adward [photography // bikes]

adward is a photography student in taipei. much of his work centers around documenting the genius and hijinks of the nabiis cycling crew, but in between he finds time for hazy landscapes and urban minutia. he took my photo once. click the photos.

john cowper powys // bookride [writing // books // BABL]

what a history of human excesses a second-hand book-shop is! as you 'browse' there– personally i can't abide that word, for to my mind book-lovers are more like hawks and vultures than sheep, but of course if its use encourages poor devils to glance through books that they have no hope of buying, long may the word remain!–you seem to grow aware what a miracle it was when second-hand book-shops were first invented. women prefer libraries, free or otherwise, but it too often happens that the books an ordinary man wants are on the 'forbidden shelves'. but there is no censorship in a second-hand book-shop. every good bookseller is a multiple-personality, containing all the extremes of human feeling. he is an ascetic hermit, he is an erotic immoralist, he is a papist, he is a quaker, he is a communist, he is an anarchist, he is a savage iconoclast, he is a passionate worshipper of idols. though books, as milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical and wicked spirits! in books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind. [continue // part 2]

bookride is a blog dedicated to the noble pursuit of book collecting and all of the peculiar quirks thereof. not only do they offer thoughts and statistics on used and rare books, but they also often post various verbiage on books and book buying as a culture. the excerpt above is appropriated from an essay by "that gigantic mythopoeic literary volcano" john cowper powys.

tweed run // adam scott [photography // bikes]

adam scott's photography makes last month's tweed run in london look even more fetching. and you didn't think that possible. click for more.

smile

just a reminder.

made in thailand [music]

*disclaimer: appreciating that this blog is not a personal journal, and considering the difficulty i'm having trying to encompass the experiences i had on this trip, this will be my last post on anything vacation-related. if you're curious about the rest of the trip, by all means send me a message.

if you get to thailand any time in the fairly near future, keep an eye out for waifish grifters in nirvana and metallica t-shirts. you won't be long in looking. i can't say what, but something's got apathy and headbanging back in vogue in southeast asia. we first noticed the trend on our train ride from sungai kolok to hat yai - a few straggly teens in ragged 501s lounging at train stops and loitering on street corners - but the trend was true all the way to chiang mai. in koh phi phi we saw it get live.

the energy of koh phi phi, despite feeling at first ambiguous, is unmistakably omnipresent. the already small island feels all the more condensed because the majority of the livable area is a tiny isthmus that connects the mountains on either side. reflecting the necessary concentration, the streets teem with people at most hours and music, smells, and vacationers pour out of open store fronts in chaotic intervals. when evening descends on koh phi phi, the energy begins to coagulate, and it doesn't take long to realize that this is a place where growing-ups come for an E-induced latter day spring break. as the low pulses of house music begin to creep from the beach inland, bars begin filling with sunburned merrymakers swilling from buckets in which you mix your own fun. amid all this, i found myself drawn to the contrast of sounds and fluttering activity of one small alley where we found made in thailand - an all-thai four piece - ripping through a spot-on cover of ride the lightning. despite the reasonably early hour, the open-air bar, rolling stoned, was packed with an already-drunk, enthusiastically rowdy crowd rollicking in the revived youth of every nirvana and rage against the machine riff. made in thailand were mesmerizingly on point, and the crowd was fun galore. we stayed for the whole set.

angkor wat [places]

a foggy sense of trespassing accompanies investigation of the majesty and mystery of angkor wat's weathered beauty. the feeling i got standing on the sandblasted thresholds of so many long-abandoned miracles of human craft was something akin to equal parts A) being alone in a stranger's house, B) stepping into an exhibit at the museum of natural history, and C) being the first kid on the block to discover the rusted out oldsmobile in the creek down by the cemetery. after so many years of being told not to touch anything while being paraded around to appreciate history, art, and religion, it felt only natural to approach these ruins with a sense of apprehension. and despite being freely invited to poke our heads into so many nooks and crannies, it did feel somehow wrong that we should be traipsing in and out of these retired holies with such abandon. to that end, i found it both interesting and painfully frustrating to observe the ways in which people from different cultures approached and did or didn't revere the temples, but that's some cultural/anthro/socio blither to be had elsewhere. also on that tip, m put to words another feeling that had been puzzling me in those musty shadows: that despite all the visitors to angkor, it is rare that you don't feel mostly alone. with so many antechambers and interior rooms, there is always some marvel that you are allowed to find and appreciate - at least for a few seconds - without the shadow of some hawaiian-print-clad auteur looming.

