reading
Adam’s Curse — William Butler Yeats
Everything worthwhile requires strife: demands ‘a measure of toil.’ Perhaps the most influential thing I read this month and one which I mention insufferably often now.
“I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.”
The Death of Ivan Ilyich — Leo Tolstoy
As someone who tends to assert the value of my life and the morality of my actions based on the opinions of others AND had appendicitis, I feel very seen by this book.
I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone — Richard Brautigan
Captures the personal, intimate ways of knowing someone and feeling indescribably about them and their complexity.
I was riding BART yesterday, people-watching. This couple sat silently next to each other, comfortably in the way that your partner, after so many years, blends into your days. I was struck by the fact that to each other their faces are mappable; in all expressions and all seasons they’ve known one another. And yet if I were to see them again on my commute today, I likely wouldn’t recognize them as the same pair. The slow, careful process of coming to know another person and to recognize, then love, then covet their features. It is the most beautiful thing to map memories onto a face you will remember always; to experience a flood of feeling at seeing the same features in a stranger. To see the hours and years behind their smile. To labor at it.
The Craftsman — Marcus B. Christian
In conversation about this poem:
“Do you think it’s possible to live forever through art?”
“No, but making art probably gets you closer to the thing that is forever”
Our Longing for Inconvenience — Hanif Abdurraqib
All things worth doing are hard to do! Namely love. Also Walkmans.
“It is inconvenient to be a person, floating through the grand and impossible world, significant in your own resplendent garden of hours but insignificant as a fleck of dust in the greater arc of the universe. It is, in some ways, inconvenient to believe that your one significant life can collide meaningfully with someone else’s, someone whom you have to put the work into finding, in the outside world, where people still sometimes go to the market, reaching and reaching and reaching.”
The Optimization Theory of Everything — theahura
Very good piece and framing broadly for why so much of the modern world sucks in a way that rhymes with why AI alignment is so tricky.
There Will Come Soft Rains — Ray Bradbury
Short story written in 1950 and set on August 4, 2026! That is when I read this!
The Blight — Emma Cline
An excerpt from Emma Cline’s new book. The last dinner between a daughter and her father who is, unbeknownst to her, on his way to Switzerland for the scheduled end of his life.
Tick Check — Michael Dickman
My time in Chicago has been riddled with ticks and the ensuing anxiety surrounding them.
Against Chill — Alana Massey
What if being vulnerable and loving radically was the real punk rock all along? Maybe it is scary and not socially rewarded, but maybe it is also the only thing worth doing! On dating and attempts at love behind the barrier of nonchalance.
watching
Magnolia — Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999
Chance & mistakes & love & forgiveness. Truly a sprawling epic of the random beautiful pain that it is to be human. What we owe to each other & how little the universe owes to us.
In the Mood for Love — Wong Kar-wai, 2000
Missed chances and poor timing. No amount of practice can prepare you for the real thing.
A particularly beautiful translation of the closing from reddit:
“Those vanished years of the past,
as if obstructed by an ashen glass window,
able to peer, yet unable to grasp.
He continually longs for everything past,
if only he could break through
that hazy glass between,
he could return to those long lost years”
Howl’s Moving Castle — Hayao Miyazaki, 2004
A heart is a heavy burden! Comfort watch.
Little Miss Sunshine — Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006
Watched at my first post-grad sleepover with a friend from college who now has a 3-bedroom home. We shared her king-sized bed instead of my staying in one of the guest rooms.
A dysfunctional family tries to roadtrip across the country to let little Olive compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Beautiful and funny and painful and heart-warming. No one gets what they want, but they all find something better. I love this movie.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day — Destin Daniel Cretton, 2026
Ya know what, yeah! This was quite good and I’m very glad I watched it. Is Marvel so back? Probably not. Am I kind of hyped for Doomsday? Yes, absolutely!
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender — Lauren Montgomery, 2026
I am an Avatar the Last Airbender super fan. The original series is lightning in a bottle and should not be touched or tarnished with any spin-off material. This sequel movie unfortunately proved me completely right. The writing, for an aged-up audience of once young fans, takes a massive step backwards in wit and complexity, which must say something sad about media literacy and the modern era or something.
listening
I Can’t Get My Head Around You — Billie Marten
Flume — Bon Iver
Grace — Jeff Buckley
take everything, it’s all yours — Asi Kemera, Heart, Heart
Rilkean Heart — Cocteau Twins
Haunted — Phoebe Bridgers
Futile Devices — Sufjan Stevens
Angeles — Elliot Smith
thinking
An absolute whirlwind of a month. It is strange to be back in a place you’ve said goodbye to. Back with new thoughts and ways of being. I feel quite changed from my three months away. This is maybe melodrama and it is quite possible that it won’t last. I hope that it does!
Some of these takes are heavily influenced by others I have shared this media with. Thank you for giving me your takes and graciously allowing me to integrate them in how I see these pieces (and parrot them here).
i love this!! what a good month!!