Personal-related Parries
December 2008
Short-circuiting Place-based Longing
If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.
January 2008
The Small Adventures - Part 2
There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a creme brulee. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up sitting there alone on my travels.
October 2007
Jam and bread, Jam and bread, Jam and bread!
In retrospect, my dog Maddie had a simpler life; the big adventures of uprooting only came in the last year of her life, whereas her offspring Jam has spent over a third of hers here in Italy, with her fixtures — first Maddie and then me — falling away.
September 2007
The Big and Easy
The moon is shining through these tropical September clouds, directly above a neighbor’s palm tree, and it’s completely full. An airplane is landing at a nearby airfield. I ramble, unable to reach what I mean, perhaps because what I mean is an almost meaningless jumble of contradictory thoughts that are less thoughts than incomplete attempts to label fleeting tumbling emotions.
August 2007
A Drop in Time
To have a camera back again a personal epoch later feels like a time machine squared. Your chronicling device — itself a time machine of sorts — is suddenly back to what it was years ago, before much was changed, which in itself somewhat returns you to those times.
Sauna Losing Heat
Rather than reaching the heights, to exciting thoughts and feelings, I tend increasingly in the sauna to just sit and think about the work I’ve just done and the work I’m about to do after. Something’s missing.
May 2007
My City to Your City
A bunch of loud white kids came running down from the promenade shouting vilely to each other. I was reminded of El Topo (we saw it yesterday at the fabulous Duke of York cinema) and I was reminded of the scene when the three bandits gradually build up their cackling harassment of the man in black as he rides into their valley.
February 2007
Fat and Foecal
We defaecate into convenient porcelein pools of water, and with a pull of a chain the mess is gone. Yet if it were not gone so quickly and easily, might we be a bit more circumspect about what we eat?
We’ll Always Have Parries
James Lileks is celebrating ten years of The Bleat, a web site about nothing updated five days a week without fail by one person. Now, I can do that. [Formerly title “A Quitter Never Celebrates”.]
December 2002
The Prejudice that Dare Not Speak its (Short) Name
I could treat being short as my own personal deformity, something with which I can help others appreciate their own good fortune. Alternatively, perhaps it is best to completely ignore the issue and keep it trivialized.
Personal-related Photos
No Latmag on Personal
And on the Trail
Wed 4 Jan ’12
Some probabilistic, and in restrospect kind of obvious, methods for seeing who in Facebook is interested in you. Here’s looking at you, XXX.
Wed 28 Dec ’11
There’s a name for something I’ve always wanted to do and lacked the gumption and follow-through and doubted it: Radical Honesty. The FAQ.
Thu 18 Aug ’11
I’m a believer — decision fatigue.
Mon 8 Aug ’11
“Gutted” by Steven Shapin in the London Review of Books is a wonderful tour of the boyn (“the burn”) which unfortunately is interesting and relevant to me.
Thu 13 Jan ’11
Tue 6 Jul ’10
Lee as one of the SC Wholly Rollers opening for the Blues Traveler with Sista Otis in Myrtle Beach.