SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED

Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes)
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I'm walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don't have my schedule memorized, and I'm not sure which classes I'm taking, or where exactly I'm supposed to be going.

As I walk up the steps to the post office, I realize I don't have my box key, and in fact, I can't remember what my box number is. I'm certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can't get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, "How many more years until I graduate? ...Wait, didn't I graduate already?? How old AM I?" Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you're going or what you're doing.

I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn't give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I'm emboldened by the fact that I can't remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won't remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.
Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.

The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.

My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don't get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that's what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery- it recharges by running.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by" absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised by matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.


So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

I don't look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I'd have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it's too late.

Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I'd drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I'd been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn't give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.
For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It's funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that's what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I'd somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don't care about what you're doing, and the only reason you're there is to pay the bills.
Thoreau said,

"the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

That's one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.
When it seemed I would be writing about "Midnite Madness Sale-abrations" for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.


I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

I still haven't drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.


You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

I think you'll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least one of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.

With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you'd never had before.

Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.

Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you'll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.


I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.


Bill Watterson


from here, via Lifehacker

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that’s not the same thing.”

- Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer and other stories

“leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are paper mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.”

- Marty McConnell, “Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell”

there are times to sail on sailboats and not have any internet or phone connection.

there are times to be absent.

there are times to break silences

there are times to know the difference.

“Never mind if he calls, the places you get
through inwardness take time, and to drift
down to the shore of the island, you know
by the sand moving, even the coarse sand here
It’s hard to say if you can even stand up, there
but there is blue sky, and blue water tipping up
the same distance from you as your face. Its face
goes further behind the eyes, without weight
or haze, and the horizon is just a change where
from going deeper you go wider, but go”
— Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge (via cassie)

dammit guys, finding too many gems today!

Gretchen Rubin:

Is there anything else you want to add?

Here's the Secret of Adulthood that took me a long time to learn: Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.


--
related:
“We’re all sinking in the same boat here. We’re all bored and desperate and waiting for something to happen. Waiting for life to get better. Waiting for things to change. Waiting for that one person to finally notice us. We’re all waiting. But we also need to realize that we all have the power to make those changes for ourselves.”

-  Susane Colasanti, Waiting For You

just how many times can you listen to Safe and Sound by Capital Cities on repeat before the trumpeting horn makes you crazy? I guess I may be about to find out, but I hope it never does.

i subscribe to the Brain Pickings weekly newsletter. this week:

David Ogilvy's Timeless Principles of Creative Management

"If you ever find a man who is better than you are – hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself."

Advertising legend David Ogilvy endures not only as the original Mad Man, but also as one of modern history's most celebrated creative leaders in the communication arts. From The Unpublished David Ogilvy (public library) – the same compendium of his lectures, memos, and lists that also gave us Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips on writing, his endearing memo of praise to a veteran copywriter, and his list of the 10 qualities of creative leaders – comes a chapter titled "Principles of Management," based on a 1968 paper Ogilvy wrote as a guide for Ogilvy & Mather managers worldwide.

In a section on morale, he admonishes that some companies "have been destroyed by internal politics" and offers seven ways to curtail them:

1. Always be fair and honest in your own dealings; unfairness and dishonesty at the top can demoralize [a company].
2. Never hire relatives or friends.
3. Sack incurable politicians.
4. Crusade against paper warfare*. Encourage your people to air their disagreements face-to-face.
5. Discourage secrecy.
6. Discourage poaching.
7. Compose sibling rivalries.

* Though Ogilvy was writing decades before email, the same applies with equal urgency to today's electronic warfare.

Echoing Dickens, who advised his son to "never be hard upon people who are in your power," and presaging the modern science of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as the key to motivation at work, Ogilvy adds:

The best way to "install a generator" in a man is to give him the greatest possible responsibility. Treat your subordinates as grown-ups – and they will grow up. Help them when they are in difficulty. Be affectionate and human, not cold and impersonal.

