Learning to Love you More: old fave

I was hanging out yesterday with a friend in Prospect Park, discussing the joys of walking (how can something that I do so often that its easy to take for granted, bring me so much peace and joy its beyond me) when he told me about an art project he'd joined in on with Harell Fletcher called the "Long Walk Home" which basically consisted of gathering a group of people at Grand Central Station and walking each and every single person home.

I bring up this story because it reminded me of Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's website: Learning to Love You More, which as always been one of my favorite blog-project websites.

My favorite assignment photograph a significant outfit. Click on the list of names on the right hand side to see each person's report.

Being Analog in a Digital World

Well folks.

We've nearly reached the end of my blogger blogging era. I've been playing with the idea of drastically changing my blog since a little before the New Year. So here it is, April and I'm excited to be nearly there, it had gotten to the point that everything about blogger's clunky back end design had begun to annoy me. Posting photos was still a chore, the look of the actual blog was bad and I still didn't have my own domain name.

The change isn't quite complete, since I'm still playing with everything and figuring out the look (I keep talking about the mysterious banner at the top which will be created through my own cunning and genius...well not really...I've got lots of creative friends), but quite soon.

I will keep the archives here active as long as blogger will allow. It would be ashame to lose my virtual documentation of the past three years.

Site Design, Feeds and Missing Content

I've been thinking a lot about what gets lost in translation lately. More specifically blogs that get mangled by everyone's feed readers. Lately I've been trying some old fashion net surfing.

A few thoughts:

• Most people I know have (with the exception of me I suppose) have put some thought and effort into their blog design. (see bk, or super clean and simple tyfo, or faves like dork mag, maud or design boom; even blazey pimped his tumblr.) It's as if someone designed a magazine cover and the store ripped it off before they sold it.
• Lost Content: This infuriates me with the tumblr rss feed and I am currently trying to find a solution. If I post a song and you never go to my blog then you'll likely never hear it (might not even know it's missing in the first place). Quotes and dialog are cut short. Links are lost. SERIOUSLY!?! Come on tumblr? That brings me to my second point...
• Abbreviated reading: When I go to a blog I'm more likely to peep the content (especially when aided by a nice design) but once you get into the act of scanning your feeder it becomes just that, scanning. If you're missing content from say...my tumblr, you're less likely to care to go back to check it out within the context of the other 5,000 posts you also want to check out. Its not intentional it just happens. Even the information most people pick up, myself included, is done in a quick once over without giving much thought to the words. Which once again means that the design is lost and so is the content. Why bother blogging at all? (No wonder we're all goldfish)
  
• Once you add a few blogs you have to add a few more. Completely inundating your reader, feeder and therefore yourself, with useless information.
  
• And the Final point. I love google, but their reader is just plain UGLY. Who seriously wants to sit around and stair at the nastiness for an hour or two?

Just make an effort to try and visit the sites of your favorite blogs. It'll definitely make the world a better place and inflate everyone's traffic. Think of it as doing your part to keep those damn designers on top of their game.

I'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts.

We Feel Fine

Check out We Feel Fine:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.).

Welcome 2008

I tried very hard not to repost this, but alas after staring at if for an hour I think its best that I give into my urge to share it.

No worries. I have a few original posts on the way.

New Beginning

And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years -
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres -
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our
business.
- T. S. Eliot
East Coker
Four Quartets

Via Duncan's blog

My Newest Obsession: Whiskey River

Startlingly beautiful quotes and thats all. Very simple.

"Knowing what will happen in the future, we are faced with a simple choice: either we resolve not to become attached to people and things, or we decide to love them even more fiercely."
- Amélie NothombThe Character of Rain

"The richness of your life comes down to the richness of your thoughts. If you want to have a full and more meaningful life you need to better tend your field of dreams."
-Earl R. Smith

Whiskey River

Blogging Better?

I was lying down for a nap and started to think about the changes to the sight I might like to implement in the new year. I'm not completely committing to any of this yet but I thought I'd post it none the less.

• Site Design:
  Originally I wanted to change the site design when I first started blogging again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really think up a layout that would suit my personality, the content of the site and would look impressive enough to keep the readers attention. Now I’m feeling a little more inspired I’ve come up with a rough idea of the design and am thinking about the easiest way to implement it, seeing as I’m not a designer and only have a basic knowledge of design software.
• Domain Name:
  I am still as of now unsure of whether or not I’d like buy the teenybooks.com domain name, though it’s something I’d been toying with for quite some time. Though I feel it makes the most sense if I actually redesign the site. I also think that it means that I’m committing to keeping the blog active and should or would like to find ways to generate more of a readership.
• Commenting:
  Blogs and commenting go together hand in hand but generally I’ve found that my friends/readers don’t offer much feedback (with the exception of one or two), which leads me to wander if I should keep commenting open. Without the option to comment, much like my tumblr, it gives me the freedom to not worry about that aspect of the site for a little while. At least until I get all the kinks ironed out. Its been two years and I still feel like a new blogger.
• Content, Content, Content:
  Generating more content, keeping the content fresh and interesting, looking at my post that garner the most traffic and figuring out how to make that work. Being personal and yet still being informative, finding the balance. (Editing my content for typos and errors before posting it!)

ps: If you're wondering how I've managed to find so much time to post during the holidays, its become sort of a give and take. I go out hang with the fam, disapear for a half an hour write a bit, head back out hang for a few hours. There has always been something for me about having family near, but having the opportunity to escape into my own little world for a minute that makes the level of interaction and the amount of people I come in contact with more bearable.

