what he said

"...The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing."

This, and much more wisdom, belongs in a speech given by David Foster Wallace to a graduating class. That someone with so much to say, and that so many of us need to hear, is gone, is a tragedy for us all...

Call an old friend and tell them every tiny thing you remember about a day you spent together. Go on, dare you.

ode to my socks

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Originally uploaded by Nodoyuna

there is such a thing as having a talent for present giving. a kind, sweet, surprising man i know bought me new socks and gave them to me the day i left for a muddy festival in the country, with strict instructions not to put them on until the final day.

pablo, i get it...

Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

oh, now it all makes perfect sense

There’s little point even in attempting to shoehorn what follows into any kind of sensible diatribe.

Basically, when the inimitable Rach was without internet for a week, the resourceful scamp and her equally handy pals at Hi-ReS! decided to make their own internet, out of gifs, bits and pieces they had on their hard drives, and the cardboard toilet roll inners.

When they got the real internet back, they uploaded part of their homemade internet. Following? I had a play and ended up on the following screen.



And what follows is Rach’s oh-so-matter-of-fact explanation of the weirdness.



I think their internet is easily my favourite thing on the internet. Thank goodness for nonsense, weirdos and flashing gifs shouting ‘YEAH!”

the answer is simple.

"Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that."
- Michael Leunig