Italo Calvino cautioned in his collected insights on writing that "one cannot say a priori that a writer just because he is a writer is more capable of handling ideas and of seeing what is essential than a journalist." Similarly, Ogilvy notes the democratic nature of ideas and urges managers not to subscribe to siloed stereotypes:

Senior men and women have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do Creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers, and others. Encourage this; you need all the ideas you can get.

Reflecting on mastering the pace of productivity, he argues:

I believe in the Scottish proverb: Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work. The harder your people work, the happier and healthier they will be.

Writing shortly after Arthur Koestler's famous treatise on the relationship between humor and creativity, Ogilvy affirms the importance of that link in cultivating a creative environment:

Kill grimness with laughter. Maintain an atmosphere of informality. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom.

In a section on respect, he calls for creative integrity:

Our offices must always be headed by the kind of people who command respect. No phonies, zeros or bastards.

In a section on hiring, he offers the two essential criteria for recruiting talent:

The paramount problem you face is this: advertising is one of the most difficult functions in industry, and too few brilliant people want careers in advertising.

The challenge is to recruit people who are able to do the difficult work our clients require from us.

1. Make a conscious effort to avoid recruiting dull, pedestrian hacks.
2. Create an atmosphere of ferment, innovation and freedom. This will attract brilliant recruits.

If you ever find a man who is better than you are – hire him. If necessary, pay him more than you pay yourself.

He adds a note on equality in hiring (though, on the cusp of the second wave of feminism and shortly after the Equal Pay Act, he makes no mention of equal opportunity for women):

In recruitment and promotion we are fanatical in our hatred for all forms of prejudice. We have no prejudice for or against Roman Catholics, Protestants, Negroes, Aristocracy, Jews, Agnostics or foreigners.

In a section on partnership within the company, he offers four points of advice:

It is as difficult to sustain happy partnerships as to sustain happy marriages. The challenge can be met if those concerned practice these restraints:

1. Have clear-cut division of responsibility.
2. Don't poach on the other fellow's preserves.
3. Live and let live; nobody is perfect.
4. "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considers not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

In a section on comers, exploring the management of talent, he reiterates some his 10 criteria for creative leaders and advises:

The management of manpower resources is one of the most important duties of our office heads. It is particularly important for them to spot people of unusual promise early in their careers, and to move them up the ladder as fast as they can handle increased responsibility.

There are five characteristics which suggest to me that a person has the potential for rapid promotion:

1. He is ambitious.
2. He works harder than his peers – and enjoys it.
3. He has a brilliant brain – inventive and unorthodox.
4. He has an engaging personality.
5. He demonstrates respect for the creative function.

If you fail to recognize, promote and reward young people of exceptional promise, they will leave you; the loss of an exceptional man can be as damaging as the loss of an account.

The rest of his principles go on to explore such intricacies as the perils of leadership, the art of cat-herding creative people, and how to know when to resign a client. It's worth reiterating just how excellent and timeless The Unpublished David Ogilvy is in its entirety.

i like it when the man sitting across from me in the office speaks in Mandarin to his wife. he laughs quietly and says tender things, thinking they are speaking secrets.
I try not to eavesdrop, but overhear and smile all the same.

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush,
had paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.
When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant

skies all empty aching blue. I meant
years. I meant all of them with you.


Patagonia, by Kate Clanchy. call me a sap, but I found this among other poems at a wedding readings site.

Song On The Subway:
by Oscar Vuong

Rush-hour on the A rain. A blind man
  staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
own the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I’m sorry
  to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
  And it kills me, the word sorry. As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
  inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
  seeps through our skin like warm water, we    

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
  but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
  Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
  exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
  has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
  this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
  will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
how will hear these notes when the train slides
  into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
  I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
  But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
  swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
   flowing from his hands. I want nothing

but to put my fingers inside his mouth,
  let that prayer hum through my veins.
  I want crawl into the hole in his violin.

