written word wednesday and the autumnal equinox.

it's wednesday! and, at 11:09 PM eastern time tonight, the earth will be directly facing the sun, with no axial tilt at all. big moment, at least for astronomy and weather and sciencey nerds out there. definitely not me, but the fact was shoved in my face during my geography class today so it's still fresh in my mind. i just wish there was some cosmic announcement or sign or something at 11:09 pm. that would make the whole thing so much cooler. but still, happy autumnal equinox! and more importantly, happy fall! finally. another interesting, or really not interesting depending on how you look at it, fact about tonight: it's the full moon, and it's the first time in 20 years that the fool moon and the equinox have happened at the same time. harvest moon! whatever that means.

so go stand outside tonight around 11 and just watch the sky, i guess. also, maybe harvest some grain. apparently this weird converging of two natural phenomena is good for that.

i have a thing for natgeo photos, so here are some good ones. the first is of a harvest moon, apparently. and the next two are just insanely beautiful photographs.

in washington

aurora borealis! in norway! two fantastic things combined into one. glorious.

so for written word wednesday, i'm going to throw out there for you some quotes from some great authors. it's the best way to get inspired, or to just be uplifted from the drags and routines of everyday life. here goes:

"clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
-william faulkner 

"all of us have a place in history. mine is clouds."
-richard brautigan (btw, this was a pretty crazy guy, beat writer and everything, but some of his stories are just crazy enough to blow your mind. check out in watermelon sugar if you're looking for something thought-provoking and quick...not if you're in the mood for a good laugh, though.)

"i don't like work... but i like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know. "
-joseph conrad

"the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
 -gabriel garcia marquez 


happy written word wednseday! and remember, 11:09 pm tonight, harvest some wheat and party.

right now, though, troy is about to sing his angst and take his shirt off. high school musical 3 really was the best of the trilogy. and come on, reading the paper has never looked sexier.

yeah, disney channel is definitely blaring from my tv. deal with it.

because aurora borealises are the best.

please excuse the sporadic blogging. school = time killer and reading is way overrated. but i guess it's necessary if you don't want to work at mcdonald's. or quiznos. or as that guy who stands at the street corner below my window on saturday mornings holding up a "honk for peace" sign. although i guess he doesn't really have a job. so that's another story. i think he smells pretty bad, too.

aaannnyway. it's an awesome day. every day. but especially if you're in minnesota. i was in minneapolis/st paul this weekend with my mom for the creative connection, a big convention for women entrepreneurs. it was cool and all, but the cities were the coolest part of the whole thing. minnesota is such a great place. it just gives off good vibes, or something. and st paul has to be one of the greatest cities in the world. screw paris and london, they're too crowded and all trying too hard to be great. st paul just is, and that's great. no doubt the minnesotan accents help a lot. great food, great colleges, great churches, great people, great hockey, great scandinavian and norweigan and irish and english and french influence and historical heritage, and a whole lot of smokers, which isn't so great but it's still a great, great, great place. just great. for instance:

beautiful houses like this historical Ramsey house/museum

st paul's cathedral

and this awesome dinosaur in the museum of history.

in honor of my new found addiction to minnesota, i'm listening nonstop to my favorite band, cloud cult. they hail from minnesota and exemplify just how awesome that state and everything it produces is/are.

not that the whole nonstop listening thing is new...i'm one of those people that can listen to one song or one album for hours and hours and days and years on end without getting tired of it at all. and cloud cult just seems to be the best band ever, so it's definitely not a challenge to do the whole nonstop listening thing. here's their website if you want to check them out and see just how right i am: www.cloudcult.com. it'll change your life and give you the power to live more positively, energetically, and with generally more happiness and light and love in your life. you'll be hooked in no time, believe me.

yes, this blog was primarily about nothing at all. but sometimes nothing at all is a nice break from "it all" if you know what i mean. oh and to add to the lack of aim and complete stream of consciousness vibe i've got going here in this post, here are some cool pictures of the aurora borealis (plural; borealises?), seen from nortern minnesota. (photo creds go to http://ham.space.umn.edu/spacephys/aurora_gallery). seriously, what could be better than atmospheric phenomenons, in minnesota, and beautiful photography? answer: nothing. aurora borealises and cloud cult and st paul and education and jobs are the best.

and to round of the wanderings of this post: bbc news is the blandest program (programme) ever. sorry tony blair, but you've got some boring, boring, boring people over in englandtown. happy monday/tuesday/week/year/century!

see ya summer

"there is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, 

which through the summer is not heard or seen, 

as if it could not be, as if it had not been!"

percy bysshe shelley

fall is my favorite season for a lot of reasons: the colder and wetter weather, the sound of leaves crunching beneath our footsteps, pumpkins, halloween, and, of course, most importantly, the glorious opportunity to wear plaid and flannel shirts endlessly (without getting the same weird looks you get in summer when you try to wear plaid and flannel shirts all the time).

