There are several things about Timber Lanes in North Center that you can’t beat. They include:
Agnes Richter was institutionalized in Germany in 1893 when she was 49 years old. She pieced together this jacket during her time in the asylum using materials on-hand, like linens, wool, and thread, likely from her work as a seamstress in the institution. The embroidery is worn down and sweat stains abound, but some of the writing can still be read in deutsche schrift, a German script that’s nearly obsolete. Some of the phrases historians have deciphered: “I am not big,” “I plunge headlong into disaster,” and “583m,” her case number. Read more here.
If we’re to believe some very trustworthy readers on Instagram (we are), this novel about how the AIDs epidemic changed 1980s Chicago is one of the best books of the year. The National Book Awards agree: “The Great Believers” was tapped last week for the fiction longlist. I’m especially excited to read it because the author, Rebecca Makkai, is a leader of the Chicago literary scene and creative director of Story Studio in Ravenswood. It’ll be fun to dive into 1980s Chicago from the comfort of 2018 Chicago. I think. <reads news and shivers>
Speaking of Story Studio, I attended its Writer’s Festival at the end of September and took a class about flash fiction taught by this author, Juan Martinez. We read some Kafka and I fell in love with reading all over again (I mean, that’s not hard to do, but I had never really read flash fiction before, and this crash course was like finding a tattooed new crush hanging out in the library). “Best Worst American” is a compilation of Martinez’s best flash fiction and short stories.
This novel follows the story of Hildy Good, a hilarious recovering alcoholic who has some secrets in her cellar. Ann Leary (NPR host and Denis Leary’s wife) has struggled with alcoholism herself, and it shows. I mean that in the best way possible. She writes about the experience of alcoholism with a brutally real but empathetic truth that reminded me of how terrifying addiction is when you live in its never-ending dirty cycle. To see yourself on a page, to be seen, is always cathartic. Even when it’s not the you that you want to be reminded of.
Jordan Peterson is a therapist, thinker, and, I’d argue, philosopher who is reviled by the left. However, he has some very interesting things to say in terms of finding your own personal worth and creating a mindset that helps you not only survive the chaos of daily life, but thrive in it. Rule number one, for example, is to “stand up straight with your shoulders back.” This isn’t a power move or a threatening stance, he says, but one that helps you “stand the hell up, with courage, and take it.”
Krasikov’s short story is a refreshingly nuanced take on the complicated realities of the #metoo movement and issues of power.
Swoon, Zadie Smith always nails it, now more than ever. Don’t miss this controversial short story about the cultural heat wave to fall in line with the progressive opinions du jour.
“I instinctively sympathize with the guilty. That’s my guilty secret.”
Puppies at brunch show off for bacon.
A boy, beautiful nose, bleached hair, skates by. Stops. Waits.
“Can I bum a cigarette?”
“Do you smoke while you roller blade?”
“Yes!”
Then, “Parliments. My favorite.”
A man, stinking clothes unwashed, rests by the fence framing the McDonald’s.
Then, “youlookbeautifultoday.”
Bikers chase cars. Cars chase time. Time chases all.
Children in wagons bump over the sidewalk, pinch the sunshine with their curious eyes.
Another man, laying on a bench in the park, streams “Big Shot” by Billy Joel from his phone and sings along. Beside him, his bald baby, rapt, watching.
Language can only convey so much. Sometimes it does just fine.
I rely on Justin to keep me musically relevant and he played this song for me last night on our drive home from Denny’s (home of the 11:30 pm breakfast-skillet-sanity-saver). Eminem is a genius. His syncopation, cadence, rhyme, and god-like wit are on full display in this song. What a fucking writer.
We finally finished the last season of “Dawson’s Creek” on Hulu following a binge of all the seasons. It was my first time watching any of it, but I knew (because I didn’t live under a rock in the early 2000s like I kind of do now) that Pacey gets the gal and Jen bites the dust.
That said, I think I would have cried at poor, lovely Jen’s death regardless, but goosebumps? That was courtesy how subtly, reverently they shot this. I love the choice to make the scene include only Jen and Grams in the room; a nod to the special relationship these two share and how, I think, Grams is really Jen’s soulmate, not Jack.
One final breath and a peaceful farewell while Grams is sleeping. It’s so soft, that goodbye from Jen. We don’t get to see her face full on through most of the scene, graciously giving us one last chance to see life from Jen’s perspective. And of course Grams knows immediately that Jen has died. Grams always knows. Grams carries Jennifer in her heart. “I’ll see you soon, child.” So gentle and loving a send off. So perfect for these two.
