Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Things That Matter and Things That Don't




-an open letter from Tony Hoagland, on the very sad news regarding Dean Young's health. Please spread the word, and if you can, give. One of my favorites: Poem Without Forgiveness.

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-Zadie Smith reviews The Social Network

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-rant-tastic

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In my clearest memory of her, it’s spring, and she is walking towards me, smiling, her lipstick looking neatly cut around her smile. I never ask her why she’s smiling—for all I know, she’s laughing at me as I stand smoking in front of the building where we’ll have class. She’s Annie Dillard, and I am her writing student, a 21-year-old cliché—black clothes, deliberately mussed hair, cigarettes, dark but poppy music on my Walkman. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m funny. She walks to class because she lives a few blocks from our classroom building in a beautiful house with her husband and her daughter, and each time I pass it on campus, I feel, like a pulse through the air, the idea of her there. Years later, when she no longer lives there, and I am teaching there, I feel the lack of it.

The dark green trees behind her on the Wesleyan campus sharpen her outline. She is dressed in pale colors, pearls at her neck and ears. She’s tall, athletic, vigorous. Her skin glows. She holds out her hand.



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Hip-hop fans: go download this free EP from Seattle's own Macklemore. I haven't blasted a CD like this in quite some time, not since Hi-Tek and Kweli has a disc been so stuck.


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Went skiing this past weekend. My first Pacific Northwestern ski experience. Now: way stoked for ski season, for La Nina snowfall, and for continuing to shred that gnar pow.

[scattered flurries] from felt soul media on Vimeo.

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