Jamie told me she liked Nick last night. Went to bed at about 8PM. Too many thoughts to be up thinking about. Not going to eat until tomorrow night. One day fast for Jamie broken heart. Not too serious. Like I told Nick, I think I was move in love with the thought of a girl liking me more than Jamie herself. Maybe, it will always be that way.

Also, Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” but good luck finding a Youtube video of a Prince song.

It’s the moment when someone kisses you, and you wish they didn’t. And when you stay with someone just because you’re scared of what it would be like not to. And when you fall for someone because they will “solve all your problems.” It’s the idea that you have to be with someone and that it has to be in a certain way. That’s as far as I’ve made it. – Jens Lekman

Via Interview Magazine.

It is in the poutine shop that Benoît meets most of the girls he takes out, and he has come to believe that some stray voltage, still floating in the air after the experience of eating, more or less explains why these girls usually agree to go out with him at all.  That and the fact that he looks, despite his best efforts, sweet—he still has the curly, dark blond hair that always got him cast as saints and angels in school plays—and that he takes the time to ask them. Most boys his age don’t ask girls out on dates anymore.  They smile and joke and insinuate and wait for them to do all the work.  Mostly, he thinks, girls just want to be asked.  And they feel a little sorry for him because of his face. - Sarah Marshall, “Notre Dame Des Patates,”

The rest is over at Hayden’s Ferry Review and it’s really good. Also, Ms. Marshall blogs here, if you’re into blogging.

Gerti looks lovely, sitting there with her breasts all blue. Well, not actually her breasts, of course, only the dress over them, but she always looks as if she doesn’t have anything on. – After Midnight, Irmgard Keun

The novel is a bit more serious than the above quote. But, it’s a pretty selection all the same.

What’s your biggest procrastination tool? Or are you a freak who never procrastinates? – Brooklyn Magazine

If I can look at clothes online, I will. Or Twitter. Twitter is the worst. Because around you people are posting interesting links, etc, about Pussy Riot’s trial, or Syria, or Romney’s latest gaffe, and you can look at your poem or fiction and think, ‘What does this do for the world?’ – Meghan O’Rourke

You can read the rest of O’Rourke’s answers, along with other Brooklyn writers, here.

Via CANADA

….This idea where you make up your own entertainment, your own activities, I think it was really intense on us, you know, this whole idea of DIY and stuff. I guess there’s a debate over this, you know, you want things for young people to do so that don’t want get in gangs and trouble like this.  But if things are too set up and stuff you end up…creating an army of robots anyway, you know. There comes a period when you gunna have come out and do things, become your own person. Pick your own friends. Your own guys you wanna, you know, build dreams with... – Mike Watt

Start at 1:25:30 and watch Minutemen sing about it here. Or you can start at the beginning and watch the whole documentary on the band. It’s called We Jam Econo and it’s pretty great.

I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, ‘Those guys aren’t so tough! They’re eating ice cream, what a bunch of swell guys.’ Oh don’t you deny it, you were eating an ice cream cone. You were eating an ice cream cone. Oh you’re bad now, you’re bad now, but you were eating an ice cream cone, and I saw you. That’s the shit you can’t hide. You eat ice cream. – Ian Mackaye

The lead singer of Fugazi spoke those words after spotting a man in the crowd being rough with other concertgoers. And it just so happened to be the same person he saw earlier eating ice cream.  You can hear it here, a 45 minute track of Fugazi crowd banter complied by Chunklet. It’s also within Instrumental, the documentary on the band.

It was about ten years that I used to listen to that song on repeat and hold back the unrequited tears. Now, all this time later, I can listen to it and just enjoy, even smirk. And I suppose there’s an analogy to be made there, how there’s a similar evolution in how I now relate to the quoted ten sentences below, all of which are, word for word, sentences I received as someone’s last goodbye.

Goodbyes, they’re often not planned, and so I suppose that’s why they can come off so awkwardly, or, as you’ll see below, oddly funny, or, at others, hurtful. But, what’s even funnier still, is that each person below probably wasn’t trying to be hurtful. In some cases, they probably thought they were being as nice as anyone could be.  Interesting then, how our intentions can be so pure, but, if they don’t match the expectations of someone else, they can be, at the same time, the most hollow things in the world.

Anyway, good luck.  I’m back to work.

Well, we can talk about your questions if you want.  But not right at this moment because I have to go eat.

Heya, yeah, I think you shouldn’t count on my eggs. You might rather consider other protein sources…

Do you happen to have a copy of my old profile? I have a friend who wants to make one and see mine as an example, but I deleted pretty much everything

I do, however, think you’re a fun guy, and would be down to hang out as friends in the future.

I’m just looking for someone who’s settled in their life and no longer ‘yearning.’

I’m still hung up on the guy from Boston & I’m apparently not ready to date quite yet

I hope you find what you’re looking for!

Hope you’re doing great!

I’m sorry, Jeffrey… I just don’t want to have any more contact with you.

