ostrita de la mar @ostritadelamar - Tumblr Blog

Quiero ser un pájaro

Cuando es tarde y me siento muy mal, quiero decir, agobiada, no pienso que me gustaría morir o desaparecer. Más bien pienso: “quiero ser un pájaro”. Lo pienso una y otra vez. Quiero ser un pájaro, quiero ser un pájaro, quiero ser un pájaro. Y así hasta que me duermo. No lo consigo, no despierto convertida en un pájaro, pero sí cansada y con la sensación de haber volado.

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How to graciously say no to anyone

“There is no money in answering letters.” —Groucho Marx

A couple of years ago, I was getting sent this article, “Creative People Say No,” at least twice a day. The idea was that creative geniuses say “no” to a lot of requests (like, a psychology professor researching processes of creative genius) in order to get their work done, so if you want to be a creative genius, you have to say no a lot so you can get your work done.

A bunch of people asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “It’s good advice for the rich and famous. Creative people say yes until they have enough work that they can say no.”

Ian Bogost explains it nicely, here:

[Y]ou have to say ‘yes’ for a long while before you can earn the right to say ‘no.’ Even then, you usually can’t say 'no’ at whim. By the time you can say 'no’ indiscriminately, then you’re already so super-privileged that being able to say 'no’ is not a prerequisite of success, but a result of it.

There was a little index card in the back of Steal Like An Artist that didn’t make it into the book that sums up my own point of view: “Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.” (I recycled the line later in Show Your Work!)

Of course, sometimes you just have to say no for whatever reason. For that, Alexandra Franzen suggests this format in her piece, “How To Graciously Say No To Anyone”:

Hey [name],

Thanks for your note. I’m so proud of you for ___—and I’m flattered that you’d like to bring my brain into the mix.

I need to say “no,” because ___.

But I would love to support you in a different way. [Offer an alternative form of support here]

Thank you for being such a wonderful ___. I am honored to be part of your world.

[A few closing words of encouragement, if you’d like]

[Your name here]

Images above from The Ransom Center, Tim Ferriss, @maudnewton, and my letters archive.

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Alfred Hitchcock (or rather, a dummy of Hitchcock) floating down The River Thames

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Cool Japanese Women & Cool Japanese Men by Sweaty Pocari

Pocari Sweat (ポカリスエット Pokari Suetto) is a popular Japanese soft drink and sports drink, manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. It was launched in 1980 and is now also available in East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Pocari Sweat is a mild-tasting, relatively light, non-carbonated sweet beverage and is advertised as an “ion supply drink”. It has a mild grapefruit flavor with little aftertaste.

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Léaud, por Truffaut. Seberg, por Godard.

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Seeing a whale is not like seeing a sparrow in a city tree, or a cat crossing the street. It is not even like seeing a giraffe, dawdling on the African veldt. Whales exist beyond the normal. They are not so much animal as geographical; if they did not move, it would be difficult to believe they were alive at all. In their very construction they are antidotes to our lives in uncompromising cities. Here was an animal that shared my heart and lungs, my mammalian qualities, but which at the same time was possessed of a supernatural physicality. Yet they are entirely mutable, dreamlike because they exist in another world, because they look like we feel as we float in our dreams.

Philip Hoare, The Whale (via sandwichsinmayonesa)