I want to sleep there
                           until my flesh
                                                  becomes music.

i call it purposeful changing of tense. in everything i write, i never keep the tense consistent. i noticed it a few year ago. and i haven't changed the way i write. i'm positive that there is meaning to the tense changes. sometimes i don't even realize it. but it has been important for me to become aware of it. it's probably all bullshit anyways :)

“You will go on and meet someone else and I’ll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story.”

- Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story


“What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.”

- Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

she walked slowly without help, it wasn't the first time she had gotten up, but it definitely seemed novel. the handrail seemed to strain under her desperate clutch.

everything expanded with the heat, including the sweat, her hair, and the time she spent thinking about him at night. the wooden floors. the venetian blinds. nothing grew smaller, everything swelled. her eyes in the rain.

this is torrential, the battle between the present and the past. the future hovers quietly, without a sound mostly, but when she takes her finger out from the dam, the noise is deafening. rocks against the pavement, toes against the water

she eats microwaved broccoli, slowly, drinking tea and knowing everything (not knowing anything at all). white blankets cover her legs. the sunlight leaked slowly in from the doors.

the night before, she dreamed about him

his hands, the way the hair on the back of his neck feels, the color of the soles of his feet
that morning she woke up, counting her breaths, the heat expanding against her knees.

the only thing she spends money on these days is containers, bags, boxes. she places them strategically albeit haphazardly around the room, catching the heat, catching the memories, catching the past, catching the words he didn't write. she lied to herself. her silence lied for her. her silence expanded. she blamed the heat.
she tried hard to remember the emptiness. she held on. she has a bad habit of not letting go, so she had to replace him with something to hold onto but the emptier something is, the more yearning it has to be filled. it sucks something into it, and she watches helplessly as the vessel she kept hollow on purpose began to overflow. into the hundred bags around the room, onto the sagging floor, so many places, in every corner. it didn't care about darkness or light. it kept filling until

she opened her mouth

nothing else could happen. there was no immediate need.
yet she opened her eyes

it all poured into her body through places she had forgotten to close

summer was visible, and she made a plan.

the slats of the pool lounge chair made red marks on their thighs

her fingers found his lips.

it wasn't a love story, because the lukewarm champagne was too strong to offer any conclusive evidence.
it wasn't a love story, because the sunlight makes you dream things that are not there
it wasn't a love story, because skin on skin on skin will get you drunk, and you stay drunk, and you can't get enough
it wasn't a love story, because her fingers ran across places that she had already dreamt she'd touch

it wasn't a love story. and she never lies.

reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, 

“Maybe it’s more like you said before, all of us being cracked open, like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel, and these things happen, these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places, and I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable, once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled, but there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart, and it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks, and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks, and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

- John Green, Paper Towns

In the world I am 
Always a stranger 
I do not understand its language 
It does not understand my silence 

Bei Dao

August 2, 1949: Chinese protest poet Bei Dao was exiled from his native land for criticizing the Cultural Revolution. 

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

- Annie Dillard

“The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.”

- Stanley Kubrick

Also, many people ask me how I manage to travel so much. Two very important things- I choose my travel partners and who I go to see very wisely (okay, and sometimes not so wisely, but I learn quickly from those experiences), and I also try never to pay for unnecessary hotel rooms. Which means I have a lot of strict rules for myself as a guest. Design*Sponge has a nice article about choosing travel partners and being a guest in someone's home. They hit a home run with some fantastic rules of thumb.

I read today that "the gateway drug to making is breaking" (Cory Doctorow) and I started thinking about that in terms of relationships. How perhaps sometimes we don't know how to fix something until we break it into pieces, and suddenly the puzzle becomes clearer. It's not always the case, and sadly sometimes we break it a little too messily to fix but. It's a thought.

And, in response to my question about whether or not one can write good poetry when happy, my friend's incredible response:

i think most poems are written while happy, but just recounting the melancholy in appreciation. in my experience, most writers are most productive when happy. seems to be a myth regarding the sad writer type. solitude is often confused with sadness i suppose. 

woke up to this message waiting for me:

"I think about how there are certain people who come into your life and leave a mark. The ones who are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid." 

- Sara Zarr.