notice.

I’ve been reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem slowly. To be honest, I’ve been reading it since last summer. It’s not that I don’t like it, but when you have a large stack of books you’re reading, you have to pick one at a time. This one kept slipping to the bottom of the pile. I’m embarrassed because I feel that I'm exactly the sort of person who's supposed to be very well read in Joan Didion and I should love her.

At any rate, I’m in the last pages now. It turns out this collection makes good bus reading, i.e. I can read it in 10-15 minute chunks without feeling uncomfortable. Also, I’ve been reading it much more quickly since I got to her essay, On Keeping a Notebook. I got excited because she describes what I’ve always felt was a weird habit of mine: I observe things, remember an alarming number of details, and write them down. I don’t know why or for what. I write down pieces of conversation I hear on the bus. I write down that I saw an old man slowly get off his bike yesterday and push it across the street. I write down the color of the pavement outside the window of my office and how the color changes with the rain.

From time to time I think that these pieces will all come together someday into a story? an essay? a poem? But the truth is, they’ll probably just live on indefinitely in my retired notebooks. Didion says that this practice is important not for remembering details, but for remembering who you were when you observed the details. I dig that. My contribution is that I think it’s important because it makes observation a practice. In a world full of distraction and masses of faces glued to phones (soapbox?) it’s useful to remember how much you can hear and see just by looking up and looking around.

people.

I told you awhile ago about how much I love sharing. It always feels so special to me to know that someone else has thought of me. Likewise, it makes me happy to let others know that I thought of them.

I keep lots of files in Evernote of things to watch, things to read, things to listen to. When someone shares something with me, I quickly file it away until I have time to go back and really look at it. So the case with The Underground New York Public Library. My dad forwarded me the link months ago - last summer, I think. I filed it away and somehow it slipped to the bottom of the pile. I was clearing through some of the files last night and found it.

I'm just blown away - it's an incredible visual blog filled with candid pictures of people who are reading on the subway. I couldn't stop looking at it last night.

Here's what I think: people have interesting lives. Every single person. Rich or poor, happy or sad, connected or lonely. There's always something beneath the surface. There's always some history that you don't know. There's always an experience that tells a story.

I love people watching because I crave their stories. We all have stories - that's one thing we have in common.

I've been having a hard time writing lately. Can I make an honest confession? I've been watching TV for an hour most nights. I don't know how I slipped into it, but I've become very aware of the almost drug-like feeling induced by gluing your eyeballs to the screen. It's such an easy way to shut your brain down, especially if you can convince yourself that you deserve it because you've been working hard all day (this is what I convince myself). Well, I'm saying it out loud because I would like it to not become a habit.

let it go.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” -Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I think I may have given you this quote before, but I needed to hear it again, today. This is one of the writing proverbs I keep in my head, along with others. These proverbs guide me on and help me to get over myself. I needed to hear it because I do it all the time. I imagine there are a handful of things that I will write that revolve around certain topics and once they're written, then they'll be done, dead, lost and I will be cleaned out. In those moments, I remember Annie Dillard’s words. I also say something to myself along the lines of, If this brain can write one good thing, it can write another.

I have been on a journey of discovery for...oh, for years. Self-discovery. Along with self-discovery, you discover the nuances of life that you may not have known. I don’t know what I mean, really, but you might. What I mean is that it feels exciting to be alive.

Jacob says that sometimes the appeal of my writing lies in its ambiguity and vagueness. I always assume that the opposite is true - I find this the least interesting part of my writing. Regardless, it’s the sort of writing that floods out of me without any effort or inhibition. It’s how my brain talks to itself inside my head.