My love for the New York subway system is at an all-time low these days, partly because the two stops closest to me are both boiling hot in the summertime, and so lately I’ve been trying as much as possible to only go places I can either walk to or take a dirt cheap cab ride to. My favorite thing about the subway—the airconditioned cars aside—has always been the Poetry In Motion program, for which the the MTA and the Poetry Society of America choose poems and excerpts “short enough to be readable on one of our subway or bus cards” every year and place them for commuters to read, between ads for Dr Zizmor.
The following poem by Alicia Partnoy is from last year’s selection; I like it so much each time I’ve seen it I’ve quickly scribbled it down in order to remember to post it, but for some reason it’s taken me an entire year to share it with you. Sorry about that.

Communication

I am talking to you about poetry
and you say
when do we eat.
The worst of it is
I’m hungry too.

Yo te hablo de poesía
y vos me preguntás
a qué hora comemos.
Lo peor es que
yo también tengo hambre.

Communication is from Partnoy’s 1992 collection, Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana; her latest collection is 2005’s Volando bajito. In 1998 she published a book of stories about her time in a camp for dissidents during Argentina’s Dirty War: The Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina.

Heather Havrilesky in Salon, on my favorite show of last season (yes, before Lost and Battlestar Galactica):

So basically, “Grey’s Anatomy” is all about incredibly hunky men who need — really, really, really need and love and adore — the women in their lives, either because the hunk in question is struggling or he’s dying or he’s in a crappy marriage. In other words, “Grey’s Anatomy” is the most elaborate, skillfully produced pornography ever created for women. No wonder I feel like molesting charming heart patients and sneaking off with pretty married doctors when I watch it.

Part of me feels a little dirty that I love a show about, you know, the love lives of doctors, but to be fair Grey’s Anatomy is smart, funny and above all ballsy—the writers are unafraid to have their characters say and do horrible, stupid, painfully human things that can have you hating them and hating yourself because you know exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing because you’ve done it too.
All of that and Patrick Dempsey is really dreamy.

The A.V. Club recently published a great interview with Lewis Black last week, whom most of you probably know from his “Back in Black” op-ed segments on The Daily Show and his various HBO specials. The interview doesn’t seem to be available online anymore but this is the best bit from it, Black on writing (his first book Nothing Sacred is now out in paperback):

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it’s impossible, it’s like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it’s done. And by the time you get it in, it’s done and you’re sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn’t do. I mean, writing isn’t fun. It’s never been fun. It’s momentum, and once you get the momentum going, that’s great, but it’s a brutal experience in many, many ways. And when you’re done, people tell you “Well, gee, I’m not interested.” “Great, I’m glad I sat down and wrote this!”

This is kind of what blogging is like, sometimes.

Stewart and Caterina are on the cover of the latest Newsweek, and so I’ve never been more happy to read a magazine on the subway. (Jarvis is also very pleased as this is the first time anyone he’s humped has ever been on the cover of anything!)

The weird thing is, the jelly kind of looks like Andrew and the pudding kind of looks like me. And you know, we totally would be snack detectives right now if we’d known it was an acceptable career path. We’d get all Dog and Beth on the trail of your missing Sno-Balls and Chocodiles.

Every once in a while I get so overwhelmed by what I think my blog should be like and how I think I am failing at making it that way that I end up not posting for weeks at a time. This is something that makes me profoundly unhappy—this site is in many ways responsible for most of the things that are good in my life, and I cherish the ability to share things with all of you, even those of you whom I don’t know and will probably never meet. It’s kind of funny but after my six years of blogging, the piece of writing that’s making it easier for me to fall in love with this site all over again is by, of all people, Dave Winer:

Then someday, when you’re in the shower or lying in bed in the morning and get an idea that you wish you could tell everyone, remember that you have a blog, and go to the computer, and write it up and publish it. That actually feels pretty good, even if you think no one will read it, because you got it off your chest.

Then in a few days Google will probably visit your site and index the post, and then when someone searches for that subject, your page will come up, and maybe you’ll pass that idea on to someone who can use it, or meet someone who agrees, or someone who disagrees. And that’s blogging, and that’s all it is.

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