Fisherman @ Twilight. 5:00 a.m. 62° F. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

it’s become a talisman, something precious. A little scary, a little holy

I first read The Seas when it came out in 2004 and was scalded by its beauty. It took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly shocked by literature’s capacity to cast a spell—you know the feeling, when you turn the last page of a novel that you’ve burrowed into and has burrowed into you, and suddenly find that the book has become more than a book, it’s become a talisman, something precious. A little scary, a little holy…

And so I put The Seas up on a high shelf, not because I didn’t love it, but because its power felt so acute I needed to dim it a little, save it for another day.

— Maggie Nelson, on Samantha Hunt’s “The Seas” in “Like Love: Essays and Conversations.” (Graywolf Press, April 2, 2024)

I've loved you as a man loves an old wound... Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently.

— Larry Levis, from "Wound" in "Wrecking Crew; Poems" (University of Pittsburgh Press) (via Regina Rosenfeld)

Low tide @ Twilight. 4:30 to 4:57 a.m. 62° F. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Incoming Clouds @ Twilight. 5:10 a.m. 62° F. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Crescent Moon over Waves @ Twilight. 4:42 a.m. 62° F. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Crescent Moon @ Twilight. 62° F. 4:15 to 4:25 am. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Crescent Moon over Waves @ Twilight. 4:42 a.m. 62° F. June 4, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Hunt gifts us not only an incisive, compassionate portrait of how and why we remain anchored to our fucked-up towns, our fucked-up loves, our fucked-up families, our fucked-up habits, our fucked-up substances, our fucked-up homes, and our fucked-up wars, but also a model as to how we might—seemingly against all odds—pull up and set out.

— Maggie Nelson, on Samantha Hunt’s “The Seas” in “Like Love: Essays and Conversations.” (Graywolf Press, April 2, 2024)

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I often think of this line from the writer Annie Dillard. And these days, I’m afraid to admit how much of my time is spent online, my mind jostling around in a sea of infinite scroll. There’s little about what I encounter online that I actively choose — and I suspect the same goes for you. That may seem trivial, moment to moment. But what are we losing over a lifetime of stolen attention?

— Ezra Klein, from “Your Mind is Being Fracked” (NY Times, June 1, 2024)

Happiness, not in another place but this place… not for another hour, but this hour.

—Walt Whitman, "A Song For Occupations" in "Leaves of Grass" (Self Published in 1855) (via Grand Canyon NPS)

Egret fishing @ Twilight. 65° F. 5:15 am. June 3, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Go out and do something. It isn't your room that's a prison, it's yourself.

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Anchor Books, 2000) (via Regina Rosenfeld)

Maiden Voyage. Cygnet with Mom and Dad Swans. 5:30 am. June 3 2024. Cove Island Park. Stamford, CT.

See more photos of the family here. (@dkct25)

Twilight. 65° F. 4:30 to 5:00 am. June 3, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

Attention, infinite waiting. Attention, triggering…Where are you? You are where your attention is.

In the early 20th century novel “Wings of the Dove,” the American novelist Henry James describes a really beautiful and intense scene in which a very, very ill woman, terminally ill woman, has a fleeting encounter with the doctor she desperately needs. She believes this doctor kind of knows what she needs to survive. She hopes that this doctor can kind of get her past her anguish.

The doctor’s very busy, and James depicts the scene where the two of them sit for a moment. And he describes the doctor as placing on the table between them a clear, clean crystal cup, empty of attention, an empty crystal cup of attention that the doctor places on the table between them. And that sort of figuration of attention as a kind of an empty cup that we place between ourselves and the object of our attention is like, I think it exquisitely invokes that idea of imminence, that kind of negative capability.

Anything’s possible here, the gesture of generosity. It has a little bit of that sense of waiting, but it also has a sense of a solicitation. Something needs to happen. So it includes elements of that catalytic, and it includes elements of that kind of mirroring, waiting image. And so, when I have to talk about what I think attention is, I’ll often use that image. Like, what’s attention? Attention is that kind of empty cup we can place between ourselves and the things we care about in the world and see what happens. […]

Well, Crary argues that attention is born in that moment as a way of saying, again, that I hold together as one being, as I confront or encounter the world. Where are you? You are where your attention is.

— D. Graham Burnett, from “Ezra Klein Interviews D. Graham Burnett” (NY Times, May 31, 2024)

Twilight. 65° F. 4:43 am. June 3, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)