swimmer

http://iraffiruse.net/post/115061173232

luh this so much

2001. Stefani. Eve. Mmph.

the luxury of Reacher

I started a new Reacher novel the other day. For me, luxury is having a stack of unread mystery novels at hand. Fiction leaves me kind of meh these days--mostly because I'm not quite sure who to read and I'm tired of self-conscious New Yorker/MFA prose.
However. Lee Child's Reacher series never fails to thrill. The main character is a brawny, six-and-a-half foot tall ex-MP roaming around the USA righting wrongs, mostly with his bare hands and his wits. The stories are funny and amazingly detailed. You know how Reacher makes decisions and why and as a reader you're on edge until the last page. No data dumps at the end, no wild explanations, and almost never a happy ending for the occasional woman who crosses his path.
Starting a Reacher novel is bittersweet, as I'm already regretting how soon I'll finish it. The last one I read almost made me miss a bus! I was so engrossed in the story that the Metro bus pulled up to my stop and sat there, door open, the driver peering out at me until I came to, folded over the page to mark my spot, and hopped on.

todays jam

Mein Gott, how I love this woman.
(And the html width from Youtube to embed the image was 420, hah.)

bender

things are happening if you only look and see

Yesterday I noticed the same guy walking back and forth in the alley behind my apartment building. Five or six buildings share the same back alley/refuse bin/garage entrance/parking lot, so there's a lot of coming and going. This guy was tall and thin, with a weathered complexion and a straggly reddish beard. His clothes hung off him as though they were too big or he was too skinny, or maybe both. He walked like someone with nowhere to go, and the usual alley traffic carried on past him--three guys searching a dumpster, cars entering the condo building's below-ground parking garage, smokers hanging out by the recycling bins, an elderly man cutting through en route to the senior housing nearby. No one spoke to the guy, even when he stopped directly behind my building, stared at the trash bin and spoke to it for awhile. I watched, a little worried at first, but all he did was pace up and down the alley, and eventually he walked out of view, and did not reappear.

*

Today I came around the corner to the Fortress of Solitude and here was a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen, in baggy basketball shorts, trying the door of the office next to mine. He punched in the code--it's a conference room--and I wondered what kind of meeting this kid was in. He was still attempting to punch in the code when I stepped out to refill my water bottle. By the time I came back, he was slumped in the chair opposite the shrink's office at the end of the hall, which was presumably where he was supposed to have been the whole time.

*

I bought a ring today, at the Atlas vintage mall for six dollars. It reminded me of the Chanel camellia ring, also pictured above. I'll let you deduce which is which.

the struggle it is real

Last week's Free Will Astrology brought me to tears. I read it in the back of The Stranger, on the bus home. What do my heart and soul have to tell me? I'm doing a pretty good job of tuning them out.
*
Right next to my keyboard at work, I keep 3 things: an acorn, a tiny gold buddha, and a paper on which I wrote, "is it true? is it necessary? is it kind?"

nix

Nothing to say, nowhere to say it.