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Quoted
People shouldn’t have to appear always, you know, stable and content, because people aren’t always stable and content. And it makes it harder…because we don’t have the freedom to express all of these darker sides of our emotions. Because we’re supposed to keep everything very, you know, friendly and polite and appropriate all the time. And I think that every emotion is appropriate whenever it arises. – Fiona Apple
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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… Injun by Jordan Abel. Technically for the thesis. I don’t know that this is my favourite of Abel’s works. It’s fascinating, but in a lot of ways I feel like he did the same things only better in Un/Inhabited. Watching… All the season premiers! Seriously one of the best times of year for me. Two favourites: The Good Place (Kooky and a little absurd, Kristen Bell is absolutely in her element in this one) and This Is Us (Because since Parenthood ended, I haven’t had something that is guaranteed to make me cry every week, and this one definitely fills that void. Plus Milo Ventimiglia and Justin Hartley.) Listening… The cover of “Jolene”…
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Quoted
I have this theory about words. There’s a thousand ways to say “Pass the salt.” It could mean, “Can I have some salt?” Or it could mean, “I love you.” It could mean, “I’m very annoyed with you.” Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside of them. — Christopher Walken
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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… I’m actually still slowly making my way through Meghan Daum’s The Unspeakable. Her essay on being someone who loves animals perhaps a little too much really hit home for me. Can we talk about the fact that I tear up at lost cat posters? Or maybe not. It might make me cry. Watching… Re-watching New Girl. I needed a sitcom-y palette cleanser. I’ve been tired this week. I loved the early seasons just as much upon re-watching them. I’ve just reached the point where I stopped watching last time because I was starting to feel kind of “meh” about the whole series, so we’ll see how things go from here on…
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Read This
Required Reading. This is what it is like to be a woman in this world. And it makes me angry. It should make you angry too. Read it: Marry Karr’s “The Crotchgrabber“. I particularly appreciated these paragraphs, early in the essay: “In case you haven’t been on the receiving end of this sort of assault, you should know the primal physiological response it evokes—in this woman, anyway. The stomach drops, as if you’ve been shoved backward from a skyscraper and are flailing through space. Time dismantles. There are more frames per second, and people’s facial features become very specific. This guy had a squashed-down forehead, wide-set eyes, and heavy but…
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Quoted
Only a man who knows what it’s like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win. — Muhammad Ali
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Quoted
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal. — Jane Austen, letter December 24, 1798
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Reading Watching Listening
Reading… The Unspeakable and Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum. When I discover a writer I genuinely like, I have a tendency to dig deep into their body of work. My interest in Daum started with a piece in Harper’s Bazaar about choosing not to have kids. Then it was the collection of essays on the same topic, edited by Daum. Next I finally picked up her personal essays. In what is perhaps an illogical or contrary approach, I started wit the most recent collection first. The writing is fantastic. It is easy to see why Daum is lauded as a master of the personal essay. Her unflinching, at…