The Future is Bright

a n f

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That was the beginning of the end, not just because shoe shopping was always sad- what was “Cinderella,” if not an allegory for the fundamental unhappiness of shoe shopping?

Elif Batuman, The Idiot, page 137

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Moody beach day

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When you’re taking a family photo, but you’re distracted by your own beauty...

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Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist, page 145

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You think you are alone until your find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read.

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist, page 145

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Today is the end of 30. As it usually does, my spin class yesterday got me reflecting on my spot in life (anyone else? Cyclebar is like part therapy session, good thing it’s dark in there). I’m so overwhelmed with what a fulfilled year 30 was. I saw so many of my friends, from my strive girls (twice!), to Arielle (twice!), I even made it back to Oregon for the first time since I moved. I made new friends, made new foods, discovered new favorite things, found out that the number one quality in a PhD student is the ability and willingness to spend 85% of your time reading, stretched my brain and my body and my emotional state of being into new places I didn’t know I was capable of. I had my family and Aaron and my furry best friend my roommate brother all there supporting me and believing in me and making life fun and I am supremely thankful for where I am in this life, in this place, in this moment, for a great year of 30. Cheers to 31!

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Before the Internet, you could move to a new state and no one at school would know anything about you. You’d have no online history. You could be anyone. You would lean against the lockers with a faraway expression on your face and let people assume whatever they wanted.

Emma Rathbone, “Before the Internet,” The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/before-the-internet?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

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Looking into the radiant mouth of the stage, my mother felt a strong sense of recognition, as if she had visited this world in a dream. As if, when she was a child, the fog of her mother's dreams had rolled through the house every night and left this sparkling residue on her memory.

Michael Chabon, Moonglow

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She had always been the kind of woman who kept her balloon aloft and sailing by cutting away sandbags and throwing nonessentials over the side.

Michael Chabon, Moonglow

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'Anyway, it's a pretty good story,' I said. 'You have to admit.' 'Yeah?' He crumpled up the kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. 'You can have it. I'm giving it to you. After I'm gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours.'

Michael Chabon, Moonglow

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Today I keep thinking back to a year ago when I knew that my whole focus and life was about to change. I was anxious about moving, about going from a steady 8-5 to an ever-shifting schedule where I had to keep myself on track. And today, as I hiked with my dog in the morning, and as I spent the afternoon reading and writing, I was very aware of how much more fulfilled I am a year later. I'm doing work I believe in, that challenges me every day, and I have more flexibility to do the things that are important to me like cook healthy food, exercise, and spend time with people and animals that I love and love me. I spend my life being curious and taking on challenges and succeeding and failing and growing.

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Walked in the afternoon's warmest hour down the main pedestrian drag and into a bookstore, to caress one maybe two books on the spine, because that's why they stand there, they're just like the rest of us, they want to be caressed and loved despite it all.

Dorthe Nors, Days, page 114

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Love this spot across from my parent's condo. (at Lake Worth, Florida)

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but language is never small. Language shapes how we view things before we even know we are viewing them. How we name something determines how we value it. If women’s last names are consistently absent from history, never passed down, then where is their — our — value?

Molly Caro May, https://thehairpin.com/what-happened-when-we-gave-our-daughter-my-last-name-aec04b8ab149#.ivh1c15b1 

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I am still more or less sane because of my evening reading.

Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman, page 259

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Books became my milk and honey. I made myself feel better by reciting jejune statements like "Books are the air I breathe," or, worse, "Life is meaningless without literature," all in a weak attempt to avoid the fact that I found the world inexplicable and impenetrable.

Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman, page 253