Maybe Very Happy, by Jack Gilbert

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“After she died he was seized
by a great curiosity about what
it was like for her. Not that he
doubted how much she loved him.
But he knew there must have been
some things she had not liked.
So he went to her closest friend
and asked what she complained of.
“It’s all right,” he had to keep
saying, “I really won’t mind.”
Until the friend finally gave in.
“She said sometimes you made a noise
drinking your tea if it was very hot.””

-- Maybe Very Happy, by Jack Gilbert

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Buy Literary Jounrals from NewPages

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You can buy literary magazines and journals from NewPages new online store! What a great idea. I feel like it makes it easier to peruse different options without having to hop from website to website: could open up worlds for people looking for new options.

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Mark Garry Rainbows

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Mark Garry installs hundreds of threads just so: when the light hits them just right, the many strands create rainbows. There’s something about the meticulous nature of the project and the beautiful result – what if we engineered rainbows in each nook of a home? All that color .... 

I’m consistently impressed with artists’ logic: the initial idea and then to execute it. There’s such discipline and hard work involved.

More images and the rest of the story is available at My Modern Net.

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Obama & Omar

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President Obama says Omar is the best character from The Wire? 

Man with a moral code (albeit unconventional)? 

Man who unabashedly loves other men? "Man gotta have a code."

Defies stereotypes? Fearless Robin Hood of the hood?

Indeed.

Good job, Mr. President. 

Source = Grantland

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Staircase of Notes

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Stroll up those stairs & click those notes. 

(I just can't get over all of the color & all of those shapes & just what exists after the last step.)

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Faith47, Cape Town

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What I like about this Cape Town graffiti is not just the slope of the horse 

& the drip of paint but the words to the right: 

"I'm fond of you."

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Emily Dickinson "Forever is composed of nows"

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“Forever is composed of nows.”

- Emily Dickinson

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Nikki Giovanni

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She knows who she is because she knows who she isn't. -- Nikki Giovanni

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I wish you were here, dear

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I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.

Brodsky

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Self Portrait as Blizzard

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"Self Portrait as Blizzard" 

by Jennifer Yeatts

"...& you’ll love
the dumb, early dark harder than ever...."

Read the rest of the poem at Linebreak

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Gyote Cover: Somebody that I Used to Know

Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover) 

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness...." 

How could you not love the voices, the strumming, and this take on the Gotye song?  

Now you're just somebody that I used to know....

 

Boardwalk Empire: You Can't Be Half a Gangster

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Let’s see; let’s see! What do I do when the choke-hold of a to-do list gets to me? I start a new television show and dissolve into it.

This week’s choice: Boardwalk Empire. 

I didn’t like it all that much at first: felt like it might break my heart or disappoint. Been watching too much Mad Men & The Wire: is there any hope for these anti-heroes? 

& then I encounter two characters that I couldn’t quite shake. 

Margaret Rohan Schroeder is unforgettable and hooked me in right away. She is played well by by Kelly MacDonald: subservient to the times and bias towards her gender and immigrant status but with an independent and fierce streak (watch an early episode when she champions the woman’s right to vote to a Senator, and you can feel the spark behind the banter). 

Kelly MacDonald also played the unforgettable maid in Gosford Park (oh, Clive Owen, how you smolder). It’s no wonder she’s the voice of Pixar’s feminist spin on the princess tale (in one trailer, we see Merida literally rip her too-tight dress so she can win her own hand in marriage: let’s goooo). 

& then there is Jimmy Darmody: the kid who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, made it to Princeton, and then ran away fight a war (his personal demons as well as his country’s). I wouldn't give pretty-boy Michael Pitt a second look in real life, but he burns in Boardwalk Empire. 

Talk about an anti-hero: mother had him when she was 13, ruined by the war and dysfunction (“I am what time and circumstance made me”), smart but tortured. It’s a young Don Draper. The photographs won’t do him justice. You have to see him chew his jaw, hear the way he shapes stories, and watch the snap of violence that fills him.

His demons fill him, and yet there is kindness. The viewer should hate this murderer, but they can't help but root for him. 

& did I mention that I was both lured into The Wire & had to take a break because Season 4 hits too close to home? Well, one of my favorite characters is Omar: the Robin Hood of the streets of Baltimore who defines three-dimensional character (he’s openly gay, has a moral code – if less than traditional – and remains fiercely independent in a world run by crews and gangs). 

Well, he’s in Boardwalk Empire, and I dare you to try and look away in the scene where he talks about his father’s bookshelves (also, peep the bow-ties). 

The above characters hooked me into the show, and now it fills me. Comparisons to The Sopranos are unfair. For me, it's all about the characters. I can’t help but hope Margaret Schroeder makes it out alive. 

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