composers

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Can you believe I actually got some assignment work done in England? A delicious scone and pretty flowers were exactly what I needed to get started with my statistics work. I can’t believe I’m almost done now 🌷

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The fact that Microsoft Word has to be a subscription is upsetting. I already paid for it why do I have to pay again

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Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Masterpost

The “getting it done in an unconventional way” method.

The “it’s not cheating to do it the easy way” method.

The “fuck what you’re supposed to do” method.

The “get stuff done while you wait” method.

The “you don’t have to do everything at once” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be permanent to be helpful” method.

The “break the task into smaller steps” method.

The “treat yourself like a pet” method.

The “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing” method.

The “put on a persona” method.

The “act like you’re filming a tutorial” method.

The “you don’t have to do it perfectly” method.

The “wait for a trigger” method.

The “do it for your future self” method.

The “might as well” method.

The “when self discipline doesn’t cut it” method.

The “taking care of yourself to take care of your pet” method.

The “make it easy” method.

The “junebugging” method.

The “just show up” method.

The “accept when you need help” method.

The “make it into a game” method.

The “everything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method.

The “trick yourself” method.

The “break it into even smaller steps” method.

The “let go of should” method.

The “your body is an animal you have to take care of” method.

The “fork theory” method.

The “effectivity over aesthetics” method.

[composers]

the elusive 7 act Structure

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Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability

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maybe that makes him my god —setting things into motion, then making me believe he’s helping in the aftermath.

Mary Leauna Christensen, from “I write about blood in two ways:” published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry (via lifeinpoetry)

[composers]

maybe that makes him my god —setting things into motion, then making me believe he’s helping in the aftermath.

Mary Leauna Christensen, from “I write about blood in two ways:” published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry (via lifeinpoetry)

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the siren 🌊

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me: hey, there’s a documentary about a topic I am already interested in! let’s watch it!

me watching: already knew that. already knew that. wrong. already knew that. true but misleading. already knew that. already knew that. leaves out the important part. already knew that

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i used to write poems about feeling sick, having a tummy made of mealworms or too many eyes in places u can’t see. now i’ve softened just like a pear, just ripe enough to eat and still praise the coming winter. every day i spend asking him for new words, asking him what a radicchio is, not really asking for a good reply. i’ll try any food with u, i said. grilling onions in hot oil the morning after he secured me with soft rope, saying tomorrow let’s add garlic. tomorrow bite me a little harder. and how about next weekend i can tie u up, instead, and feed u fig jam on a small, delicate spoon? and when we go for coffee get embarrassed because i can’t stop touching ur back or making pursed lip kiss me faces. and endless dreaming about chopped vegetables, peeled fruit, satin, shoplifting. how the steam in the shower made it all look like a story i’d tell myself when i needed to soften edges. and wake thinking that the avocados we left on the counter should be softer today, just perfect for slicing into.

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— Maggie Nelson, Bluets

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For anyone without easy access to a local library,

I am not an ebook reader myself, but LibGen and the Gutenberg Project are sites I've heard good things about. The others look enticing.

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Every year at about this time (…very approximately) I post a reclist of 10 short stories I particularly enjoyed reading in the last year, all of which can be read online for free. Here’s the latest list, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

1. Sestu Hunts the Last Deer in Heaven - MH Cheung Beautiful and odd. A story of what happens after you’ve killed the gods, the unexpected realities and the things you have to live with. I love stories about after the climactic things traditional fantasy narratives are about, and this one excels!

2. If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You - John Chu Two butch Asian weightlifter dudes bonding with each other and then dating, and one of them happens to have superpowers, but the superpowers aren’t the focus. This is SO charming!!

3. Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold - SB Divya This is a really cool retelling of the classic fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin from the Rumpelstiltskin character’s pov, building out the world and his background and making him a sympathetic character with a specific history. Haven’t seen a fairy tale retelling quite like this before and it’s great! And I say that as a connoisseur of fairy tale retellings.

4. A Farce to Suit the New Girl - Rebecca Fraimow A troupe of Jewish actors in Russia, in a time of political upheaval. This story has such a good and powerful feeling of activity and forward momentum, and of the way a community supports people even if things are weird or complicated! I love every single character and how firmly they are themselves.

5. Sheri, At This Very Moment - Bianca Sayan The sacrifices you make to spend time with the ones you love - a snapshot of one brief visit together, out of two lives that only rarely get to align. Made me teary the first time I read it!

6. Spirochete - Anneke Schwob An engaging second-person pov story about possession and identity. It has such a great sense of timing! And the last line GOT me even on second read when I hypothetically knew what was coming!

7. To Embody a Wildfire Starting - Iona Datt Sharma Ahhhhhh this story is so good at embodying the horrible complexities of the choices people make in the worst of situations, that good and bad and divine and evil and just plain personness can all reside in one being. Also it’s about a dragon society and the revolutionary humans who tried to make everyone into dragons, and also about parent-child relationships, and also about a bunch of other things. God it’s good.

8. Obsolesce - Nadine Aurora Tabing Is it really me if I don’t have at least ONE story about robots in my rec lists? (actually I just went back and checked and in multiple previous years I inexplicably didn’t, maybe it wasn’t me writing the reclist in those years lol) ANYWAY who wants to have sad feelings about robots again! I know I always do! In a world where anyone who has a physical body instead of having their consciousness transferred is more and more obsolete, no matter if your body is human or robot, what do you hold onto? This one has a real good melancholy tone.

9. Letters from a Travelling Man - WJ Tattersdill ….does what it says on the tin. Letters to a dear friend, from a man travelling for the first time to the unfamiliar part of the world that friend comes from. I love the sense of place you get from the letters, as well as the deep and abiding importance of this friendship in both their lives. Another one I cried over!

10. Texts from the Ghost War - Alex Yuschik Another epistolary one, but this time in text messages instead of letters, and between characters who start the story antagonistically! About mech pilots in a ghost war, and making connections, and finding things to care about, even when stuff sucks. I love them!! (also, I am inescapably me, whoops, it took me until I read some fanfic of this story to realize that almost certainly the story was meant to be canonically shipping the two leads, I never notice romance unless there’s anvil-sized indications.) Anyway this is a really good story!

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Mäster Mikaels Street  12 ,  Södermalm, Stockholm   -  Tomas Mandel 

Swedish, b. 1923 -

Oil on canvas ,  60x50 cm

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“But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.”

-Franz Kafka

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Maggie Nelson, Bluets

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"be not afraid"

demanding

you have no right to control another person's feelings

does not provide a productive alternative

"when you hide behind that rock I feel as though you don't appreciate the fact that I came all this way to deliver the word of god"

statement of fact

not pushy

opens conversation to productive compromise

emotionally aware