it's a season of family traditions, from carving pumpkins, to making grocery-bag textbook covers, to jumping in freshly raked leaf piles, to turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes. it's the return of football, of hockey, and of the annoying abundance of grown men wearing sports jerseys in public on weekends.

another great part about the return of autumn: the wind not only blows in colder weather, but also new opportunities to reinvent yourself. when i was little, i was always so excited for school to start in the fall because it was a chance to show the other kids how cool my new clothes and lunchbag were. in college, i still treat is as an opportunity to show up to class changed and more grown up than the year before, the horizon brimming with endless possibilities and my closet overflowing with new clothes to help boost my "new me" image. sure, a lot of these clothes end up in the giveaway pile and the once brimming horizon sometimes pretty quickly dims as people sink back into routines, but the possibility of change and reinvention is always still there.

oh and another reason why fall is great, even more awesome than plaid and flannel. two words: PUMPKIN PIE.

so, see ya, summer, and welcome back fall. and...i'm not even going to think about what season comes after fall, because the thought of shoveling heavy snow just to be able to get out of the garage makes me want to jump off a short building right now. (and land safely of course.) so fall is the focus. don't forget to stop and look at the leaves, buy more plaid and flannel, and just enjoy the fall air and all the opportunities it blows in with it.

on an unrelated but completely important note, taylor swift has a new song. take that as you will. happy monday!

written word wednesday (on thursday)

okay so it's not wednesday, but really, it must be wednesday somewhere. i'm going with the same philosophy of "it's five o'clock somewhere" here. but really, books are so much cooler than drinking, so in your face jimmy buffet. and alan jackson. just put off celebrating thirsty thursday a few more minutes because written word wednesday is so not over yet.

anyway, this week's written word is gabriel garcia marquez's story "the handsomest drowned man in the world."

marquez is one of the pioneers of magical realism, definitely one of the coolest genres of literature ever created. magical realism as a literary genre originated in latin america, and it has close ties, at least aesthetically, with surrealism. exhibit a:

salvador dali, the temptation of st. anthony

this dali painting has clear realistic elements, like the horse and the elephants and the human figure, elements that we can recognize. however, dali blended, and largely overwhelmed, these "normal" elements with the supernatural and bizarre, like the stilt legs, the glowing palace-like structure being carried by the elephants, and the grotesque-ness of the rearing horse. this appears more like a dream, and is thus a representation of the rational mixed with the irrational, the welding together of the conscious and unconscious realms.

magical realism, and surrealism, aim to arrive at a deeper understanding of reality by blending the conscious and the unconscious, and also through the blending of realism with more magical elements, such as: extreme hyperbole, mystery, the outlandish and the fantastical, supernatural elements, an accord between the natural and the supernatural because of the acceptance of the supernatural, fatalism, and paradox, to name just a few. super long sentences, vivid descriptions, and outrageous occurrences combine with other magical elements to create this wonderful genre.

a mexican critic said, "if you can explain it, then it's not magical realism." and that's what makes it so great and, well, magical, to read and take in. marquez's story "the handsomest drowned man in the world" is a prime example of the genre, and also a great story by itself. it's about this tall dead man who washes ashore in a small coastal village. he is described as such: "not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination." they name him esteban, significant because the first christian martyr was esteban, stoned to death and a true representation of faith, love, and mercy. (authors use esteban and steven as character names often to give their characters the same significance right off the bat.) the villagers admire him for his apparent sincerity and modesty and pride, and they return him to the sea after holding a grand funeral for him.

here's the last few sentences, to give you an idea and completely enthrall you so you're just as hooked on marquez and magical realism as i am:

"they let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss. they did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. but they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make esteban's memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down from the bridge in his dress uniform, with his astrolabe, his pole stare, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's esteban's village."

the story is about being inspired and the need to discover everything that holds us back. it's also more, a reminder that our routines and mundane lives can be interrupted at any time with the fantastical, the beautiful, the un-ordinary, that it is completely necessary, in order to live life to the fullest and most meaningful extent, to shift your perspective often, or at least to have it shifted for you by an outside force beyond your control.

there's much more meaning in this short story than just that, because naturally magical realism works are so so so dense and wonderfully complex. its significance as well as its beauty are endless. but it's more fun if you figure it all out on your own, so i'll leave you to it. you can access a copy of the story here, but i would definitely suggest buying a book of garcia marquez short stories, like this one. highly worth it and life-changing. just look at how awesome he looks:

definitely one of my top choices in the "who i'd like to meet" category. happy written word (thursday) wednesdaydali painting for you to ponder and eventually give up on trying to understand.

