. Her sandals were on the carpet, the usual glass half-full of water on the nightstand, and I didn’t want to move them, not just yet.

Feb
10

A revealing malapropism encountered at work: “the last acceptance criteria eludes to it.”

Feb
4

“Why do you wake up?”
Anthony Volodkin

Dec
27

“I found the safest place to keep all our tenderness. Keep all our bad ideas. Keep all our hope. It’s here in the smallest bones, the feet and the inner-ear. It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen.”
—The Weakerthans

Dec
4

Man finding his way south at 64 mph on Interstate 5 near Wildcat Canyon, California, on a Sunday in 1993

From Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits.