> 165: Keep the channel open, bicycle buses, "How do I get friends like that?"
Lee Me Kyeoung
Hi. My glow-in-the-dark skeleton onesie arrived in the mail so I feel prepared for everything October has to offer. I hope you are similarly fortified.
Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it comparies with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open." Martha Graham's advice to Agnes de Mille.
Newsletter Fave Tejal Rao has a new newsletter for the New York Times (new) about vegetables.
"The easiest answer to 'how do I get friends like that?' is to be one."
"If the woman who found me bleeding on the footpath thought I was faking, I don’t know what I would have done. She directed the paramedics over the phone, stayed with me until they arrived. The one fact I can cling to when fear threatens to override my empathy is that there are more people like her than people like the man who hurt me." Is true crime rotting our brains?
Vonnegut interlude: "I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope." Also: Story shapes.
"I thought when you got free, if you decided to come back to us, you’d find a way to help us feel more free too."
Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.
Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.—Raymond Carver, “Rain"
Bye,
Laura