salvador dalí, Lion, Cheval, Dormeuse invisibles, 1930

the tv easel. and speidi

the coolest breakthrough in the constant search for cooler and more expensive ways to show off your plasma/led/lcd 12132421 watt and 123123 resolution HDTV---yeah, that exists---has to be the tv easel. i mean, we watch tv so much, why not treat it as a work of art? it's a pretty understated statement about our culture, as well as just a cool way to place a tv in a room.

the above image is from restoration hardware, a testament to how expensive and apparently in-style this mode of tv display is. if restoration hardware sells it, you know it'll be at least four thousand dollars and out of stock.

but anyway, the tv easel perfectly captures our modern obsession with tv entertainment and all the distraction it gives us. for most people, looking at a tv these days is the equivalent of what looking at art was back in the days (you know, the days, or the days): an escape. renaissance-goers had no tv (sucks to be them), and as long as they weren't dying from the plague or being run out of town by rival ruling family powerhouses, italian aristocrats would admire art for its beauty and, and everything else art has to offer. nowadays, thanks to the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the medical revolution, and now the hdtv revolution/craze, people can just watch tv to escape without even leaving their comfortable abode. for the average modern-day-goer, the tv really is "art." the artist's canvas on the easel has been replaced by the tv on the easel. and this innovation definitely requires less work on the "artist's" part. just a lot of sitting at a comfortable desk, indoors, entering weird programming codes, or writing a great script that will sell, or filming some engrossing reality trash tv.

not that i'm criticizing. the tv is a great invention. i'm no hater, and i like to watch it. i'm just observing. and judging a little. just a little.

luckily, this new canvas has provided us with great art. exhibit a:

yes. speidi. although now i guess it's just spencer and heidi, individually. which is a bummer. but it made for a great last season of the hills, let me tell you. thanks, mtv. and thanks, whoever invented the tv. and thanks, whoever invented the tv easel. although it was already an invention, so thanks really to whoever copied the idea and applied it to the television.

art is not dead, it just alive in tons of frames per second now. but really, go to a museum. they have couches there sometimes. at least hard benches you could sit on. oh, and speaking of art, invest in some the hills dvd's. and steer clear of restoration hardware. every visit just makes you feel like your life is inadequate and like you live in a shack with dumpster treasures. happy sunday! and remember to work hard on labo(u)r day.




[sunday night album:













matt pond pa, several arrows later]

thursday is the best day of the week.

thursday really is the best day of the whole week, because it's like the weekend is almost here, but the weekend isn't quite here so there's still the anticipation of the weekend. it's hard to explain, but it's true.

[insert witty segway here]

here are some nature photos to inspire/awe/humble/energize you on such a great thursday. and some wise words from marcus aurelius, a cool guy. (all photos are from natgeo.com as much as i wish i could take credit for them)

bering sea

waikawau bay, new zealand

toad river valley, canada

santa monica shore

palouse, washington (washstate, the good washington)

germany

florida

have a great thursday! and go outside.

written word wednesday: first of september

it's written word wednesday! hopefully this trend is catching on. music mondays and follow fridays are getting old.


it's september 1st, the day that the hogwarts express leaves from king's cross. you know, if you keep track of those sorts of dates.

so it's only fitting that today's book is:


harry potter and the deathly hallows.

only one of the best books ever. and i know not everyone's into the whole hp craze, but i cannot say that i am in that unfortunate group of haters.

this book is great on so many levels: the story is good, if you're into it, it's very english (england english), it's extremely well written because jk rowling is a genius, and its themes can be widely applied to "real" life. the power of love, resistance, endurance, friendship, etc., all carry through to the end of the series and culminate in a huge way in this final book. and, this is a great guide to being homeless wanderers, if you ever find yourself in that position. even if you don't follow the series or if you're not a particularly hardcore hp fan, you can appreciate all this book has to offer in the way of transcendental significance and symbolic meaning. it exudes innocence and purity of heart, stressing their supremacy over hatred and prejudice. and we could all use a refresher on the importance of purity of heart these days, right?

plus, did i mention that jk rowling is a genius?

quote highlights:

"dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste."

"he looked out over the ocean and felt closer, this dawn, than ever before, closer to the heart of it all."

"of course it is happening inside your head, harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

"we're all human, aren't we? every human life is worth the same, and worth saving."

"from their high vantage point the village looked like a collection of toy houses in the great slanting shafts of sunlight stretching to earth in the breaks between clouds."

...and way, way more. i would quote the whole book if it wasn't illegal-ish.

anyway, great book and jk rowling is almost as cool as hermione granger. almost. and i probably just lost five or six, or all of my followers on twitter. but haters can hate. now that i've released all my hp nerding energy (nerding is a word. i just made it up, but now it's a word), here's a non-hp related quote to brighten your wednesday.