January 2011
16 posts
▶ Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues →
writing in the dust: Albert Goldbarth, "The Way" →
wesleyhill:
The sky is random. Even calling it “sky” is an attempt to make a meaning, say, a shape, from the humanly visible part of shapelessness in endlessness. It’s what we do, in some ways it’s entirely what we do—and so the devastating rose of a galaxy’s being born, the fatal lamé of another’s being…
“Joy has that peculiar effect, that at times it oppresses us just as much as...”
– The Count of Monte Cristo (via kristentanner)
Book 3 of 52
Book #3: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Moderately Recommend.
After reading and re-reading The Great Gatsby, I have assumed any other work by Fitzgerald will prove somewhat futile, but I was pleasantly surprised by his first novel. I felt the story as a whole was underdeveloped, but the “crispy realizations” (as Justin Vernon might call them) of Amory Blaine, especially...
“I have no patience with the untorn, anyone who hasn’t weathered rough weather,...”
– Andrea Dworkin (via lukescommonplacebook)
“What do you do? You laugh. I’m not saying I don’t cry, but in between, I laugh....”
– Sam from Garden State (via jenniferbenson)
“Perhaps the most significant aspect of our conception of what it means to be...”
– Bryan Wilson, Contemporary Transformations of Religion
“If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal...”
– Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
from wesleyhill
Book 2 of 52
Book #2: Restoration: Returning the Torah of God to the Disciples of Jesus by D. Thomas Lancaster
Recommend.
If nothing else, it is an important reminder to keep Christianity in its proper context: Judaism, and specifically, the Torah. The argument is for a return to the law [Torah] according to a number of convincing passages, initially the prophecy in Deuteronomy 30:8, “And you shall...
“Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot...”
– Henri Nouwen (thanks, Margie)
Book 1 of 52
1: “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen
Highly, highly recommend it.
This is the sort of generation defining type of thing that “The Suburbs” album by Arcade Fire hinted at. The bleakness is perfectly placed, illuminating the overwhelming and complex webs of selfishness and insecurity that lead to competition, the sort of survival-driven competitiveness that is characteristic...
“History seems to me so important that it’s misleading to treat it as a mere...”
– Paul Graham, “The Age of the Essay” (via lukescommonplacebook)
“In earth,
in blood, in mind,
the dead and the living
into each other pass,
as...”
– Wendell Berry, “In Rain”
“Where did self-pity come from? The inordinate volume of it? By almost any...”
– Jonathan Franzen, Freedom