Bravo, 20 years later. Holds up.
In an attempt to get as much out of our Movie Passes as possible before it goes popcorn-stuffed-belly up, we’ve been seeing a lot of movies lately, including “McQueen,” the visual feasty documentary about poor English boy turned fashion world icon Alexander McQueen.
1) Yes, go see it. 2) Justin and I both were a bit surprised when I reacted so physically to the robot dress scene from his 1999 runway show. I started CRYING and, of course, had the aforementioned goosebumps. It was surprising because there was no real lead-up to this footage; it wasn’t supposed to be this super emotional moment. But it was for me and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
Here’s what I’ve landed on: This robot spray paint dress finale happened in the midst of the Y2K scare, thus, everyone kind of saw these robots as menacing the model and destroying her virginal gown. But when I watched it, I thought it was so hopeful! The robots dance with the model, learn to move with her and try to learn her language, and then they add something to her experience. Sure, what they do to her dress is messy and has an underlying violence to it, but I see in this choice McQueen’s optimism, his openness, his ability to find something beautiful in the darkest places. Contrast that with his last runway show, “Plato’s Atlantis,” right before his suicide in 2010. The “robots” of that famous show were cameras that moved in front of the audience and in front of the models; watching, waiting, judging with a lens. In those robots, the violence was clear, the battle lines drawn, the hope gone. We should have known then the tragedy to come.
And finally, Keyboard Cat. I love this shelter ad almost as much as I love Keyboard Cat’s face during the coda.
Listen here. Go see the movie, too! So absurd. So perfect.
I finally caught up on the latest season (it came out last December). Despite the novel-esque length of each episode, I finished it in two days because I’m obsessed with all these characters (once, of course, I remember they exist in my magic TV box and are poised for viewing pleasure).
Anyway, this scene, where our fave anti-hero goes on a vacation only to find rest does not suit him or his repressed PTSD/ anxiety/ depression/ devils, gave me goosebumps. It’s set to Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song,” which is perfectly haunting for a clip of man left alone with nothing but his terrible thoughts.
One line, though, is what really did me in. When Tommy’s housekeeper asks him if he’s alright, says he doesn’t look good, Tommy responds: “I know what this is. It’s just myself talking to myself about myself.” Never have I heard a more perfect description of the downward spiral.
So, Radiohead for the mental wounds, these cute lil guys for the physical ones. The limited edition line is sold at Target and features the colorful work of one of my favorite design bloggers, Oh Joy!
Perfect for melty hot days, when you need a pop of color that won’t dry out. It looks much more natural than a lipstick and keeps your kisser smooth. More color ways here.
This new novelty shop opened earlier this month. I tried the stick-ified peanut butter ice cream dipped in chocolate and crushed potato chips. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds.
Go follow @smallditch on Instagram to see the most adorable and clever reinterpretations of found nature into fashion shots. (Thanks, Jealous Curator, as always, for the hookup.)
I prescribe one viewing each morning. To be watched as many times as necessary.
I have bookmarked this speech ECS gave at the Committee of the Judiciary of the US Congress on January 18, 1892. I find it most useful during, of all things, my super-blue days. Her wisdom and identification about the realities of the solitude of self, and her unintentional reminder that I am capable and free to help myself (a privilege people like ECS fought hard for) help pull me out of the black holes that are my bad days. I recently re-read the speech and thought I’d share some of my favorite parts. Read the full text here, you sweet-beautiful-captain-of-your-own-ship.
“In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.”
“…as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same—individual happiness and development.”
“The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.”
“The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.”
“No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation.”
“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.”
“In youth our most bitter disappointment, our brightest hopes and ambitions are known only to ourselves; even our friendship and love we never fully share with another; there is something of every passion in every situation we conceal. Even so in our triumphs and our defeats.”
“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands.”
“The young wife and mother, at the head of some establishment with a kind husband to shield her from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety, secure against the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a desirable influence in society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all this she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most successful statesman possesses.”
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and position.”
“The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer.”
“Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman, it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.”
“But when all artificial trammels are removed, and women are recognized as individuals, responsible for their own environments, thoroughly educated for all positions in life they may be called to fill; with all the resources in themselves that liberal thought and broad culture can give; guided by their own conscience and judgment; trained to self-protection by a healthy development of the muscular system and skill in the use of weapons of defense, and stimulated to self-support by a knowledge of the business world and the pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever give; when women are trained in this way they will, in a measure, be fitted for those hours of solitude that come alike to all, whether prepared or otherwise.”
“The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties and pleasures is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone.”
“We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul we see the need of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.”
