nfrc

"Such is the dark backward and abysm of time. Everything lies all jumbled up in it, and when you look..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:58:12 -0400

“Such is the dark backward and abysm of time. Everything lies all jumbled up in it, and when you look down you feel dizzy and afraid.”

- W.G. Sebald, “Air War and Literature”

"Given these quantities, the natural historians sought consolation in the idea that humanity was..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:43:33 -0400

“

Given these quantities, the natural historians sought consolation in the idea that humanity was responsible for only a fraction of the endless destruction wrought in the cycle of life, and moreover in the assumption that the peculiar physiology of the fish left them free of the fear and pains that rack the bodies and souls of higher animals in their death throes.

But the truth is that we do not know what the herring feels.

”

- W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

"We live with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah, were..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:10:52 -0400

“We live with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes: Common Counters summe up the life of Moses his man. Our days become considerable like petty sums by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our dayes of a span long make not one little finger.”

- Thomas Browne, Urne Buriall

Vampire Weekend

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 12:47:32 -0400

Vampire Weekend

self-indulgence of hastily written email approaches infinity

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:41:00 -0400

you’re lucky all im thinking about is the role—and I mean additionally roh-lay, with the ^ over the o in the French sense, rôle—of the river as a medium of economic, political, spatial, and even rhetorical exchange shaping the silent cartography [Halo reference yes but john archer will never get it which just makes it better] of the imaginary for Ralegh’s Guiana

also last night jean howard, wearing a pink poofy vest over a pink sweater, approached me at her apartment party and said “Ben, I have a question for you. Can you make me a cocktail?” the events that follow are foggy and astonishing, but at one point I believe I pointed out that because I’d made my own bar, the bar and the bar-as-bottles functioned as a sort of artisanal palimpsest that expressed both the potential for and the reification of the assembled object, at which point she stuck out her tongue and giggled at me before tanking her way off to write more anthologies of shakespeare and make a bazillion dollars

shit is real and your misplaced apostrophe’s are not encouraged

Having a strange bout of displaced nostalgia for the Gelateria...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:07:49 -0400

Having a strange bout of displaced nostalgia for the Gelateria de Leone and for those afternoons spent on Grand reading from my Norton anthologies in the wild hope of studying poetry for the rest of my life.

Evenings I would go: Read three poems: stare painfully at the cover for a while: tuck the volume under my arm: walk home.

"The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:04:20 -0500

“

The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion. …

It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people.

”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates on an event in what is also my neighborhood, at a deli I went to just a few days ago and to which I hope to return.

Why does Coates not name the market (Milano)? Or the man? As much as I like this article and agree with it, it still seems like Coates is interested in making spectacular the event rather than its roots. Why are we surprised that racism happens in and around us all the time, or that those most prone to racism are the same that fail to recognize it as something that can live in good people? Failing to understand the way a social anxiety incubates is its own act of incubation, and deploring it in others is about as effective as burning incense to get rid of the plague. We are all of us racist, and it still seems to me, as it has seemed to me for a long time, that until we start seeing ourselves that way and actively trying not to be, we won’t get very far. Coates is right about that, although he doesn’t say it quite outright: call it a pharmakon, loathe it, loathe it in yourself, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.

“And you couldn’t talk to Harry, because he had forgotten...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:03:00 -0500

“And you couldn’t talk to Harry, because he had forgotten his English.”

“ I was surprised by that. He spent fourteen years with me.”

V.S. Naipaul, A Way in the World

"The opening stanza is the description of a place unfit for old people…"

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:29:00 -0500

“The opening stanza is the description of a place unfit for old people…”

- From the second paragraph of a paper explicating Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium,” which begins, of course, with the line “That is no country for old men.”

Last night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. February 24th,...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:46:00 -0500

Last night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. February 24th, 2013.

"Every experience is unrepeatable."

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:54:27 -0500

“Every experience is unrepeatable.”

- Italo Calvino

January 12th, 2013. Near Bratanng, Nepal. Kura khura two.

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:53:23 -0500

January 12th, 2013. Near Bratanng, Nepal. Kura khura two.

AGAIN

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:51:13 -0500

AGAIN

January 22nd, Pokhara, Nepal. First thought upon discovering...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 01:25:08 -0500

January 22nd, Pokhara, Nepal.

First thought upon discovering this photo in my camera: is that what they fucking looked like? I guess so, yeah, that’s what they fucking looked like.

Fox.

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 09:39:35 -0500

Fox.

theatlantic: Dioramas Inspired by 19th-Century Women...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:07:09 -0500

theatlantic:

Dioramas Inspired by 19th-Century Women Novelists

Jane Eyre.Wuthering Heights.The Awakening.The Lifted Veil. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” What these works have in common is, of course, that they’re all pieces of fiction written by women authors in the 19th century. Undoubtedly as a result, they all share an explicit or latent fixation with the domestic sphere to which so many women were relegated at the time — and with the psychological implications of that confinement.

These are the subjects of Julia Callon’s Houses of Fiction, a series of photographed models that depict rooms from these novels, exploring both their sedate surfaces and their chaotic subtext. “The dichotomous representation of women — mad or sane — is crucial to represent in this series,” Callon writes. “Therefore, each story is presented as a diptych: one image represents the passive, subservient woman, while the other represents ‘madness.’”

See more.

There is no short story more psychologically horrifying than “The Yellow Wallpaper.” None.

theatlantic: Dioramas Inspired by 19th-Century Women...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 08:46:00 -0500

theatlantic:

Dioramas Inspired by 19th-Century Women Novelists

Jane Eyre.Wuthering Heights.The Awakening.The Lifted Veil. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” What these works have in common is, of course, that they’re all pieces of fiction written by women authors in the 19th century. Undoubtedly as a result, they all share an explicit or latent fixation with the domestic sphere to which so many women were relegated at the time — and with the psychological implications of that confinement.

These are the subjects of Julia Callon’s Houses of Fiction, a series of photographed models that depict rooms from these novels, exploring both their sedate surfaces and their chaotic subtext. “The dichotomous representation of women — mad or sane — is crucial to represent in this series,” Callon writes. “Therefore, each story is presented as a diptych: one image represents the passive, subservient woman, while the other represents ‘madness.’”

See more.

There is no short story more psychologically horrifying than “The Yellow Wallpaper.” None.

"Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in..."

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:17:47 -0500

“Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness?”

- Haruki Murakami, “The Year of Spaghetti”

good to know

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 12:22:39 -0500

And still they were the same bright, patient stars.

John Keats, Hyperion: Bk. 1

guardian: Zhang Wuyi sits in his newly made multi-seater...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:44:30 -0500

guardian:

Zhang Wuyi sits in his newly made multi-seater submarine at his new workshop in Wuhan, China. Zhang, a local farmer, has made seven miniature submarines with several fellow engineers, one of which was sold to a businessman for $15,855. The submarines, mainly designed for harvesting aquatic products, such as sea cucumber, have a diving depth of 20-30 metres.

From picture desk: live, our place for the day’s best news images.

Photograph: Darley Shen/Reuters

Fuck yeah Wuhan, fuck yeah farmers, fuck yeah China. Fuck yeah _spirit_.