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10:04 is a hard book to take a picture of because the cover art is a somewhat indecipherable/inverted dark image of Lower Manhattan with part of the electric power grid out. Also, it’s sporting a plastic library dust jacket. (If you saw all the pics where you could see me in the book’s reflection…) But if you viewed this book IRL, it would look essentially the same as what you’re seeing here — it’s not as if this image is some massive distortion. It’s the same even if you’re looking at it through a different lens.
From Newsletter Issue No. 24:
“Helena Kim, a stay-at-home mother in Chula Vista, Calif., decided that when she turned 59, she no longer wanted to cook. ‘I was getting groceries delivered anyway,’ she said, ‘so if I am going to order groceries I may as well order the whole meal.’ She tips well and gives drivers high ratings… Ms. Kim, now 60, adores her automated life. ‘I get Amazon delivery, I get food delivery, I get grocery delivery, I get pet food delivery,’ she said. When she does leave the house, ‘I drive a Tesla and I use self-driving mode. If I could get a robot housekeeper, that would be perfect.’”
Beep-boop, beep-boop, let’s hear it for an automated life.
When it comes to the snooze button (which, have you noticed, is ginormous on the most updated iPhone OS?), here is my philosophy, at least with my own snooze button activity: The point is not so much to get more sleep; the point is to have an awareness that I am getting more sleep. I think that fundamentally, humans want to actively know that they are receiving or experiencing a benefit. Is being granted a bit of extra sleep without being alerted to it the same as actively choosing to get that extra time? I don’t think so. (Stay tuned for my exhilarating dispatches on my philosophy of laundry.)
The Brick came up in conversation with friends the other night. You know, this thing (?) that is heavily advertised as a way to curtail phone use. (Cue all the Brick ads in our feeds, starting now.) It was relayed that “I have my life back!” was the refrain from a person in his 20s who used a Brick. (Wow?)
I didn’t know that Annie Hartnett was a philosophy major, but I learned that after reading her bio today.
I came across this Carson McCullers gem today:
“There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”
When I tell you that I truly did gasp when this scene appeared as we were watching Sentimental Value…
Been a while since I’ve done one of these. (Self-aware pattern recognition: I guess I say that every time.) Here’s a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read lately**.
The Guardian recently published a piece about tropes. You know, the prescribed templates that are staples of romance, a genre I don’t read but I’m clued in enough to understand the gist.
When I interviewed my niece for my homesick project, I asked her what homesickness feels like. Among other things, I loved that she very specifically said, “I feel it in my sternum.” Because there’s a real physicality to emotion, right? See: pit in stomach, butterflies in chest, etc.
Oh, this ol’ thang? I’m sitting at this desk that we bought at the Dublin IKEA after moving from NYC.
Front page of Sunday’s NYT: “They’re Not Alone in Copying Thoreau’s Cabin in the Woods.” Henry David Thoreau and his Walden cabin are as American as it gets. Rugged individualism? Check. Pioneering spirit? Check. Having to tell everyone about it? Check. (Just kidding…maybe?)
Stick Season is the worst. (Apologies to Noah Kahan, but it’s true.) But thanks to Matt, something cheery popped up in our sparse-looking yard today.
Snowy Sunday Book Club: “En Sueño” by Sandra Dooley, featuring a pensive + relaxed woman looking up from her book and staring right back at me as I do the same.
What does it mean to have something published posthumously? (I mean, I know what it means, but what does it MEAN. [Know what I mean?])
From Newsletter Issue No. 23:
On New Year’s Eve, we got together with friends. Aside from the general joviality of a post-Christmas catch-up with some of our favorite people, we played a game called Priorities. It’s fast and easy, and the basic gist is that one player at a time is given five cards, each with a very specific “thing” on it, and then proceeds to prioritize them in order of how much they value/like these things.
E.E Cummings (or e e cummings if you wish) + his visual poetry, the formatting of which Instagram can *almost* handle:
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]