my holga [photography]

days before our trip, i received word that my pocket camera was officially kaput. as luck and timing would have it, m arrived with a holga as my christmas gift. despite that a great number of photos from the early part of the trip didn't turn out, we still got some great shots from the holga. click the photo above. thanks to jeff for some light editing help.

travels

mauriah and i have only just returned from wanderings in malaysia, thailand, and cambodia. the following few posts will focus on parts of the trip; most of our pictures are here and here, and i'll be adding more soon (depending on when you get to this post). for now, here are some incomplete thoughts and notes that might otherwise not get mentioned in later posts.

- i will forever travel by train as often as it is a reasonable option for meeting my time and distance needs. standing, sitting, and sleeping while bumping through too-bright dusty afternoons was the best possible way to appreciate the landscape and people of these countries. if we had simply flown from singapore to kuala lumpur or phuket, for instance, we would never have known that - given the region - turbans, burqas, and cowboy hats are all perfectly acceptable forms of headwear in malaysia. nor would we have had any idea that due to recent political unrest in thailand, all trains are patrolled by uniformed guards carrying fully automatic weapons. nor would we have had the chance to wave to so many smiling kids, or be reminded of so many one-player childhood games, like racing the train on your bike.

- thailand is all it's cracked up to be. the sands are soft, the food is spicy, the pace of life (not including bangkok) is languid and smiling, and the islands rise in photoshopped greens and grays out of cellophane blue water. each island seems radiate its own mood. we stayed on pleasantly deserted koh lanta and touristy but singularly picaresque koh phi phi. chiang mai, in the north of thailand, is surely among the greatest cities in the world for wanderers. the local people are friendly and knowledgeable, and every turn of a corner offers temples, bookshops, shrines, and cafes, and the city limits never feel more than a 15 minute walk. many thanks to gabor for playing host and tourguide.

- despite all the words i could lay waste to lauding cambodia, there is no doing it justice. cambodia is a place that i would love to live - the style of living is simple, the mood is amiable, the food is fresh and delicious, and it is bike-friendly. the prevalence of reds, browns, oranges, umbers, saffrons and the like in the local color spectrum are all the more prevalent for their placement. palaces and temples gleam red, yellow, and gold; monks are draped in bright orange; the dust of unpaved roads varies between brick red and sienna; so many citrus fruits and curries of all hues. two of my favorite moments in cambodia were being invited to play in a local soccer match and seeing freshly slain hogs ferried on the back of motorbikes. how am i supposed to convey to you the baffled, happy moment in which, pedaling away from angkor wat in the late afternoon, we were overtaken by a handful of motorbikes each with between one and three full grown hogs on the back?

ask me about all this stuff the next time i see you, it'll sound better over a beer.

square america [photography]

all too often i stay up when stuffy old conventional thinking says i should be mostly supine and placidly catatonic. i don't know why, but it usually reveals something wonderful. in this case, the chance to look hopefully for cast-off photos of my teenage aunts in poodle skirts, my post-vietnam uncles smoking a reefer behind someone's garage, and other extant photos of my then-hippie dad at the tepee he lived in for a summer over at square america was glib accompaniment to the songs in my head.

back from vacation

i'm still getting my bearings, more soon...

PAUSE

i'm going to malaysia/thailand/cambodia, so the phone at sentencelessness will be left off the hook until february 5. thanks for stopping by. see you soon.

inauguration [photography]

advance inauguration links, most will be updating continuously. click each photo for a different link.

modern love [writing]

