⌾ Recommendations

Hello,

It is Friday, the day of the week when I send out a short list of things I think might be worth your time and attention over the coming weekend.

(1) READING (online): Craig Mod's email newsletters are lovely. His central newsletters are Roden and Ridge Lines. The content is mostly about walking/hiking in Japan, where Craig lives and works. However, he also goes to other cool places and walks there. Other topics include bookmaking, design, and photography. I almost always find out about interesting ideas or concepts when I read these, and I like Craig's voice as a writer.

(2) READING (offline): The book Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson.

Here is the description of the book.

The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

I've been referencing Carson's work a lot because it is all double plus awesome. This book, which is one of her early ones, is my favorite thing she has written.

(3) TRAVEL/EVENTS: I'm going to the Lacanian Compass Clinical Study Days, which take place April 5-6. I go to this event almost every year. (I missed last year because my third kid was born literally the night before the event started.) I look forward to this event a lot, and if you're interested in clinical psychoanalysis, I think you would like it, too.

This year, the event will be in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; you can find more info about it here.

(4) GEAR/SHOES: The New Balance 1080 V12 is the best running shoe I've ever used, and I've used a lot of different running shoes in my life. I see a newer version (the V13), which I have not tried. When my V12s wear out, maybe I'll try the V13, but I'm not sure because the V12 is, like, perfection.

(5) APPS: The app Planny is a great iOS app I use to keep track of all the projects/tasks I have going on at any moment. Before using this, I used the built-in reminders app on my iPhone/Mac. I gave Planny a try and found that I really liked it. I don't know exactly what makes me like it better than other apps that do the same thing... Be that as it may, there is something about Planny that I really dig.

(6) WATCHING: We are currently in the build-up to Wrestlemania 40, which (like Clinical Study Days) will take place on April 6 and 7. Some good stories will come to a head at Wrestlemania. However, the main story at Wrestlemania last year between Sami Zayn and the Bloodline is my favorite storyline in all of wrestling.

I rewatched this video on YouTube, which is a recap of that story as it went into Wrestlemania 39. It is still soooooo good!