> In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, ‘Kayf haal-ik?’ or, in Persian, ‘Haal-e shomaa chetoreh?’ How is your haal? > What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In…
“Each of us needs something of an island in his life—if not an actual island, at least some place, or space in time, in which to be himself, free to cultivate his differences from others.” — John Keats, Of Time and an Island via Book Mania [http://bookmania.me/post/…
Over at The Atlantic, Juliet Lapidos says she finishes every novel she starts to read [http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/stop-making-excuses-and-finish-that-book/381795/?single_page=true] and takes on The Rule of Fifty [https://mikeschultz.ghost.io/tag/rule-of-fifty/] > “The most common defense of book-dropping I hear…
Don’t just do something. Sit there. —Saying in Kyoto cited in a perceptive and beautiful essay on Pico Iyer's new The Art of Stilness [http://ideas.ted.com/2014/11/04/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/]. I love it that the essay ends citing Emily Dickinson— Some keep the Sabbath going…
> “With the rise of print culture...Americans endowed handwriting w/ greater symbolic meaning.” http://t.co/5kUCgE0u7g pic.twitter.com/SOM2u1BDKZ [http://t.co/SOM2u1BDKZ] — Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) November 5, 2014 [https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/530098089097711616]…
> Cool marginalia! MT @Lit_Books [https://twitter.com/Lit_Books]: Allen Ginsberg’s annotated copy of T.S.Eliot’s “The Waste Land” pic.twitter.com/9BGL5YxITO [http://t.co/9BGL5YxITO] — Souri S (@_unesouris) November 5, 2014 [https://twitter.com/_unesouris/status/530102655423901696]…
The Paris Review [http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/11/04/william-carlos-williamss-election-day/] shocked me into another kind of appreciation for election day by offering this 1941 poem by William Carlos Williams. > Warm sun, quiet air an old man sits > in the doorway of a broken house— boards for…
Dissapointing that the Washington Post's article on the Philadelphia Orchestra's use of the mobile app LiveNote [http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2014/10/29/b162aff2-5dc4-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html] to enhance user experience at performances doesn't seem to have attracted much attention from readers or local…