Sick of spelling February
10 things worth sharing this week
I was reading an old diary and this line made me laugh: “I’m sick of spelling February. Ready for March.” Here we are!
10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
For the 4th year in a row, writer Sam Anderson and I had a draw and chat to celebrate Michel de Montaigne’s birthday. Really fun conversation.
Another fun conversation with a writer I admire: I’m a guest on the latest episode of Michael Bungay Stanier’s Two Pages podcast. We went deep on some of my favorite topics, and I read from Lynda Barry’s What It Is, which is coming out in paperback for the first time this May.
Reading: Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, which was a weird novel before it was a weird movie. I love Gray’s work — check out the warning in this mural and the marvelous handwriting in a letter he wrote to Edward Carey.
Cory Doctorow’s “Memex Method” of making your commonplace book a public database, a.k.a. what it’s like to keep a blog over time, a.k.a. showing your work. A blog is such a beautiful thing: Ready for whatever you throw at it and revealing your obsessions and themes and patterns over time. (I’m delighted that my friend Mark Larson re-started his blog and look forward to his weekly updates.)
Maps of who lived when. I highly recommend making a stacked timeline like this by hand — you will learn so much.
A poem by Hafiz: “All I want to do / is get drunk with my wife…”
Simple objects that work as advertised: I ordered some of these cheap acrylic book stands to hold up “now playing” CDs and tapes by the stereo and display books on our bookshelves.
TV: “The low-key pleasures” of the Mr. and Mrs. Smith reboot, especially the score by composer David Fleming. If you liked Atlanta and The Americans, you’ll probably like this show.
Music: I like the “sorrow leavened by flashes of humour” in the latest Grandaddy record Blu Wave a lot, especially the pedal steel playing of Max Hart.
RIP Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle Owl whose exploits captivated and inspired so many of us. (“It takes a daily effort to be free.”) One of the things I loved about seeing photos and videos of majestic Flaco is how similar his behavior was to the tiny little Eastern Screech Owls I have in my back yard. There are owls on every continent except Antarctica, so chances are you have owls nearby! To honor Flaco’s memory, consider building an owl box in your backyard, make your outdoor lighting bird-friendly, learn about why birds hit windows, and remember that rat poison is owl poison.
Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who sent me recommendations for Palm Springs! Sorry I didn’t have time to write back to everybody — that’s the one downside to having a crew this large and wonderful…
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xoxo,
Austin
P.S. Enjoy this door papered with pages from Steal Like an Artist:
I'm not surprised to learn that you were following Flaco's story: that he learned to hunt for his own food after years of having food placed in his cage, that he kept his bearings among the trees around the park, and that he was alone -- no female of his breed within thousands of miles.
Being reminded of him this morning and re-experiencing tender heart, my thoughts went to another true story, known the world over, of the Akita dog Hachiko who greeted his master every afternoon at a Tokyo train station after his commute home from his job. One day his master didn't get off the train because he had died at work. The next day, and every day thereafter until his own death nine years later, Hachiko returned to the station expecting to see his master again.
Two creatures with whom we do not share a common form of communication -- what we call language -- and so we cannot know their hearts, demonstrate what appears to be courage in the unpredictable world that WE DO SHARE with them. In the words you quote from the NYT writer, "It takes a daily effort to be free." Hachiko is honored for his loyalty, but what I see is love: it takes a daily effort to love.
I'm sick of writing February too. ALL HAIL MARCH!