From Alison on one of my huevos rancheros experiments...

We were out for brunch and Andrew got the Huevos Rancheros. Half way through, he said “On a scale of 1 to Kate, I rate these a 7”.

you are screaming

your intentions

in a language I can’t decipher.

my dear heart’s lack of fluency in your tongue

is my weak shield for pretending not to understand.

not to understand what is obvious.

not to understand what I wish were otherwise.

not to understand what is not said in my language.

not to understand what you intend.

though, I know.

and so my shield is weak.

steven pinker on fate

An academic with an optimistic orientation is refreshing.

The fact that the balance can change (and, I argue, has changed) over time is perhaps the firmest ground for another shared conviction: that we are not helpless about our fate.

 - Steven Pinker, The New York Times

our ability to begin and to end something can both be hindered by fear.

elegant lovers

The man who delivers the Rumpus found the below quote from Jeannette Winterson. I like it.

Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wish consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.

size matters

the man who does not know the dimensions of his being can be unintentionally dangerous.

the impact of documentaries

of the many words that were strung together at lucy walker's presentation tonight on the power of documentaries the set I took away was this:

these forms of virtual reality [documentaries, etc.] can prompt people to take the perspective of people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy.

she seemed to be precise with words used on her slides. I found it interesting that she chose the expansion of sympathy as an impact of documentaries. I'm curious to explore this more - what value does sympathy have? perhaps the first stage of empathy?