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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker. On the polar opposite of Wine. All The Time., which I read just before this, this book makes me want to run away from the wine world screaming. I am FIRMLY on Marissa Ross’s side when it comes to approaches to wine (aka I want to feel relatively confident discussing, purchasing, and drinking wine). Becoming a sommelier sounds horrifying, though in a way where I suppose I kind of admire these people? Bosker’s writing is fresh and entertaining, so the book is a good read. It just also makes me want to scream fairly frequently. Watching… Jane the Virgin. Okay, technically I watched this. I’m caught…
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Quoted
“Then I decided that this disorder and this dilemma, revealed by my desire to write on Photography, corresponded to a discomfort I had always suffered from: the uneasiness of being a subject torn between two languages, one expressive, the other critical; and at the heart of this critical language, between several discourses, those of sociology, of semiology, and of psychoanalysis — but that , by ultimate dissatisfaction with all of them, I was bearing witness to the only sure thing that was in me (however naïve it might be): a desperate resistance to any reductive system.” — Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
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This is a beauty of dissonance…
This is a beauty of dissonance, this resonance, of stony strand — from “The Lonely Land” by A.J.M. Smith If you know me at all, whether in person or online, then you probably know that my heart lies with rocky coastlines along the Atlantic Ocean (evidence: here, here, here, here, and here). I’ve also talked before about how when I was living in Halifax I would often drive out to Peggy’s Cove in the off season in search of new ways to look at what is a pretty iconic tourist destination. These two very different images come from one such trip on a very windy April day. It was cold, the sky…
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Wednesday Words
Renamed. Reworked. Same basic premise as the “Required Readings” I was doing before. I recently wrote a review of Sue Sinclair’s Heaven’s Thieves, and I still find myself thinking about it almost daily. Vacation The shoddy balconies, sliding glass panels, reflected swirl of leaves. Why does everything that appears in glass look like a face? The mirror-trees stand half in this world and half somewhere else, a place not necessarily better than this one but faraway and therefore enviable. — from Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2017)
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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… Wine. All the Time. by Marissa A. Ross. The book has blurbs from both Mindy Kaling and Leandra Medine, so OBVIOUSLY I was going to get it. And it’s great. I’m now swirling and smelling and sipping and taking tasting notes. I’ve learned A LOT. Plus Ross is hilarious and I kind of want to be her best friend. Watching… Fleabag. WHY DIDN’T I WATCH THIS SOONER!? Phoebe Waller-Bridge is brilliant. It’s dark. It’s twisted. It made me sob. Really sob. The pacing is so spot on. The comedic rhythm is just off kilter in a way that works so well. Breaking the fourth wall has never worked so…
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The Ocean Calls
The ocean calls to me all year long. Honestly. I grew up landlocked, so I’m not sure where the deep-seated desire to be near the ocean came from, but it is definitely there. I miss proximity to the ocean on a daily basis and get a substantial thrill each time I get near a large body of water. These are two photos of what will hopefully be a four photo series. Top: “The Ocean Calls (Summer)” taken on the boardwalk at West Point Lighthouse on PEI Bottom: “The Ocean Calls (Spring)” taken at Peggy’s Cove, NS Both available as prints and more in the shop now.
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Quoted
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone and not alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. All that matters about poetry is the enjoyment of it however tragic it may be. All that matters is the eternal movement behind it — the great undercurrent of human grief, folly, pretension, exaltation and ignorance — however unlofty the intention of the poem. — Dylan Thomas
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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick. I would like to be best friends with Kendrick, please and thank you. This book is hilarious and smart. Watching… Company. I’m am fully on board basically any time I can watch a filmed version of a stage musical. It’s as close as I get to Broadway. The cast in this production is phenomenal (though my deep love for Raúl Esparza may make me a touch biased…). Listening… The soundtrack to Violet. It’s weird. It’s good. It’s Sutton Foster.
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Quoted
I gave up on being Nice. I started putting more value on other qualities instead: passion, bravery, intelligence, practicality, humour, patience, fairness, sensitivity. Those last three might seem like they are covered y “nice,” but make no mistake, they are not. […] I don’t put a lot of stock in nice. I’d prefer to be around people who have any of the above qualities over “niceness,” and I’d prefer it if that applied to me, too. I’m also okay if the most accurate description of me is nervous, and a little salty. But at least I know what I want to strive for. – Anna Kendrick, Scrappy Little Nobody
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Butterflies
The thing is, the longer I spend here — 3.5 years of the PhD and counting — the longer I spend here the more I think that I would rather be the one creating the things than the one analyzing the things. *** Setting: undergraduate class My favourite professor says, “Trying too hard to find a hidden meaning in a poem is like plucking the wings off a butterfly.” The image never leaves me. Almost 7 years later I wonder about how many butterflies I have killed and what all the death was for. *** The thing is, the longer I spend here — 3.5 years of the PhD and…