other people's art

last week most of my colleagues were at the Conference for College Composition and Communication in Florida, and many of them posted snippets of all their inspirational notes from panel sessions and special interest groups and workshops. some of them have collected these snippets from the various social media slots where they started into a more accessible space. Patti's excellent recaps are linked from her blog here. there's also this monstrous box of tangly data. it is slightly less monstrous than this bottomless hashtag pit. and plenty of other attendees have compiled their streams of conference thoughts too.

I did not go to this conference. I went to Kentucky instead. so it's nice to have so much second-hand info about the conference floating about out there. I can look at other people's notes and take what I want from them.

this blogpost is not really about any of that academic adventuring, though. I've been thinking about many other things... the story of my life. the future. solitude. light and trees and footprints and trade-offs. Robert Frost.

these street art photos were taken during a sunny walk many weeks ago. it seems longer-ago than it probably really was. today, winter saw fit to revisit us with a whole day of intermittent flurries. it's been a fairly grey week. these pictures from early March don't match. 

"The best stories take us inside of storytelling so seamlessly, that when we emerge, the impossible is easier to imagine."
— Disgruntled Haradrim (@pdjeliclark) July 30, 2014

Pro Tip: When you like people, tell them you like them. Some people have a hard time believing other people enjoy them and need to be told.
— Hank Green (@hankgreen) March 6, 2015

the twitter-thoughts embedded here originate with various strangers. they've hitched themselves interestingly into my thoughts over the past months and months and months, for one reason or another.

Don’t underestimate the importance of describing “the obvious”. It is meaningful to have the world described in certain, subjective terms.
— PBS Idea Channel (@pbsideachannel) March 24, 2015

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.” ― Roland Barthes
— Daily Zen (@dailyzen) July 12, 2014

I wonder if it would be cool to plan out a mural or a wall-painting like some of these around town. what colors and shapes would I want to plaster on the side of a building, if I could? what marks would I leave out there for the public to walk beneath? would they tell an intelligible story?

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.
— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) January 6, 2015

your story can be about you, of course. but it probably isn't only about you. your voice and your colors are not the only ones telling it. 

the future is mostly a question mark, haunting and deep, but it's not only a question mark. there are a lot of other tracing and tangling lines in it, too.