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Iām thinking about two quotes from things I read yesterday.
- Kaveh Akbar: āLove was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.ā
- Lynne Tillman (writing about Nan Goldin): āA section titled "Empty Rooms," which lies at the center of the book, insists on what's lost or gone. Goldin is traveling, staying in hotel rooms, visiting friends, returning home and leav-ing. There's a portrait of a plumped pillow on a bed, rumpled sheets and two pillows that stand in for bodies that once lay there, a mirror that reflects light only on an ordinary bureau, golden paintings above a bed's backboard, and all are stage sets for memory.ā¦Hotel rooms usually mark transitoriness and freedom from daily life, but they're haunted by the many bodies that have passed through. The photographs are also haunted by her absent friends, some of whom have died and some of whom are far away. Temporary stations themselves, the empty rooms emphasize the inadequate hold anyone has on life, how it all just goes, finally.ā
I texted Jancie the Akbar quote. She reminded that love is a room you donāt even know youāre building.
And now Iām thinking about the rooms I have built without knowing, how many people have been in them. The world is very big and full of very many rooms. Itās amazing to see that now.
Jul 9, 2024
Related Recs
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I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that
thinking for a moment it was one day like any other.
But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought
it must have been the quiet candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep,
it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.
And I thought this is the good day
you could meet your love,
this is the gray day someone close to you could die.
This is the day you realize
how easily the thread is broken
between this world and the next
and I found myself sitting up
in the quiet pathway of light,
the tawny close grained cedar
burning round me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending through the first
roof of light the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live, this is where
I ask my friends to come,
this is where I want to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple of my adult aloneness
and I belong to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
Mar 13, 2024
this heart in the concrete has been on my mind since stumbling across it. i am constantly wondering the story behind it. were they alone and took advantage of the drying cement to cement their love for passing onlookers to see? were they dared to draw something by a friend and their intentions were too pure to trace anything but a heart? but why a heart? the endless possibilities of a blank canvas for the public eye and yet they chose a heart? maybe out of fear that it would be erased if anything else were to be etched in stone? maybe they feared a name of a lover wouldnāt last as long as just a heart? but itās just a heart. no initials. no āOscar wuz here :).ā no time stamp or anniversary. just a heart.
I struggle to find a reason of intention and yet this heart just stares back at me. but maybe this is love. reminding me on my walk that love exists. it comes and goes. it will show up unintentionally and unconditionally. there doesnāt have to be logic or reason behind it. there doesnāt have to be some long, drawn out story explaining how love works and comes to be. it can be just a heart. hardened in the concrete by an unknown artist who knows more about love than I ever could.
Apr 5, 2024
š
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the otherās welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters on the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own images from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Jul 1, 2024
Top Recs from @florinegrassenhopper
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No screen Sundays. If I want to listen to music its CDs or radio. If I want to watch a movie, no I donāt. If I want to see a friend, I will make plans with them on Friday or Saturday to meet up. As a result, I read more, write more, and sit with questions like ādid Citizen Kaneās 50 year winning streak in the Sight and Sound critics choice survey end in 2012 or 2022? When did Stephen Merritt come out? Whats the etymology of Whitsun?ā
This is something that I have practiced off and on for many years but Iāve been doing it every week since December and I love the way that it just allows me one day of true freedom and rest.
Jan 22, 2025
Mar 3, 2025
My calendar this year has 52 of these week at a glance pages but I donāt think that way. So, I've been inspired by Ross Gayās Book of Delighs to start recording the little moments and sensations that bring me joy throughout the day. An analog pi.fyi, if you will.
heres some of what I have so far:
- Waking up to the sound of my upstairs neighborās footstep. It sounded nostalgic. Felt like company.
- Strawberry jam
- feeling tender for strangers: their lips, nail colors, their small wrists. Thinking of all the lives we hold gently.
- A young girl bought an LP at the bookstore just before I left. She stroked its cover with love
- Green tiles āthe mint shade always makes me think of Jancie
- Charlieās little bop and punch dancing to some German language punk
- lunch with Katherine, curry Brussels sprouts
- small talk at the photo studio. The photographer's brother was named after their dad, stole his identity, bought jet skis.
Jan 13, 2025