There’s no rational explanation for how much I love frogs. I mean, there might be a rational tidbitual oddment I could lay down for you  but all the tidy, comprehensible bullet points in the world wouldn’t do justice to how deeply fascinated and charmed and shivered I am by those little half-blood princes, those darling swimmers who leave the water to tuck the soft green of themselves into the grass so they can lie in wait for me, so they can leap in ambush and make me bark a laugh of surprise at their ridiculous bodies, hurled up from the grass, bounced high, airborne.

Humanity is bad and terrible and capable of the most horrific acts of cruelty and venality. But oh my god, when a beautiful brain does beautiful brain things, it makes me remember that some of us are not only unbad and unterrible, but really fucking wonderful. What I’m thinking of here is this thing I found on the webs that are inter, this fabulous wonderful thing. To be precise, this thing:

This is what I can do:

Butcher’s charts take it all apart.

Sewing patterns put it all together.

The sundering and the reconciling … they interest me, both. I maybe love taxidermy because it requires both; I should maybe love the jigsaw puzzle more than I do, for the same reason.

Often I think of the poetry of objects
about the way a seam is resolved
or the way a spine grows
about the things we make with our bodies
and the bones from out of our bodies

Oh. My. God. The happies, they are upon me.

I make playlists on my iPod and they’re often very theme-y because I am nothing if not a theme-y woman — I like to group and organise. I like to find patterns, or, in their absence, make them. Maybe that’s the curatorial urge. Or the librarian’s urge. Anyway, I have a playlist on my iPod called “river” and I listen to the songs on that playlist a lot, especially when I am despairing because those songs are very cathartic to hear and especially when I am all joyed-up because those songs are very cathartic to hear.

Imagine if we could remove the mortar that holds all the disparate elements of our selves together. Remove it and fiddle the bricks of character around a bit and repoint, so that we could be remade. Or maybe that’s too drastic (altho’ I am a woman who likes the grand gesture) — it’s not a complete rebuild that interests me but the jimjummery of a rejig.

Here’s a thing I just realised. Chet Baker had it right: let’s get lost. That’s what running is, for me: a getting lost, the way you can get lost in very few things, maybe only love and sex and music and physical exertion and the way the air smells in the woods in the fall or the way a cold lake feels on your body when you jump in naked and let all that cold swirl across all your bare skin to leave you gasping and shuddering in a strange beautiful release that’s almost like the moment of orgasm, in the pleasure/pain aspect of it and also in the being completely present in your body aspect of it.

When I grow up, I want to be a people. A people with antlers.

I run. I like to run, a lot.

Correction.

I love to run. Love it, with big crazy heartsing heartpound loveness.

I took my kids to see Zombieland the other day. (Because yes, I am an awesome mother.) It was a highly enjoyable experience, more than any of us had anticipated, honestly, and chief among the many excellent moments was the scene in which the four nonzombies who are our heroes realize the rules of quotidian life no longer pertain and lay waste to a souvenir shop, smashing and crushing and pulverising all the cheap tat that stocks the shop’s shelves. It is an exhilarating moment, for sure, because transgression so often is, and transgression that involves destruction? Ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks!

It is such a miracle, this ridiculous Internet thing. Just a few days ago, I was sitting bundled in sweaters in an old farmhouse in Quebec, looking out the kitchen window at the blazing colours of autumn while simultaneously peeking into the studio of artist Ghadah Alkandari; the thing about Ghadah’s studio is that it’s located in Kuwait, half a world away from me. But with a click of the Send button on her Mac, she was able to show me a little piece of her reality and that is an eventuality I like very much. And oh my, how I like publishing these images so that you too can step into Ghadah’s world for a moment or two.

I don’t know why I always want to know “why” but I do. Even when the answer to “why?” is “because” or “dunno” or “what’s it to ya, mofo?” Even then, I still wanna know. Why, I wonder. Why am I like that? Dunno, really. Because, I guess. What’s it to ya anyway, mofo?

I am very, very afraid of fire. Very, very afraid of it and very, very — o so very — compelled by it.

Okay, this is just the loveliest thing, this project by Nathalia Ponomareva. I wish we lived in a world where all the daily objects of life could be similarly delightful.

by guest blogger rachel cheetham douglas

i went bra shopping the other week. i have a small collection of racerback tops that just sit there in my closet, year after year, because i don’t have any racerback bras to wear underneath. well, that’s not true. i have two racerback bras, but i can’t wear them because they’re itchy and hateful and itchy and they ride up and did i mention they’re itchy? itchy is a funny word. say it. you almost feel a little japanese. or maybe i’m overcaffeinated today. whatever, the point is that goddamn i hate those bras.

It’s a wrap.

Leo Tolstory rocks my world, man.

Sometimes art just happens. Look at the corset (or maybe it’s a ribcage) on my bedroom wall.

The other night I was drinking whiskey and thinking about Fibonacci numbers and thinking about Katinka Matson’s scanned flower images and thinking about how once upon a time I looked at her daffodils and realised how 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all, just like you: the Internet is a fœtid swamp of depravity and conjecture and rumour and fibbery and inaccuracy and pointlessness and Lindsay Lohan’s twat, and I can’t really come up with a compelling argument to dissuade anyone of such notions.

 Aggregation rules.

I like the word “with”. Maybe because writing is so not a “with” activity. It’s really a pretty terrible pastime: lonely; painful; scary; frustrating; slow.  But it’s also the way I learn what I think — I often don’t truly know until I start the ridiculous process of corralling the headchaos.