What happens if you fall in love with a writer? »
Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash you pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. It’s an unpredictable life.
But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?
This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind.
If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.
(via carnivaloftherandom)
Quietly, U.S. Moves to Block Lawsuits by Military Families
While public officials are out waving the flag toward these families, federal lawyers in court are now quietly trying to expand the U.S. government’s legal immunity from exposure to medical malpractice claims brought by those very same military folks. Now, the feds want the courts to recognize a bold application of an old doctrine — an already heavily criticized old doctrine — that would bar many plaintiffs, whose loved ones serve their country, from exercising the right merely to be able to present the substance of their claims at trial. Read more.
Image: Reuters
Salvador Dali, Advice From a Caterpillar, 1969. Courtesy of William Bennett Gallery (Flavorwire)
1969
(Source: 20thcenturypix)
"These (GOP) debates… they have jumped the shark. Because last night — I swear to God — the Republicans talked about three things: deporting Mexican grandmothers; building a colony on the Moon that could become the 51st state; and how Obama is out of touch."
— BILL MAHER, Real Time (via inothernews)
"I think (African-Americans) would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."
—
New Jersey governor and Republican darling CHRIS CHRISTIE, who is pushing for a voter referendum on marriage equality in his state rather than take up the issue in the Legislature.
Yes, because in those good old days, a referendum was a realistic option for African-Americans, you fucking idiot.
(Source: inothernews)