one random last-august afternoon i got on an uptown F train with a comely brown-eyed girl heading to some event i've now forgotten. we sat down on one orange seat and one yellow seat and held hands. after a stop or two, the elderly man in the seat perpendicular to mine cleared his throat and, when he had caught our eyes, asked if we were brother and sister. with equal parts sheepishness and brazen good humor, we clarified our situation. he seemed happier that it was our way and not his and told us we looked 'real happy together.' then, perhaps to fill the off-balance silence, he told me, 'she's a real pretty girl,' and quickly reaffirmed both his respect and his manhood, allowing, 'i don't mean nothin' by that.' she blushed. i blushed.
for the next who knows how long his watery blue eyes glistened as he told us about growing up in brooklyn, the travails of being a new york city cop, losing his wife, remarrying. incidentally, he happened to be returning from greenwood cemetery, visiting his first wife.
once on the topic of marriage he began to muse on the tragedy of love as a lost institution of our time - lamenting that so many divorce, are unhappy, or never marry, and that too many true loves are lost by chance or foolishness. he spoke about his first wife and his current wife in distinctly different tones, utilizing his old-timer's brooklynite logic and power of suggestion to convey more than he actually spelled out. clearly, he loved both women, but his two loves were as different and necessary as sugar and salt. he spoke of his first wife sweetly, tenderly, with twinges of heartbreak and fondness for familiar super8 memories; he made it clear that love was all they'd needed. he spoke of his current wife less delicately, but perhaps with a greater sense of her being his other half, as if the two relied on each other as partners, foils, lovers, friends. he secretly went to the cemetery every week while she was getting her hair done. 'she don't need to know. i think it'd only hurt her.'
we got off at the next stop.

i was reminded of that day reading the first installment of salon's new series american's talk about love.

...Going home one Sunday night, I go down on the subway and something happened that has never happened before -- ask any New Yorker, they'll agree with me -- there was nobody, I mean no single person on the subway platform.

It was maybe 10:30, 11 o'clock. The train comes, and again, nobody is on the train. Except for a woman sitting at the head of one of the cars. So being a young New York boy I get on the train, I walk the length of the train to where she's sitting, I sit down right next to her, pull out a book, and start reading. And I peruse the page, or a half-page, I turned to her and I said, "Excuse me, does this train go to Brooklyn?" She looks me in the eye and she points across the other side of the car and, of course, there's a big sign: "To Brooklyn." I said, "Oh! Thank you! Goodbye."

Get back to the book. Couple minutes later I turned to her and said, "Could I take you to your home?" She looks at me and she says -- with a pause -- she says, "If you got a quarter you can go anywhere you want." Which was what the subway cost at that time. And she got off at the next station, and I got off with her and followed her.

She's standing here watching me tell this story again. [continue]

DOWNLOAD: bloc party - this modern love [mp3]
*photo

my playground [movie]

aside from the high-fives, which make it kind of seem like a commercial for men's deodorant, this looks kind of (euro)cool in that the architecture is challenging AND when those guys stop flipping around you can't help but hope for there to be a cut to some lost kevin bacon/christian slater footage from the 80s a la gleaming the cube. or is that just me?

heavy metal band name flowchart

*click it*

courtney wotherspoon [illustration]

her site // her blog

jordan awan [illustration]

*click it*

hitotoki [writing]

hitotoki is an online literary project collecting stories of singular experiences tied to location in cities worldwide. // the word hitotoki is a japanese noun comprised of two components: hito or “one” and toki or “time,” and is often translated as “a moment.”
DOWNLOAD: bon iver - your love (outfield cover) live [mp3]

THIS
makes me so sad.

sun kil moon [music]

i've recently been seeking a new, palatable morning background. i found it by returning to sun kil moon's latest, april. it's subtle, it builds, it doesn't offend slow-waking sensibilities. and if you actually tune in, it's quite mesmerizing.

DOWNLOAD: sun kil moon - unlit hallway [mp3]

an awesome book [books]

i think i've seen the artwork of dallas clayton's hand-illustrated, aptly named an awesome book somewhere recently, though i can't place it. thankfully, my wonderful sister reminded me of it. these pictures don't do justice to the charm and genius of clayton's efforts, but i've got no time to tinker. tuck yourself in and click them to be transported.

short imagined monologues [writing]

some fun they're having with short imagined monologues, a wide open, revolving cast project over at mcsweeney's. michael nelson price's recent submission - no son of mine plays oregon trail like that - is a pretty great our-generation-specific piece, and there's loads more. from price's oregon trail:

Can't you see that Oregon Trail is a microcosm of life? I'm sure you've seen my high score on the computer: 8,040 points. Did you know that for years people considered 8,000 points impossible? You don't get a score like that by playing it safe and taking the banker. You get a score like that by selecting the farmer, purchasing only oxen and ammo, setting a "grueling" pace, and feeding your party "bare-bones" rations.

