Another Chance To Get It Right

Engagement Photo Inspiration...

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:20:27 -0400

“I was leaning toward people who are happy about getting married as inpiration.”

The Taming of Wild Ways

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:59:00 -0400

The first thing is this: I have no idea if Maurice Sendak loved children. I don’t know if he liked them, in general. He said, more than once, that he didn’t write for children — that he wrote books, and then people said that they were for children. So that’s who read them.

Although I can’t say either way if he loved them, I can say this: Maurice Sendak respected children. He respected that they have agency and that they love stories that don’t pander to them. Our society isn’t very good at respecting children, isn’t too good at recognizing that children have vivid dreams and fears that they want to face. Sendak didn’t run away from the fears of children — his protagonists encounter islands of monsters who don’t want him to leave so much that they threaten to “eat him up” and they run into goblins who steal their sisters. But they don’t get eaten up. And they outsmart the goblins. It has been a trend in children’s literature to get rid of the unpleasant elements, to “whitewash” everything in an attempt to not terrify their target audience. But children crave that terror. And books help them to learn how to navigate a world of fears — the imagined monsters of our childhood or the teeth-gnashing bosses of our adulthood, all are vanquished in the end.

If Maurice Sendak has always given children that gift, of letting them face their fears and guiding them to the other side, then he hasn’t abandoned us as adults. Recently on Fresh Air, in a heart-swelling tear-inducing interview that I drove around the block to finish listening to a second time when it was re-aired at the end of the year, Sendak reflected on his last phase of life. He voiced, so sweetly and calmly, the fears and sadness of aging — that friends and lovers die before we do, that we prepare for death too. He doesn’t let us flounder there — he said he wrote his last book while his partner was in his house dying because he wanted to save himself, because he didn’t want to die too. I think there is something beautiful in that too — we fear the end, but we can save ourselves too. There was something of that saving in the end of the interview, where Sendak made it clear that he wasn’t afraid of death anymore. That he was sad, often, because he had lost so many friends to death, but that he was happy, too, to still have friends to share his life with. And if Sendak’s greatest gift to children was to trust them with his words, then perhaps his greatest gift to adults was this — to trust them to believe that it’s possible to go gracefully to the grave, both happy and sad, with the words “I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready” on our lips.

A sweet little tribute to a person who is part of an ugly...

Sat, 05 May 2012 17:18:00 -0400

A sweet little tribute to a person who is part of an ugly tremendous tragedy.

theohpioneer: 6ft. Swells and Rain (Taken with Instagram at...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:22:54 -0400

theohpioneer:

6ft. Swells and Rain (Taken with Instagram at Folly Beach)

I don’t know you personally, and I probably wouldn’t recognize you if I ran into you on the street (or in Hope & Union), but I like your tumblr and I like all your mixtapes and I like knowing that this love letter you’re writing to the places we live (and how we live in them) is sometimes being written to this beautiful place I call home.

That looks amazing.

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:05:31 -0400

That looks amazing.

Epidilius: Rules to New Girl's True American

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:01:20 -0400

Epidilius: Rules to New Girl's True American:

WANT TO PLAY THIS ASAP!

epidilius:

Game prep:

Arrange the cans of beer around the bottle of rum. The cans are Pawns of the Secret Order, the rum is the King, and the arrangement is called the Castle.

Decide on 4 Zones, and arrange platforms ( chairs, buckets, anything ) in patterns through them. The 5th Zone is the Zone with the…

newspaperblackout: A blackout by routei0: A historical...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:19:03 -0400

newspaperblackout:

A blackout by routei0:

A historical newspaper blackout poem (a la Austin Kleon) about the Hindenburg disaster:

.

“There is no frigate like a book.”

Very clever allusion to an Emily Dickinson Poem!

Lackadaisical Comedienne

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:04:31 -0500

sarahb:

I figure with all the willy-nilly spirit-animal-claiming in society today, odds are high I’m somebody’s and I don’t even know it.

Two phrases that have never failed to elicit a laugh when used in casual conversation:

1) Spirit-Animal

2) Blowjob Machine

"Rock, Paper"

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:20:00 -0500

"Rock, Paper" :

Rebecca Woolf has never written anything about sibling dynamics that didn’t make me immediately nod my head and cry.

These guys look like they are having a seriously good time....

