soopastryheart

Writing is hard. And stupid. And everything you write is probably stupid too. But you do it anyway, just in case a tiny paragraph in a book resonates, even in the most microscopic amounts, with a struggling writer who spends her days with her forehead on her desk hoping for her writing to stop sucking.

“Unfortunately my brain made its usual pilgrimage to the mysterious land where language dies. My imagination was impenetrably dark, boarded up. The ideas remained inexpressible, penumbral. I had linguistic thrombosis, my textual flow impeded by the narrowing of some creative vessel. I sat simpering at the desk, and thought: You fucker, you failed to cannibalize drug deals, corruption, murdered nurses, domestic disputes, drowned children, hit-and-runs, and now you can’t even fashion a decent story out of your wife’s sadism. You’re done. I poured 330 milliliters of Heineken on the keyboard until the screen went green. I had been dodging success with drone-like precision for nearly two decades. That’s it, I concluded. It’s finished. Seems persistence wasn’t the key after all.” 

– excerpt from Quicksand by Steve Toltz, the second book from the author of my favorite book of all-time, A Fraction of the Whole.

Yes, it’s insanely ubiquitous, from weddings to funerals, and everything and anything in between. But I’ll be damned if it still wasn’t one of my favorites.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

– i carry your heart with me (i carry it in, by E.E. Cummings

Like most, I watched and read a lot of the coverage on last week’s historic SCOTUS ruling. And while it was truly beautiful seeing everyone’s reactions and celebrations (both gay and straight), it was this 2013 New Yorker cover that I found most poignant.

July 2013 cover of the New Yorker

#LoveWins

I was proofing personal statements before I had received my official acceptance letter from the UW. Then I found myself making a little allowance money when college students, bogged down from graduate school applications, were paying me to edit theirs. So between writing my own essays, to reviewing nearly 50 others, I definitely picked up on the nuances of college application essays. Like, the major themes people liked to focus on, the super common mistakes that were made for the sake of “uniqueness,” and the outrageous levels of self-absorption contained in 700 words or less.

“From my earliest childhood, all I’ve ever wanted was to attend either an Ivy League school, a still respectably expensive party school, or a so-called safety school, where the standards are so low that I’d be a shoo-in, and which my parents could tell their friends was “a better fit.” Although, of course, as a biracial child, I wasn’t sure if higher education would even be an option for me. And, when I say biracial, I mean that my father went to Harvard and my mother attended Oberlin. When I was young, this situation tore me apart, because I never knew which world I belonged in. Should I follow my dad and become hugely successful and condescending to everyone, or should I dream of becoming every bit as creative yet talentless as my mom? I still don’t know the answer, but maybe not knowing is my greatest strength.”

–excerpt from Paul Rudnick’s “College-Application Essay” in the most recent New Yorker.

A virtual vault of words expressing the love two people had for each other. Beautiful. Throw away the key.

“She lived on the 82nd floor of the Hancock Center and started sending me daily e-mails, even after we’d seen each other earlier the same evening. Her love letters were poetic, idealistic and often passionate. I responded as a man and a lover. As a newspaperman, I observed she never, ever, made a copy-reading error. I saved every one of her letters along with my own, and have them encrypted on my computer, locked inside a file where I can’t reach them because the program and the operating system are now 20 years out of date. But they’re in there. I’m not about to entrust them to anyone at the Apple Genius Counter.”

— excerpt from Roger Ebert’s Roger Loves Chaz, a recollection of the life he shared and endured with his wife.