Surprised? Of course I was surprised. You go out with a girl. First date, second date, a restaurant here, a movie there, always just matinees. You start sleeping together, the sex is dynamite, and pretty soon there’s feeling too. And then, one day, she arrives all weepy, and you hug her and tell her to take it easy, that everything’s okay, and she says she can’t stand it anymore, she has this secret, not just a secret, something really awful, a curse, something she’s been wanting to tell you the whole time but she didn’t have the guts. This thing, it’s been weighing down on her like a ton of bricks, and now she’s got to tell you, she’s simply got to, but she knows that as soon as she does, you’ll leave her, and you’d be absolutely right too. And right after that, she starts crying all over again. – Etgar Keret, “Fatso”

You can read the rest of it here. Or, you can watch the author read it here.  Highly recommended.

Well, with this email, it wasn’t like love lurked between the two people who’d sent and received it. We’d only been one date and no marriage vows had been exchanged. But, the date had gone very well, I thought. And, I really did think, we would see each other again. I’m not a complete idiot with these things. If you’d have been there, I really have to think you’d have thought the same.  And though we never did see each other again, I would, almost two months after not hearing from her, receive this…

…So please dont feel ive written you off just becasue I havent written or called or texted for a month. Thats just me…

“And when it comes your turn to speak before the crowd. Tell them about the time we did it. On the beach with fireworks above us…Also tell them about how I gave to charity. And tried to love my fellow man as best I could. But most of all don’t forget about the time on the beach. With fireworks above us” – Bill Callaghan

That was the first time. Then there was the next time, when I saw the topless woman and Megan and I took a swim in the cold water then lay out on the beach and she wore her bikini.  I try to play it back now, her athletic fullness, its healthy sway, the way her cheeks came out of her suit.  I can’t even begin to imagine there’s a man somewhere who’s allowed to be near it.  Though I try not to think of that, just as I try to think of every woman I’ve seen from that website and the parts they now let be spanked and rubbed and caressed.  That day, I was very near Megan’s backside. The shade of the trees crept in on us on the sand. Music played from her phone. Her towel was beneath her and her cheek rested on clean terrycloth as I worked the kinks inside the strong muscles along her shoulder blades.

“You’re going to make me fall asleep,” she said as I kneaded up her neck and under her spiky, messy, short hair. It reached the end of the day then and I thought, very specifically, there’ll never be a time when I’m anxious with her. I’ll be rubbing her back when we’re old, even when it’s not as beautiful, scars and moles and wrinkles, I’ll rub her back and I’ll love it still because it will be her back. – Jeffrey Ellinger

…I’ve been nothing but trouble. Admittedly, internet games run amok have a wry way of sneaking into real life. And I felt silly sitting there thinking ‘what a shame’ since we’d have to go to so much trouble to avoid each other in such small circles. In any case, you did a good job reading. I felt a bit robotic. Poised is a nice compliment, I’ll take it.

Here is the thing: as much as I might seem any number of untrue things in light of my actions, I have not been very honest or forthright. I will try to be right now. I leave for AWP next week and am running myself ragged trying to fit it all in before then. As you have probably seen/investigated, a friend and I are getting a lit mag off the ground on top of several other projects that I have to wrestle with each day. I am also highly susceptible to distraction, especially of the social kind. Maybe this will appear just another one of many excuses. In any case, what I am trying to say is that I am finding myself with not a lot of free time, especially this week/next and thus can’t commit to anything until I get back and figure out where I am. A long explanation yes. But I am not one for games and wanted you to know that I was not jerking you around simply for some immature pleasure. I’ve just gotten a bit ahead of myself recently and there you have it.

You should say hi. I should say hi. I know you were at the (redacted name) reading. Why not then?

(First initial redacted)

Yes, you should date an illiterate girl.

Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream. - Ingmar Bergman

I love what he says around 1:45

…it’s impossible to pass on experience or learn from others. We must live our own experience, we cannot inherent it. People often say: use your fathers’ experience! Too easy: each of us must get his own. But once we’ve got it, we no longer have time to use it. And the new generations rightly refuse to listen to it : they want to live but then they also die. This is the law of life, its real meaning.  We cannot impose our experience on other people or force them to feel suggested emotions. Only through personal experience we understand life. - Andrei Tarkovsky

It was a kind of permit that she was giving herself – a permit to feel completely unhampered in her escapades. And she proceeded to make free and frequent use of it. Whenever she felt like seeing Leon, she would go off, using any excuse that came to mind; and since he wouldn’t be expecting her that day, she would call for him at his office.

It was all very joyous, the first few times. But before long he stopped hiding the truth from her: his employer was complaining loudly of these incursions.

“Bah!” she said. “Come along.”

And he slipped out.

She demanded that he dress entirely in black and grow a little pointed beard, to make himself look like the portraits of Lious XIII.  She asked to see his rooms, and found them very so-so; he reddened at that, but she didn’t notice, and advised him to buy curtains like hers. When he objected to the expense:

“Ah! So you pinch your pennies!” she said, laughing.

Each time, Leon had to tell her everything he had done since their last rendezvous. She asked for a poem, a poem for herself, a love piece written in her honor: he could never find a rhyme for the second line, and ended up copying a sonnet from a keepsake.

He did that less out of vanity than out of a desire to please her. He never disputed any of her ideas; he fell in with all her tastes: he was becoming her mistress, far more than she was his.  Her sweet words and her kisses swept away his soul. Her depravity was so deep and so dissembled as to be almost intangible: where could she have learned it? – Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary