How did we get here?
I lay on my bed last night,
grafted your face
on a past we could never have
and filled it with memories –
only good ones –
where all the rows ended in love.
But the images were stills,
just photographsof a dream waiting to happen.
Showed up to Heathrow today for the two-thousandth time.
Got into my taxi and I learned Nick Cave's son died.
The news hit me like a bus into a hill.
from Exodus by Jesu/Sun Kil Moon
It’s hard holding onto things in this life. There’s always something pulling you down. The same can be said of letting go. It’s just as hard to know when to let go or how. You have to decide. You can hang onto what you have and see where the winds of change carry you or you can let go and hope there’s someone there to catch you. If what you have just now is precious then hang on with everything you’ve got but, if you have any doubts, then let go before this thing carries you too far away. I’m still here. Just be sure.
The Little-Known ‘Slow Fire’ That’s Destroying All Our Books - LitHub: “…It’s called a “slow fire,” this continuous acidification and subsequent embrittlement of paper that was created with the seeds of its own ruin in its very fibers. In a 1987 documentary on the subject, the deputy Librarian of Congress William Welsh takes an embrittled, acid-burned book and begins tearing pages out by the handful, crumbling them into shards with an ease reminiscent of stepping on a dried-up insect carcass.
I love this story of an usher who took it upon herself to organize the women's bathroom line during the intermission of Hamilton. "After two weeks of porcelain chaos, she knew she had to do something
No anorectic can bear advice, and particularly no advice that touches on or even seems to touch on our inviolate selves. [...] All those who haven't been anorexic themselves have no idea about anorexia because they have never led an anorexic existence, and it is the anorexic existence – the nature of this existence – which matters more than anything else in the world to an anorexic. An anorexic needs to exist in this way because there is nothing else in their existence but existence itself; everything else in the world they have given up for this existence; the anorectic is an addict of the anorexic existence.
While this might draw us to comparisons with the self of Kafka's Hunger Artist unviolated by nourishment and, like Sarah, dying off-screen, except in her case apparently from too muchnourishment, it would be better read in tandem with Metamorphosis, as change is the horror driving that story, with the previously inviolate selves of Gregor and Grete undergoing transformations right at the beginning and right at the end, with Sarah as Gregor to the narrator's Grete; one's death allowing the other to stretch her limbs or, in this case, make a breakthrough in her writing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: “Two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce reported being happily married five years later.”
13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings
More fluid reflections on keeping a solid center.
Rats trained to drive tiny cars find it relaxing, scientists report Agence France-Presse
Please also note that there are a lot of people in the comments with corrections, especially about Spain, Germany, and Turkey, so take it with a grain of salt.
Condé Nast’s formula: “appeal to a moneyed, aspirational readership.” As glossy magazines decline, is anything lost along with the elite tastemaker-editor?... Glossy Stories
Kidney for sale: How organs can be bought via social media in the Philippines Channel News Asia
Friends are chosen
Some choose you
But not too many
True friends are few!
Some you made
When you were small
Some more recent
Crossed paths called
Friends are special
Bonds so blessed
How you connected
Gods need not guess
Friends are steady
They are true blue
No hesitation
They see you through
Some may call
Just in case
Somehow they sense
You’re in troubled space
Friends make time
Give heart and soul
No quid pro quo
Need they hold
Some don’t call
Still you’re in sync
You pick things up
You link the strength
Friends challenge
What you do
They expect
Your best from you
Friends are forgiving
Always there
When you’re an a-hole
They’re still there
Friends need attention
Friends need your care
Their hopes and fears
Are yours to share
As a friend
You too must be
All and more
Yours are to you.
“No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for
success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who
accomplished great things at different ages
Jozef Imrich escapes across the Iron Curtain when he was 21....
1) Helen Keller, at the
age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She
was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25)
The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built
the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled,
powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28)
Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49
years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40)
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully
ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the
155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President”
―
Pablo
