Wear only secret clothing
hello
Another year done. It’s been nice to have you aboard. Thank you for flying Afternoon Slow.
Five things I’ve found:
We had a trip to Lisbon a few weeks ago and I took a pile of New Yorkers to catch up with. The best thing I read was this article about “débutante, burlesque dancer, and poet” VR Lang. A fascinating life and some excellent lines:
On the thirtieth day
Drink only water. Wear only secret clothing.
Speak to no one. Proceed out by moonlight only.She was also good at titles:
Things I Have Learned in Canada / How to Tell a Diamond from a Burning Baby / Who Is the Real Oscar Mole? / To Our Friend Who Married a Bore and Who Is No Longer One of Us by Choice
She was a fan of what she called ““the piercing clean detail” as in:
You kill me. Yes you do.
I know no one else who’d
Buy a sparrow (I
Didn’t even know they sold sparrows)
Just to feed it watermelon
And in public, too.Every afternoon I think of you
Out there, flushed and fair
Scraping the exhausted rind with a spoon.
Every day! All winter.There was also this great piece about Tim Berners Lee.
“Tim has always been difficult to understand,” a former colleague of his told me. “He speaks in hypertext.”
We all know someone like that.
Very hilly Lisbon. With very particular pavements.
The loveliest album I’ve heard in a long time: K-Lone, sorry i thought you were someone else Warm, rhythmic, like wearing secret clothes.
Some Emerson I came across:
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air”
At last, an explanation about why bicycles are so efficient. From It’s All About The Bike by Robert Penn.
“In physiological terms, we get maximum power out of our muscles if they are allowed to function in a cyclical way, and relax for six times longer than they work. It’s to do with blood flow. Cycling with regular pedals and cranks, our legs only push on the pedal for a small part of each pedal rotation: about 60 degrees. For the other 300 degrees of the revolution, the main muscles in that leg – hamstrings and quadriceps – are at rest, and able to absorb blood, carrying replacement energy. So, pedalling matches almost perfectly the optimum ratio between muscle rest and work. This is a central reason the bicycle is such an efficient human-powered vehicle.”
SELF PROMOTIONAL NEWS
I’ve written a gift guide. As Anna Lappé has said “Every time you spend money you are casting a vote for the world you want.”
I think I have an idea for a book. You can follow along to see if it’s a good one.
Presentation Club 3 happens on January 7th. I’m very keen to find volunteer presenters, especially if you’re not a man.
I’ll give you back your December.
russell
(There are 1011 of you. In 1011 Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen an Arab scientist working in Egypt, feigned madness for fear of angering Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, and was placed in house arrest. He started writing influential Book of Optics and proposed the now accepted model that vision takes place by light entering the eye.)