How many gold medals would Michael Phelps have won if all he cared about was making it across the pool? How many championships would Jordan have if all he'd wanted to do was dribble the ball down the court? Sure, you can make it across the country in relative comfort. But let me ask you this: How many spare wagon wheels do you think Michael Phelps takes with him? Why not push a naked, starving family to the brink of collapse and hunt your ass off for food all the way to Oregon? Isn't that what Jordan would do? [continue]

other imagined genius: it was i who flipped over the risk board last night // a pep talk for the new pair of shorts i will wear everyday this summer

i've been reading short stories [writing]

[the zagat history of my last relationship // noah baumbach]

AASE’S

Bring a “first date” to this “postage stamp”-size bistro. Tables are so close you’re practically “sitting in the laps” of the couple next to you, but the lush décor is “the color of love.” Discuss your respective “dysfunctional families” and tell her one of your “fail-safe” stories about your father’s “cheapness” and you’re certain to “get a laugh.” After the “to die for” soufflés, expect a good-night kiss, but don’t push for more, because if you play your cards right there’s a second date “right around the corner.” [continue]

[a young girl in 1941 with no waist at all // j.d. salinger]

The young man in the seat behind Barbara at the jai alai games had leaned forward finally and asked if she were ill and if she would like to be escorted back to the ship. Barbara had looked up at him, had looked at his looks, and said yes, she thought, she would, thank you, that she did have kind of a headache, and that it certainly was awfully nice of him. Then they had stood up together and left the stadium, returning to the ship by taxi and tender. But before she had gone to her cabin on B deck, Barbara had said nervously to the young man: “Hey. I could just take an aspirin or something. I could meet you on the deck where the shuffleboard stuff is. You know who you look like? You look like a boy who was in a lot of West Pointy pictures with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and—when I was little. Never see him anymore. Listen. I could just take an aspirin. Unless you have something else—” The young man had interrupted her, saying, in so many words, that he had nothing else to do. Then Barbara had walked quickly forward to her cabin. She was wearing a red-and-blue striped evening gown, and her figure was very young and sassy. There were several years to go before her figure stopped being sassy and just became a very pretty figure. [continue]

[on seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful april morning // haruki murakami]

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.

"This is amazing," he said. "I've been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you're the 100% perfect girl for me."

"And you," she said to him, "are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I'd pictured you in every detail. It's like a dream."

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle. [continue]

[the region of unlikeliness // rivka gilchen]

It’s not as if Jacob wasn’t lovable in his own abstruse and awkward way. I admired how much he read—probably more than Ilan, certainly more than me (he made this as clear as he could)—but Jacob struck me as pedantic, and I thought he would do well to button his shirts a couple buttons higher. Once, we were all at the movies—I had bought a soda for four dollars—and Jacob and I were waiting wordlessly for Ilan to return from the men’s room. It felt like a very long wait. Several times I had to switch the hand I was holding the soda in because the waxy cup was so cold. “He’s taking such a long time,” I said, and shrugged my shoulders, just to throw a ripple into the strange quiet between us.

“You know what they say about time,” Jacob said idly. “It’s what happens even when nothing else does.”

“O.K.,” I said. The only thing that came to my mind was the old joke that time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. I couldn’t bear to say it, so I remained silent. It was as if, without Ilan, we couldn’t even pretend to have a conversation.

There were, I should admit, things about Ilan (in particular) that didn’t make me feel so good about myself. For example, once I thought he was pointing a gun at me, but it turned out to be a remarkably good fake. Occasionally when he poured me a drink he would claim he was trying to poison me. One night I even became very sick, and wondered. Another evening—maybe the only time Jacob wasn’t with us; he said his daughter had appendicitis—Ilan and I lay on his mattress watching TV. For years, watching TV had made me sick with a sense of dissoluteness, but now suddenly it seemed great. That night, Ilan took hold of one of my hands and started idly to kiss my fingers, and I felt—well, I felt I’d give up the rest of my life just for that. Then Ilan got up and turned off the television. Then he fell asleep, and the hand-kissing never came up again. [continue]

LINK: most of salinger
LINK: and this about old j.d.

hanne hvattum [photography]

click them. words later...(?)

freeman transport [bikes]

freeman transport exists based on that old adage about doing something yourself because you want it done right. nathaniel freeman, an artist, and benjamin ferencz, a designer, don't like to leave home without their bikes, which is why their custom track frames are built to travel. each bike comes with an airport-friendly 26" x 26" custom waxed-leather travel bag made by billykirk, and can be fully assembled and disassembled using only one tool. if you can't splurge for the whip, they also sell t-shirts and wallets.