Hitting The Links: 4/20/25
Lots of links, finding art in a parking garage or two, new podcasts, the disease of writing, no-quit running, the seven faces of John O'Clocks, and more fragments of my dis-integrated self.
The Virtual Memories Show News
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You can make art in a parking garage.
I did it twice this week. (It doesn’t have to be photography, though in this case it was.)
Go out in the world and keep your eyes open.
Birdy Of The Week
“Mom’s never coming back [from the shower]! At least I’ll have this sneaker to remember her by. . . .”
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields • Meeting Across The River • Elon Green • Vanda Krefft • Seth Lorinczi
RIP Wink Martindale . . . RIP Mario Vargas Llosa . . . RIP Rosemary Sandberg . . . RIP Victor Emanuel . . . RIP Nicky Katt . . . RIP Marvin Levy . . .
Also Richard Armitage died.
Another obit of Robert E. McGinnis, with LOTS of illustrations.
Joe Coleman is curating what looks like an amazing exhibition at Deitch gallery in NYC next month, CARNIVAL! I hope to make it to the opening on May 3.
I enjoyed this interview with Mark Wunderlich about poetry, art, & Gesamtkunswerk.
Arthur Lubow wrote a lovely piece about the auction of Maurice Sendak’s amazing collection of art.
After recovering from quintuple bypass 20 years ago, my old man developed a fixation on (knockoff) luxury watches. Not being trained in extremely obvious literary symbolism, he was unable to explain this behavior. Gary Shteyngart has also gone overboard in the horological department, and reports from the Watches and Wonders fair.
I just wear an Apple Watch nowadays. I also unretired my Garmin Forerunner 645 this week for my runs as I work on that whole marathon thing (see below). But in 2011, I bought a Junghans Max Bill manual-wind watch, an elegant & unostentatious 34mm piece with a black leather band. Looks like it retails nowadays for 2x what I paid for it, not that I consider it any sort of investment. I took it out of the drawer recently. Maybe I’ll wear it to special occasions, if anyone ever invites me to one (and as long as it doesn’t jeopardize my Stand streak with my Apple Watch).
Someday, I should get back to my science fiction story, The Seven Faces of John O’Clocks.
I’m bummed that Mythic Quest got canceled. The retweaked final episode wasn’t exactly worth it, either.
Elon Green wrote about The Importance of Being Elon.
I don’t know; this sounds like a forgery to me.
Some good thoughts/practices for people like me who are in the Watch & Wait stage of blood cancer.
Current/Recent Reading
Ginseng Roots: A Memoir - Craig Thompson
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age - Vauhini Vara
Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs - Sally Mann
Before the invention of photography, significant moments in the flow of our lives would be like rocks placed in a stream: impediments that demonstrated but didn’t diminish the volume of the flow and around which accrued the debris of memory, rich in sight, smell, taste, and sound. No snapshot can do what the attractive mnemonic impediment can: when we outsource that work to the camera, our ability to remember is diminished and what memories we have are impoverished.
The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins/Pike) (only one chapter left in Book One!)
This dormant half of his personality perhaps revealed itself most clearly in his instinctive assumption that the active and busy side of him was only standing in for the real self, an assumption that cast a shadow on his active self. In all he did—involving physical passions as well as spiritual—he had always ended up feeling trapped in endless preparations that would never come to fruition in anything, so that as the years went by his life had lost any sense of its own necessity, just as a lamp runs out of oil. His development had evidently split into two tracks, one running on the surface in daylight, the other in the dark below and closed to traffic, so that the state of moral arrest that had oppressed him for a long time, and perhaps more than was strictly necessary, might simply be the result of his failure to bring these two tracks together.
or
“Writing, like the pearl, is a disease.”
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Last week, I said I wanted to get back to running, and I finally did. Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I did 5.4 mi. w/some of The Guys. I was slow (9:34/mi on Tue., 9:29/mi on Thu.), but my legs felt fine after. I also got in weights Wed. & yoga Thu., but had to skip weights on Fri., due to podcast travel. Got my yoga on yesterday, and hope to get weights in today, and will maybe feel like I’m getting my body back.
Even better, I did a solo run this morning in my neighborhood. It was only 4.5 mi., and my pace was nothing to write home (or a newsletter) about, but it involved a LOT of hills, including the entire half-mile return to the house, and I managed to keep myself going, with no “I’ll just take a walking break here” moments. I need to get that no-quit mindset back, so I was glad to grind out that last set of hills.
I took up running in 2018, and sometime the following year I thought about running a marathon, but never got to it, partly because I was running too hard/much and getting all sorts of injuries. I’m trying to be a little smarter about it all now, and hoping that the weights & yoga will offset some of the problems I’d been incurring, and that I can build up my stamina and will (speed, not so much) and get a marathon in this year.
Anyway, I hope to do better than some humanoid robots did on their half-marathon. FTR, I ran my only official half in 2019 at 1:49:50, an 8:23/mi. pace; humorously enough, that pace was only slightly slower than what I ran in my first 5k ~9 months earlier, despite going 10 miles longer. (During lockdown and after, I started running some half-marathon-length routes I put together in my town, which you’re invited to join me on, once I get my distance back in another month or two.)
Meditation’s been okay, but I still spend a while of each session just trying to get the world out of my head, not really getting under myself as I’d been doing early on. It’s true that there’s a lot going on, but I should be able to dis-integrate better than I’ve been doing.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, a new Instax, & maybe some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Long painting / The air plays along with my chemicals / Drained again,