“Truthfully, I love you so much that I will defend you even from me.”— Elías Nandino (1900-1993), from “ Don’t Come Near Me “
in: “Elías Nandino: Selected Poems”, translated from the Spanish by Don Cellini
Okay, look, Kendall is on a mission. And he’s not going to stop unless we take his legs out.
Sculptures by Mia Chaplin
“Ally is the girl I love, so she is the girl I talk to about Duran Duran. When we are out dancing at our favorite sleazy rock bar and “Rio” comes on, as it always does, she and I are the “two of a billion stars” Simon is singing about. We make sure to lock eyes when that line comes around and sing it to each other. Since Ally’s an astrophysicist, she knows all about stars and quasars and tidal debris and accreted satellite material. Her universe is such a big place, full of so many galaxies - 100 billion of them, with 100 billion stars apiece, which means 10 to the 22nd power stars - that it’s terrifying to think of the odds that we found each other. We want to freeze the perfect moment, hold onto it, at least long enough to understand it. But it dances on with us or without us, so we jump in and try to keep up. The universe is expanding, and we are just two of a billion stars.”— Rob Sheffield, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran
“November is a hinge in the year, and the door gets opened to ghosts.”— Nina MacLaughlin, from “On the First of November, the Ghosts Arrive”, The Paris Review

Papercut, 1947, Henri Matisse