datebynumbers:
I have not been writing. I have been very, very busy not writing. I have been taking out the trash, washing the dishes, and painting my toes to dismal results. I took my hands hostage, forcing them into copying, printing, organizing, and whatever verb that could occupy them. I was updating my resume, my diet, my wardrobe, my life. I was breaking in new shoes and throwing out old bras, curating new playlists and burning old lyrics. I was packing and tossing and cycling and pacing and ignoring the boiling inside.
Life was settling into order, and there was one enormous, insurmountable problem: me.
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“Of course I wanted to be in love, of course I wanted to have someone light up my night in the darkest hours, of course, of course I did. But I wanted a novel, I wanted a story in motion, and I didn’t want that love to be the end of the story. I wanted him to be a character and I wanted our novels to crash together and rivet us. I wanted to be bewildered and have my breath stolen and the rug ripped out from under me and to read him top to bottom for the rest of time.”
thespacesamidlove asked: Why are you so fascinated with Lincoln?
Honestly, I think I’d have an easier time explaining why I’m less fascinated by just about anyone else in the world.
I just saw Spielberg’s Lincoln last night, and wow. It was the best dialogue I’ve “seen”/heard in a movie in ages. If Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t win an Oscar, I don’t know what is happening in life. About three or four times during the movie, I thought to myself, “Oh yeah, that’s Daniel Day-Lewis”. The rest of the time, I was completely convinced it was Abraham himself on screen. I don’t remember the last time I was so pulled in to a movie. Sally Field was great, James Spader was great, Lee Pace was great, and Joaquin Phoenix stole the whole show in my opinion. (Edit: That awesome actor is NOT Joaquin Phoenix, but holy cats does he ever look like him. Such a good acting job that he successfully convinced me that he was two different people!)
I couldn’t really imagine a life in which I watched that movie or read that story and wasn’t completed fascinated, but I think you’re rather referring to what I wrote about the book Lincoln’s Melancholy. Yeah, I really, really love that book. As interesting as Lincoln’s Presidency is, I believe his younger life and his road to the Presidency are even more interesting. I suppose most great leaders are fascinating enough, but I don’t know any whose flaws and idiosyncrasies are exposed as Lincoln’s are. He helped to save the most iconic democracy in the history of the world, but he was still so obviously human. He loved and he lost, in all senses of the word, from the loss of young love in the form of Ann Rutledge, all the way to the loss of his two sons. Everyone deals with heartbreak in their own way, but most leaders conceal their pain. I celebrate a man that not only wears every emotion on his face, but holds that head high in doing so, even if only due to uncommon height.
“ I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
— The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. an innocuous touch by someone just doing their job—a barber, yoga instructor or friendly waitress—that you enjoy more than you’d like to admit, a feeling of connection so stupefyingly simple that it cheapens the power of the written word, so that by the year 2025, aspiring novelists would be better off just giving people a hug.
