Jan
9
Prospect Park #
May
22
The Nourishing Wake
“Millions were vacuumed from the streets up into their office buildings… Hundreds of thousands crawled out from under their desks. File cabinets righted themselves. Blinds ceased smacking windows. Shards of broken glass flew up and landed as whole bottles atop desks.” #
Mar
20
‘How come she never got sad?’
‘She did get sad, Booboo. She just got sad in her way instead of yours and mine. She got sad, I’m pretty sure.’
‘Hal?’
‘You remember how the staff lowered the flag to half-mast out front by the portcullis here after it happened? Do you remember that? And it goes to half-mast every year at Convocation? Remember the flag, Boo?’
‘Hey Hal?’
‘Don’t cry, Booboo. Remember the flag only halfway up the pole? Booboo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you listening? Because no shit I really have to sleep here in a second. So listen—one way to lower the flag to half-mast is just to lower the flag. There’s another way though. You can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me? You understand what I mean, Mario?’
‘Hal?’
‘She’s plenty sad, I bet.’
—David Foster Wallace #
Mar
16
“Dear mornings,
Thank you for having a truer, more still type of quiet than evenings.”
Dec
19
From Dan Anderson’s photostream. #
Nov
1
“It’s because of their new way of doing business the old-fashioned way I can do my part in doing the same. I’m a new doctor who does old-fashioned house calls because of Square.”
—Joseph Morrison (via Aaron) #
Oct
11
“There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn’t even know it. You didn’t know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye.”
—Colson Whitehead (via Buzz) #
Sep
13
“A great stagnation warning sign during 1.0 is when someone decides to create an organization chart defining “This is who does what”. Now, investors and outside parties need this org chart to get a sense of whether you’re real or not, but your 1.0 team does not. The whiteboard in the corner of the room, which lists who is doing what, is your org chart. The definition and hierarchy an org chart portrays is the first step in creating a culture of secrecy in your org. That might work for Apple, but you’re not Apple, yet. You’re hope and hard work.”
—Michael Lopp #
Aug
21
“It was as if his head perched on the bedpost all night now and in the terribly early A.M. when Hal’s eyes snapped open immediately said Glad You’re UP I’ve Been Wanting To TALK To You and then didn’t let up all day, having at him like a well-revved chain-saw all day until he could finally try to fall unconscious, crawling into the rack wretched to await more bad dreams. 24/7’s of feeling wretched and bereft.”
—David Foster Wallace #
Aug
15
“Pretty much anyone who feels they’ve ‘arrived’ anyplace is about to learn a) how much more they could be doing outside the narrowness of an often superficial ambition and b) the surprising number of things they had to give away through the opportunity costs and trade-offs that lead up to every theoretical milestone. It’s a real goddamned thistle, and it’s more than a little depressing.”
—Merlin Mann #
May
17
“That’s why it sometimes seems to me that music theory is one of the most despicable disciplines there is, because you’d probably label the bass of that magical chord a ‘passing tone,’ and once you’ve labeled it a passing tone it’s a bit deflating… doink!, it goes in the bin with all the other passing tones. Somewhat like passing through Trenton on your way to Philadelphia: unremarkable. In the same way, once you call something Spaghetti and Meatballs, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ve understood anything about pasta, or that you should serve it to paying customers, or why a pianist might eat such a ridiculous thing before a concert, or any of the related questions that might come up. Bach had that way of using passing tones so that you could meditate on the passing-ness of things, what it is to pass, to move on, to leave beauties behind… of labeling the labels with meaning, breathing life back into the most basic, even the most unassuming, words.”
—Jeremy Denk #
Apr
17
“By holding it tightly, I feel strangely more detached.”
—Evelyn Glennie, in her TED talk about how to listen #
Mar
20