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:56:32 -0500

These guys look like they are having a seriously good time. It’s a fun cover, for sure.

laurajones: daffodils in january? oh, south carolina. (Taken...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:29:43 -0500

laurajones:

daffodils in january? oh, south carolina. (Taken with instagram)

in time of daffodils(who know

the goal of living is to grow)

forgetting why,remember how

Tales from the Turntable, Part One

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:04:19 -0500

I got a turntable for Christmas, and of the first few albums I bought to kick off my collection, I didn’t expect for the best sounding to be Give Up. Ben Gibbard’s voice would sound beautiful coming out of anything, but the album’s music pings out of the speakers and reverberates off our wood paneled living room walls, each beat a revelation.

Give Up is one of the first albums of my real-grown-up life, the life I live here. My first life out of my parent’s house or a dorm room. I never listen to albums when I am supposed to, nor do I listen to them how I am supposed to. Albums happen to me, a few songs collected here or there, perhaps, before I eventually pick up the whole thing. Give Up happened piecemeal, first the Iron and Wine version of “Such Great Heights,” then the Postal Service version. Then, a gifted burned cd of Ben Gibbard singing live, right around the time both Give Up and Transatlanticism were released. On that cd, Gibbard sings “Brand New Colony” with an acoustic guitar, and I had never loved a song more.

I was crazy, then, so there was a lot of that feeling. I loved songs and boys more than I ever thought I had.

The rest of the album came in medical school, here. We left an Indian restaurant and played the album in the car. I recognized the words of the first song from someone else (see above, boys and songs), but I had never heard them sung.

Joe had worked at the NIH before coming here, and he said that it was true, all of “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” everything about how young people live in that city. The gaudy apartment complexes outside of town, the commutes, a whole city of young people sleeping alone. He said it every time we listened to it, until I pointed out that he always said the same thing. Then, he never said it again, and I missed it. I knew as soon as I pointed it out that it was the last time I would hear it.

Right before Ryan left for the NIH, I burned him a cd of just that song, and I told him what Joe had said about it. After he died, I kept the playlist in the sidebar, labeled “For Ryan,” until iTunes spontaneously deleted it, and I cried.

I haven’t been to DC since I was 10. There were times when I was supposed to go, and the flight got canceled or we were too tired to drive over there. A lot of missed opportunities, but I imagine I’ll get there some day. Still, so many of the people I love have spent time passing through there, and since I have loved them, I have in some way loved it too.

The last phrase of the chorus, the last words of the song, they kick like they are supposed to:

And I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving.

The district sleeps alone tonight, and I miss my friend so very much. I hate people leaving, and I hate things changing, and I hate it when things are not like I want them to be. But I am lucky that I don’t sleep alone, not tonight or any night. And sometimes the leaving hurts just right, and sometime this song helps me remember that too.

File under: My boyfriend is hilarious.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:05:00 -0500

File under: My boyfriend is hilarious.

dangwow: backstage at a 50s burlesque show. I really feel like...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:06:14 -0500

dangwow:

backstage at a 50s burlesque show.

I really feel like this picture is explaining a lot of things about being a woman in our culture, but I’m not sure what those things are.

Also, as an aside, I am really in love with burlesque.

Photo

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:54:31 -0500

theohpioneer: and I don’t feel any different. Transatlanticism...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:34:59 -0500

theohpioneer:

and I don’t feel any different.

Transatlanticism is one of the first batch of LPs I bought for my new turntable. When it arrived, I had to hold myself back from putting it on until tonight. This has been my first song of the new year for so many years now, but it never gets old.

My new motto for science. [source]

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:06:00 -0500

My new motto for science.

[source]

wordboner: get more: store | blog | make your own wordboner...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:13:30 -0500

wordboner:

get

more: store | blog | make your own wordboner store | twitter | facebook | coupons

tee tags: inspirational | nsfw | <3 | doublemeaning | gay

I would very much like to have this shirt to wear to the lab on days like today.

Proud Moments In Science, Pt. 1

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:07:38 -0500

My boss: So! Are you ready to do that all-important experiment?

….

Me: Which is….?

"Novelists think a lot about God … [because] we create whole worlds and we people them and then we..."

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:24:20 -0400

“Novelists think a lot about God … [because] we create whole worlds and we people them and then we tell the people what to do: We make them fall in love or fall out of windows. So there is that curiosity about God that I think all novelists have.”

- On today’s Fresh Air, writer Scott Spencer talks about religion, chaos, prison writing, violence and defending others. (via nprfreshair)

Also, this:

[S]tories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.
[John Hodgman]