The New YorkTimes recently invited readers to submit poetry using the financial crisis as inspiration. A few of my favorites:
Last weekend
i wanted to buy something
spend a grand or two.
But then I remembered what the tv said
about the future
about tomorrow
about how I may not have a job.
So I sat by the window
and watched
the snow fall instead.
— Thomas Bernard, Charlotte, N.C.
Got no money coming in
so easily we turn to sin
Every day we reminisce
how did life end up like this.
Winters death lets hibernate
wake with spring to meditate
On what is real and what is fake
No more shopping for goodness sake
Back to the land, back to the earth
lets show mother nature what were worth.
— Christopher D Hayward, Southampton, NY
Newly poor
the well-to-do’s
concern about poverty
is sparked anew.
This astute little commentary on men’s modus operandi just came my way: “I do understand a bit about how they operate…at least ones as highly evolved as I am. We continue to communicate [with women] like mice circling a cheese-filled maze looking for a doorway in. When no one answers we eventually move on to another maze. If we find a weak floorboard, though, we keep nosing at it until it gives way and we gain entry. In the meanwhile we share emotions and try to make them laugh. It breaks down the natural defenses and before you know it we are munching cheese…”
I’ve lost my other half and I’m not too proud to say I feel like I’m dying inside. I tried to leave frigid New York for dreary Portland some 30 hours ago, only to get stuck in the absolute last California town I want to be in right now. Purgatory, again, still. It’s seemingly endless. I’m in an airport bar having a drink, about the only thing other than the occasional bread product I’ve been able to consume since I started this whole process (thanks, TraumaTrim!), and I’ve just been notified that my flight’s been delayed until 11:49pm which likely means another night in a sad, sterile airport hotel listening to Bon Iver on repeat and crying myself into a fitful sleep….
Aren’t they supposed to be the no hassle anti-airline? If you can’t read the fine print, what just arrived in my inbox says: “Just register for this promotion between Date A and Date B for travel between Date C and Date D and we’ll send you a $50 voucher good for travel between Date E and Date F. Vouchers will be mailed on or after Date G. Offer expires on Date B” and now the kicker: “Restrictions apply* [asterisk! [sputter!]]” Oh what have we become??
Sublime new release by Sigur Ros. I could write the album name out here in Icelandic but really, what would be the point? It’s the one with a long foreign title and lanky, bare-assed men jumping over a fence. Kinda can’t miss it.
One of my best friends got engaged about a month ago. This is an excerpt from the email I just got from him:
“Things with [the fiance] are so good tho. I look at her ring sometimes and just can’t believe that we are engaged. I still feel like such a kid! I just want to make babies with her so badly! I have had this paternal instinct lately …. but I know we are waiting at least 3 years. You will be Aunt Kelly! NOt to be toooo cheesy but could you imagine if we had kids around the same age? that would be sick. Those little buggers would be best buds.”
I don’t know whether to cry or puke or both. Pretty boy player born with a silver spoon in his mouth dates a million beautiful but mildly-retarded thoroughbreds, finally falls head over heels for a girl who does her own nails and digs a sale (and, I should say, isn’t so awful-looking herself), proposes years earlier than originally intended and wants to have babies NOW. It’s almost farcical.
cool stuff abounds. find your way on, off and around the grid
I'm a writer and wide-eyed wanderer, culturemonger and experience collector. Born in New York and raised in Colorado, I've also lived in Sydney, France, Martinique and spent various random weeks and months exploring the spaces between. Possibly as a result, I'm not happy unless I'm on a plane twice a month going somewhere to discover something cool. This is where I'll attempt to collect and share some of the things I see in travel, design, retail, music, film, web, food, style. (I admit, focus has never been my strongsuit.)
Day jobs have included years at big city branding shops, little town magazines and a stint heading up marketing for an alternative law firm's San Francisco office. I still have a foot in that pretty little city but my heart resides in Manhattan.
My other gig
I'm also editrix-in-chief of TheDistillery, a marketing blog focused on media, design, and brands. It's a place where a bunch of stuff goes in and only the good stuff comes out. Drink up. DistilleryMedia.com.
