trial & error

"I don’t know what bothers me more: how much I hate my body, or how angry I am at myself for..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:13:52 -0500

“I don’t know what bothers me more: how much I hate my body, or how angry I am at myself for hating myself so much.”

- Lisa Arch on Episode 18 of The Mental Illness Happy Hour

"Learning to connect with each other, to experience empathy, to step outside our own experience, and..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:33:40 -0600

“Learning to connect with each other, to experience empathy, to step outside our own experience, and to accept love in all its forms—these, I believe, are the experiences for which we became human.”

- Martha Beck, via my friend Erin C’s Facebook feed

"In accepting my past—in not asking it to be more dramatic than it was—in not asking it..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:12:59 -0600

“In accepting my past—in not asking it to be more dramatic than it was—in not asking it to compare with other people’s stories—I could finally wake up to how it had shaped me, and embrace where it was steering me.”

- Po Bronson

"Leon Battista Alberti, a fifteenth-century architectural theorist, said, ‘Errors accumulate in..."

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:21:47 -0500

“Leon Battista Alberti, a fifteenth-century architectural theorist, said, ‘Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.’ But better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.”

- Twyla Tharp, from The Creative Habit (2003), p. 23

"The truth is that not all lies are the same. There is a hierarchy of lies: some are allowable, some..."

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:52:50 -0500

“The truth is that not all lies are the same. There is a hierarchy of lies: some are allowable, some are not. There’s actually a scientifically measurable scale of fibs that ranges from utter and total bullshit—that’s the worst—and decends down through whoppers, whoppers junior, lies, white lies, and Santa. Now that last one of course is the most acceptable form of lie available: It’s a lie to children to help make the world a bit more bearable. Like the tooth fairy, where we lie to children by saying that a magic fairy is going to leave money for you under your pillow for your tooth, rather than telling them the actual truth, which is of course that a tooth fell out of your head and one day everyone you know will die.”

- John Oliver on the Bugle podcast, episode 206

"Life seemed so sweet, and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey man, every..."

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:41:28 -0500

“Life seemed so sweet, and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey man, every day’s a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something’s bound to turn up.”

- American Splendor (2003)

"[W]e know what the godly think of love, or the illusion of it, especially when admission money must..."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:49:35 -0500

“[W]e know what the godly think of love, or the illusion of it, especially when admission money must be paid to see it … they are Against. They cut it out. Love corrupts.”

- Salman Rushdie, from Shame (1983), p. 60

"Bitterness is just amplified self pity."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:46:22 -0500

“Bitterness is just amplified self pity.”

- Mark Maron, from episode 2 of the podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour

"Wherever I turn, there is something of which to be ashamed. But shame is like everything else; live..."

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:42:34 -0500

“Wherever I turn, there is something of which to be ashamed. But shame is like everything else; live with it long enough and it becomes part of the furniture. In ‘Defence’, you can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it anymore. And everyone is civilized.”

- Salman Rushdie, from Shame (1983), p. 21

http://www.flavorwire.com/309136/10-wonderful-libraries-repurposed-from-unused-structures

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 12:20:51 -0500

http://www.flavorwire.com/309136/10-wonderful-libraries-repurposed-from-unused-structures

"Some amazing, fortuitous things: meeting my wife, and making roach clips just at the right moment...."

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:13:22 -0500

“Some amazing, fortuitous things: meeting my wife, and making roach clips just at the right moment. Y’ know, some people just get to be at the right moment of life, and Sylvia knocked on my door one day, and the flower people came to Frisco … God bless the hippies: They loved anything ugly.”

- Furniture Gary Knox Bennett in the documentary Craft in America

Condiment party in my kitchen: lime juice, pickled onions, and I...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:55:50 -0500

Condiment party in my kitchen: lime juice, pickled onions, and I finally started another batch of preserved lemons (Taken with Instagram)

http://instagr.am/p/MhQTPJo8yR/

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 20:53:49 -0500

http://instagr.am/p/MhQTPJo8yR/

My collection of ill-fitting bras (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:20:37 -0500

My collection of ill-fitting bras (Taken with instagram)

"Cynicism lacks any real conviction. it doesn’t like the game as it’s being played, and..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:08:26 -0600

“Cynicism lacks any real conviction. it doesn’t like the game as it’s being played, and so it spoils it.”

- Julia Cameron, from The Sound of Paper (2004), p. 7

"Trains, coins, stamps, Cistercian abbeys, Bettys—all part of the semi-autistic male impulse to..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:50:18 -0600

“Trains, coins, stamps, Cistercian abbeys, Bettys—all part of the semi-autistic male impulse to collect—a need for order or a desire to possess, or both.”

- Kate Atkinson, from Started Early, Took My Dog (2011), p. 45. Not an exclusively male impulse….

"Image-making, wrote Wallace Stevens, ‘is primarily a discipline of rightness.’ In a good..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:25:14 -0600

“Image-making, wrote Wallace Stevens, ‘is primarily a discipline of rightness.’ In a good image, something previously unformulated (in the most literal sense) comes into the realm of the expressed. Without precisely this image, we feel, the world’s store of truth would be diminished; and conversely, when a writer brings into language a new image that is fully right, what is knowable of existence expands.”

- Jane Hirshfield, from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997, p. 18)

My only New Year’s Eve regret was not taking a good photo...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:50:07 -0600

My only New Year’s Eve regret was not taking a good photo of my outfit, a fuchsia Tina Turner/Muppet number I picked up at the Value Center earlier that day. I love this photo, though.

"I was in a hellish relationship a few years ago, but I swear, the moment I said goodbye, all these..."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:09:14 -0600

“I was in a hellish relationship a few years ago, but I swear, the moment I said goodbye, all these blessings started flowing into my life. It was like God was holding a big bag of blessings and I was holding a bag of shit, and when I let go of my bag, God was like, ‘Here you go.’”

- Katori Hall

"The story they say in Zen is, if you have a little piece of shit on your nose, then you will smell..."

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:13:29 -0600

“The story they say in Zen is, if you have a little piece of shit on your nose, then you will smell it wherever you go: ‘Oh this stinks, oh this stinks, cooking stinks, everything stinks, it’s all bad.’ So the expression in Zen is, ‘Wash your face.’”

- Edward Espe Brown, from How to Cook Your Life