Last week was my first full week back to work, post-holidays. I was surprisingly at peace on Sunday night, ready and accepting that it was time to get back to reality. Sometimes vacations can feel too short; sometimes, too long. Felt like this one was dialed-in.
Lately I feel like I have more space in my weekends somehow. Something has shifted. It’s like there’s just 2–4 hours that weren’t there before. I’m not sure how it appeared.
Took my first ride on the NYC Ferry this weekend, up the East River from Brooklyn to Queens and over to Manhattan. So pleasant!
Late last year I spent way too much time window-shopping for a new keyboard. It was an intense relief to finally buy one. Shopping can be a thrill and a vast emptiness.
Art
Pink Honey, acrylic, pencil and ink on burned paper by Modupeola Fadugba. The Waterfall, oil on canvas by Henri Rousseau. Fireflies, woodblock print by Tsukioka Kōgyo. Garland of Fruit surrounding a Depiction of Cybele Receiving Gifts from Personifications of the Four Seasons, oil on panel by Hendrick van Balen the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Cleaning Jesus, gelatin silver print by Walter Martin
Books
War and Peace, cont.. Hit a bit of a rut this week. Whether chicken or egg, it coincided with losing my earlier consistency.
Running
Just a few more miles and I can add the Red Hook neighborhood to my ran-every-street list. Got back to a longer run this weekend, aided by warmer weather. Above 35–40º, it gets much, much easier to manage a run over a longer period of time. Fewer garments to manage, lower downside risk if you mismanage ventilation or layering, etc.. And drinks stay warm.
Around the Web
The life of a fangirl. “Fandoms create environments where participation happens almost always naturally and almost always horizontally.”
The Case for Blogging in the Ruins. “The blog, at its best (a best I aspire one day to reach) is Montaigne’s direct descendant. It’s a form that allows for intellectual exploration without demanding premature certainty. You can write a post working through an idea, acknowledge in the post itself that you’re not sure where you’ll end up, and invite readers to think alongside you.”
Against access. “Our environment has endless potential for life. For centuries, however, much of our vitality was forbidden. We were forced to stick with the effects of the hearing and sighted world. Now, though, we are all in varying stages of flight.” How accessibility (in a common understanding of an “us” making the world easier for a “them”) falls short, with particular focus on ASL interpreters. Very interesting!
DeafBlind people are creating a new language. An PBS intro to ProTactile, which I learned about from the article above. It looks beautiful and fun!
The loneliness crisis isn’t just male. “What our polling reveals, though, is that it’s a youth loneliness crisis, rather than a male loneliness crisis. Age, not gender, shows far greater correlation with antisocial attitudes and beliefs. Younger voters — both male and female — are increasingly paralyzed by anxiety and fear, and they are finding it harder and harder to socialize. In fact, when you look at the data, the ‘antisocial crisis,’ as I like to call it, is actually most pronounced among young women, who experience the highest rates of social isolation.”
“One of the most underappreciated things about the recent past washow common boredom was.”
The philosophy of Solvej Balle.
It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons.
How Markdown took over the world.
What an unprocessed photo looks like.
Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?: How American tourists took over everything. “They feel challenged. They feel alive. They are Americans. They are frontier people. They love a cultural mystery.”
Mamdani moderating – high hopes!
Music
Netherwalker, Odyssey of Respair. Guttural screamy metal with some classical grandiosity.
Beethoven: Sonatas 18, 27, 28, 31 (The Lost Tapes / Live) perf. Sviatoslav Richter.
Funkadelic, Maggot Brain. I really like the title track. Interesting to hear this transition in music history – borrowing from blues, gospel, psychedelic rock, blending it all up and leaving nothing out.
Charlie Hunter, Ella Feingold, Different Strokes for Different Folks. Bluesy, funky guitar + bass + percussion. “Nasty, Ain’t it!?“.
Bill Evans Trio, Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings. Just really good start to finish. A favorite moment this week was a pre-dawn run in Prospect Park with this album playing. Magical.
Charles Lloyd, Figure in Blue.
SML, How You Been.
Movies
45365. Documentary of people in a place (Sidney, Ohio). If you like this sort of “snapshots of everyday life around town” documentary – I really do – check out Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
City of Gold (2015). Follows along with food critic Jonathan Gold as he explores LA food, and with other talking heads about his impact on food writing, etc.. At its best when its attention is on the city.
Fragments for Venus (short). Straightforward description and juxtaposition – sometimes the basic ingredients are the most potent.
Tron: Ares. Gorgeous to look at, and I think a larger screen would shift my opinion a bit, but all the dazzle in the world cannot save a leaden script, delivered flatly. Interesting to see Minecraft-life voxel cube material when techno-things disintegrate – very similar presentation in Superman (2025) with the reality rift thing.
TV
The X-Files, s5e14 “The Red and the Black“. I dunno, is this going anywhere?
Hannibal, s2e9–11. This is going somewhere!
Lost LA, s1e1–3. PBS!
Mark Larson 