Euny Hong suggests keeping your big goals to yourself.
“… every time you talk about an unfinished project with someone, you are tricking your brain into thinking you’ve done some of the work. Talking about writing a book gives you the same mental fatigue and satisfaction that you’d get from actually writing for an hour.”
city life (29 June 2016)
City Life is an apartment hotel
on Wellington’s Lambton Quay.
The yellow-leafed tree is
a ginkgo biloba.
I know nothing at all about
the white splotches on the wall.
Zen garden (21 May 2016)
“Mementos that Bird has kept for years hold the past inside them, making it tangible and permanent: clippings of Mickey’s hair, peels of the first orange they shared, a bloody tissue. They stir nostalgia but reopen its wounds, like scabs asking to be tugged back so they can bleed.” (from Sarah Gerard’s NYT review of “Bird” by Noy Holland)
On page 59: a lovely sentence that seems like a found senryū …
A swell of things:
gathered, unsortable,
gone.
“It is here, in Holland’s subtly radiant details … that “Bird” shines brightest, since they so aptly mirror what’s happening beneath the domestic surface.” (another snippet from Sarah Gerard’s review)
This novel sings like
poetry; I’m obliged to
read between the lines.
(19 May 2016)
“The writing is hallucinatory, musical and intimate.” (Sarah Gerard)
Holland, Noy. 2015. Bird. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press.
scrabble sculpture (03 Dec 2011)
Can we? — quickly now!
— Can we just keep pretending
that nothing happened?
(07 May 2016)
The text here is something plucked indiscriminately, unresisted, out of my subconscious. “Reality is … a sum of all texts in various media, including action and thought” (Annette Lavers. 1982. Roland Barthes : Structuralism and After. London: Methuen & Co. [p171].
two violins by Danny Andreini
On Lambton Quay, Bach
for two violins; small boy
stands captivated.
(16 May 2016)
On an autumn afternoon, unexpectedly, a vivacious counterpoint crosses Lambton Quay and stirs up in me both joy and nostalgia.
brush-strokes
Courting danger, risk —
albeit measured, at least —
I open your book.
(14 May 2016)
other (15 December 2011)
How long does it take
to make up for a timid
lifetime? Keep writing.
pebbles
poems crunch under-
foot like shells and dry shingle,
step after slow step.
(07 May 2016)
Would a basic level of income change the world for the better? At FiveThirtyEight, Andrew Flowers writes on how guaranteed income is gaining traction.
via What Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money? — Discover
To me, there’s always been something vaguely sinister about Wellington’s Opera House Lane. That feeling was pretty strong when I was walking through last Wednesday. But it wasn’t the tagging and graffiti grabbing my attention.
The sculptural bulk of the structure overhead – it must be a walkway, I think – the weathered brickwork, and the qualities of the light combined to make it more than usually impressive. And my camera thought so, too.
So here are my three shots. (Oh! you might notice there’s a bit of a photo-shoot happening in #607, by the way.)
a twisted pair 