A few thoughts

Recent thoughts, resolutions, internal injunctions:

• It is important to look words up in the dictionary. I should do this more often, instead of assuming I know what “fulsome” means. To this end, I recently bought the new fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary for our use at home. This goliath will also support me in my attempt to read Infinite Jest in a few months. (Also, we are a poet and an editor! We should own a real dictionary, even if it is more convenient to use the house iPhone to look things up.)
• Corollary: The idea of “looking something up” did not exist until writing existed -> the beginning of a cataloging of information -> converting language into data. (Thoughts from reading the excellent The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.)
• Ballet. I am thinking a lot about ballet. More on this later, perhaps. (I am thinking about Apollo’s Angels, about how I hate most forms of exercise, about how flexibility is something I only possess in my dreams.)
• Best movie I have seen in quite a while: Rust and Bone, dir. Jacques Audiard. Guion and I saw this at the Virginia Film Festival and we were equally floored by it. Highly recommended. (Because, really, Marion Cotillard can do no wrong.)
• Men look best in fall clothes.
• I need to say “no” more often and not feel guilty about it.
• The dog has become very pushy lately. She’s one of the ones I need to say “no” to more often. (But look at that face!)

Man the food-gatherer reappears incongruously as information-gatherer. In this role, electronic man is no less a nomad than his paleolithic ancestors. — Marshall McLuhan