ryrivard
Jun 22, 2009
2:52am
“FedEx Ground,” near Elkins, W.Va.
May 10, 2009
7:21pm
“This door is locked and will not open,” the campus of West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va.
May 7, 2009
5:39am
“
Every now and then you reach a sort of fissure or fracture in time. It’s like a scenic overlook as imagined by Einstein or Kepler, from which you can actually witness two possible futures: Off the left side, you see a world of orderly streets and squares, where fans crowd theaters showing the new blockbuster by Jessica Simpson, who looks down from a marquee, slender and blonde and shaped like a barbell, booming on top and in the middle, skinny as a pencil between, and radios blast an endless stream of Jessica Simpson hits, her voice syrupy and love-filled. Off the right, a different world entirely, a place fallen into chaos and ruin, where a tremendous pop energy has leaked away and our beloved galaxy of reliable stars has been replaced by shabby novelties, and Jessica Simpson, living in a house amid a strip of identical houses in the fifth settlement ring beyond Dallas, with her third husband, a kicker in the Arena Football League, has been utterly forgotten.
”
- The Jessica Question by Rich Cohen in Vanity Fair.
May 4, 2009
1:42am
A Strange Country in a Book
T.E. Lawrence in a letter home, Sept. 1910. From Lawrence of Arabia: The Selected Letters, Malcolm Brown, editor:
You know, I think, the joy of getting into a strange country in a book: at home when I have shut my door & the town is in bed—and I know that nothing, not even the dawn—can disturb me in my curtains: only the slow crumbling of the coals in the fire: they get so red & throw such splendid glimmerings on the Hypnos & the brass-work. And it is lovely too, after you have been wandering for hours in the forest with Percivale or Sagramors le desirous to open the door, and from over the Cherwell to look at the sun glowering through the valley-mists. Why does one not like things if there are other people about? Why cannot one make one’s book live except in the night, after hours of straining? and you know they have to be your own books too, & you have to read them more than once. I think they take in something of your personality, & your enviroment also—you know a second hand book sometimes is so much more flesh & blood than a new one.—and it is almost terrible to think that your ideas, yourself in your books may be giving life to generations of readers after you are forgotten. It is that specially which makes one need good books: books that will be worthy of what you are going to put into them. What would you think of a great sculptor who flung away his gifts on modelling clay or sand? Imagination should be put into the most precious caskets, & that is why one can only live in the future or the past, in Utopia, or the wood beyond the World.
May 4, 2009
12:00am
Things & What This Is Not
I don’t anticipate doing much writing here. I spend much of my day at that already. But I need to organize things, clip things, and make sense of things by posting things.
Eleven years later, Jason Kottke’s motive still applies.
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