Poetry: What I Like and Don't Like

I worry that with all the new content especially during the holidays, there are plenty of posts that will get lost in the mix. That being said I can't particularly help myself, so bare with me, read and enjoy as much as you can, hopefully you'll catch up once its over. I'd seen this poem on Beatrice back in November, wanted to repost it but didn't want to steal too much of their content even though I have only a few readers and it wouldn't matter much to anyone but me.

Anyway, I came across this poem on their site and was instantly inspired to find out more about the writer, Phlip Shlutz, and the Writers Studio in New York City, which he founded and where I would like to take classes sometime during the new year. There was a blurb about his poetry and his fiction writing that I found inspiring in the original post and this poem in particular I relate to most of all.

From Failure:

I like to say hello and goodbye.
I like to hug but not shake hands.
I prefer to wave or nod. I enjoy
the company of strangers pushed
together in elevators of subways.
I like talking to cabdrivers
but not receptionists. I like
not knowing what to say.
I like talking to people I know
but care nothing about. I like
inviting anyone anywhere.
I like hearing my opinions
tumble out of my mouth
like toddlers tied together
while crossing the street
trusting they won't be squashed
by fate. I like greeting-card clichés
but not dressing up or down.
I like being appropriate
but not all the time.
I could continue with more examples
but I'd rather give too few
than too many. The thought
of no one listening anymore—
I like that least of all.

The Wit of the Staircase:

I've been reading back through Theresa Duncan's blog. Its a curious thing her life and her death, and while I won't speculate about the suicide of her and Jeremy Blake (the web is full of too much of that already) I would like to reblog this quote I found:

"Go live, win and lose, smash your hands against hysterical constellations, your head against phases of the moon, and your heart against another heart. Find the leisure to contemplate the results. You will discover the human condition. Foolish people who say that they seek reality don’t know what they are saying. For them, the worldly, when they approach it, they tremble and feel weak, distressed, fearful, terrified and repelled. They reject the truth and turn somewhere else for it, an easier, a softer, lifeless one. Little do they realize that they have been through the door itself, and in error, stupefying ignorance, in that immensity, said nothing is here, and stepped back to dullness. They may be less eloquent and merely realize the words it is painful. I must stop it, and step back."

--John Brzostoski

The blog itself is interesting to read with or without the details we now know.

Resolutions for Writers

I'm tired, its late, and I've not much to say (it seems that no one really does much on the internet on Sunday anyhow). What I do have, after going through my weekly Sunday evening Google reader clean out is a few things that I found, that I'd like to share or direct you to. From Work in Progress' Suggested Resolutions for Writers.

7. Give yourself a break. Writing is hard. Yes, we all know it’s not like digging ditches…but it’s taxing nevertheless, and it’s hard to keep up morale when your wonderful story has just been rejected by some literary journal intern via a terse, form rejection printed on a scrap of paper the size of a gum wrapper. Don’t constantly beat yourself up for not being good enough/hard-working enough/brilliant enough/lucky enough/connected enough. One of my favorite teachers used to say that for a writer, there is only one question to ask: “Did you write today?” If you did, you’re golden. Doesn’t matter if it’s crap—that’s what revision is for. Just get your words on the page.

Rilke Week

It's Rainer Marie Rilke Week at Chekov's Mistress. Which is great because I love Rilk. Letters to a Young Poet moved me as a young writer and still to this day I can read it each time like its the first. There are so many times in my life when the passages have been able to explain various stages of my journey though life and my journey as a writer.

This poem was posted in her comments section.

THE PANTHER

His vision from the passing of the bars
is grown so weary that it holds nor more.
To him it seems there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The padding gait of flexibly strong strides,
that in the very smallest circle turns,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which stupefied a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
soundlessly parts –. Then an image enters,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs –
and in the heart ceases to be.

I almost posted this to m.i.n.e. but I like it more here.

Why Write?

I'm finally getting through some of my google reader blogs, now that its up to 1,000+ (yes and it is actually 6am in the morning). I cam across an post from Neil Gaiman (yes THAT Neil Gaiman) about writing that I instantly loved:

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.

You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.

Check out his blog here.

PS, if you've never seen Mirror Mask it is an absolutely stunning and breathtaking film.

Dig It

I've been reading the Happiness Project a lot, Gretchen Rueben's blog which corresponds to a books she's writing about a year spent trying every tip, trick and idea to become happier. I know, I know I did tease this trend last year, but I like the idea of someone being proactive about their happiness or about the whether or not achieving happiness as a sustainable thing is ever really possible. Its worth checking out, even if only because its interesting to watch her journey.