Sarah Wilson

the one thing you’d keep

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If you were stranded, or homeless, or if the house burnt down, what’s the one thing you’d keep? It’s a great question. It’s a question that leads to so much whittling down of things. Once you whittle down, where do you stop? Artist Susan Mullaly posed the question to a bunch of people in Waco Texas and photographed the results. Many are homeless or disenfranchised, for various reasons.

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Fred Albreight is a homeless carpenter. He says:

I pick up stuffed animals all the time, I got a truck in here too. I found him, this little dog in a dumpster down in the projects in the South Side while I was pickin’ up cans. The reason I picked it up is because whenever I see a little child I give it to him. That’s why I collect them.

When I was a kid, Dad kept our photo albums next to the front door

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a socrates quote…just because

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“Beware the banality of a busy life.” –Socrates

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And a pretty Autumnal picture, just because.

But a few more words from me: Right now I’m way too busy. I’ve been busy all my life. I thrive on it. Being busy fills the gaps. And the gaps are scary. Void, nothingness, weightlessness…scary! So when I fill gaps, I feel safe. For a brief, frantic moment or two.

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why i really don’t like snark

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I don’t usually comment on nasty stuff in the media. It’s usually best left to fester without further stoking. But I feel compelled this time. Because it’s an example of something that’s been bothering me for ages.

Snark. I really don’t like it. Gawker started this bitchy style of commentary. Perez Hilton perfected it. And bloggers and tweeters have tried to emulate it. 68379_2_468

Snark has become a “voice” that many people find comfortable to slip into. It’s easy to replicate. Just look down your nose and spew forth. It’s mistaken for critical thinking. It’s not. Critical thinking is productive. Snark separates you from me. It creates distance, which is destructive. It makes none of us happy. It’s human behaviour at it’s most base and fearful. Which is so disappointing.

Snark is not hate speech. It’s more cowardly. And it attacks individuals on personal fronts. See this New York Times article on snark for more.

And note: the great writers and reviewers don’t stoop to snark. They don’t need to or wish to. Their aim is to share and connect, ultimately.

I rant, of course, following the attention Wil Anderson and Catherine Deveny’s Logie tweets have attracted. It’s just been announced Catherine’s been dumped from The Age (their words, not mine) for her contributions.

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how conservative are you? (a fun test)

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I just found this great little widget, developed by Slate, that – in a press of a button – can determine how conservative your online news reading habits are. And how open-minded you are. And whether you can see both sides of an issue.

Get your reality check here. Fun! (Don’t we just love a test that tells us something about …us?)52173_4_468

Slate writes:

Maybe democracy will survive the Internet after all. Many hands have been wrung over the supposed tendency for consumers of online news to seek out sites that validate their own political opinions. Like minds, the theory goes, surf alike.

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fully sick rapper….does Fashion Week. gorgeous, darlink!

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A few weeks back Fully Sick Rapper Christiaan van Vuuren and I chatted via email about his 106 days in hospital quarantine. And how boredom, and a wish to share his TB story, led him to write crazy-head raps. The kid is so heartfelt and switched-on. I rather love him. And the post was re-posted around the world. Hoorah!

He’s now 126 days in …and he’s been driven to produce this distracted fashion clip:

Now, I think I love him even more. This clip’s friggen gold. And as someone who finds the whole Fashion Week caper a not-so-pleasant exercise in The Whole World Worrying About What Everyone Thinks of Them…it’s timely. (As an aside, Fashion Week has always distressed me because I usually hit a point where I look around and see everyone miserable because they are forced so violently into ego-tainted disconnection…but that’s another story).

Paris, London…Hospital!!

“This is the future of fashion. And it is the past of fashion. It is both the future and the past of fashion. It is the forever…. It’s fucking fashion infinity.”

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Sunday life: why we should resist bottled water. Like, now.

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* this post has been updated

This week I don’t drink bottled water (actually, I haven’t drunk the stuff for several years, but I’m kinda ensconced in this “look what I happened upon this week” theme…so let’s just ride it for now).

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Recently I aborted a liaison with a guy because he didn’t recycle. To be fair (to me?), it wasn’t that he didn’t recycle per se. It was the reasoning he gave for why he felt entitled to leave the carrying out of one’s tuna tins to the communal bins to everyone else. “If I start,” he moaned. “Then where do I stop?“ What he meant was, if I give a shit about my cans, won’t it just open a Pandora’s box of care from which there’s no turning back? A life of cutting plastic windows from envelopes, keeping a bucket in the shower and hypermilling? Won’t it set in train the collapse of the whole merry house of cards? Yes, yes, my friend, it will.

All of which is a loose segue to a subject I’ve been busting to cover: bottled water, and how quitting it makes life better.

Drinking bottled water complicates life. It clutters flow with needless stuff.

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clever guerilla green bombs. nice.

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This is an innovative use of something outdated and slightly crapp-ola (a lolly machine) transformed into something clever and randomly good (garden bombs).57369_8_468

I saw this on Springwise. They explain the concept best:

The brainchild of Los Angeles-based Common Studio, Greenaid aims to facilitate what it calls “guerrilla gardening” in the many forgotten grey spaces of the urban world, including sidewalk cracks, vacant lots and parking medians. It has reclaimed old, quarter-operated candy machines and converted them for use selling seed bombs—mixtures of clay, compost and seeds that can be thrown anonymously into derelict urban sites.

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The most efficient apartment ever

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This is quite freaky: Architect Gary Chang has created a 24-rooms-in-one-32-square-metre apartment (translation: he’s taken a tiny apartment and converted it such that it functions as 24 different rooms….using sliding walls). Check this out: The New York Times describes it in more detail: The wall units, which are suspended from steel tracks bolted into the … Read more

lady ga ga’s tattoo: an inspiration (!)

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I never thought I’d find solace on the inside of Lady Ga Ga’s arm. 58856919

But there you go. She got this tatt done at some late-night Japanese ink parlour…quoting her favourite philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke:

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?

I like it. But me, I’d probably gone with one of Rilke’s other quotes, like this:

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