Window To My World

Good morning, Carlson. #ARTchitecture (at William S. Carlson...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:02:08 -0400

Good morning, Carlson. #ARTchitecture (at William S. Carlson Library - UToledo)

The most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard (lived).

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:21:10 -0500

The most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard (lived).

AFrames. #senegal (at Brisson Antique Museum)

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:20:23 -0500

AFrames. #senegal (at Brisson Antique Museum)

Crossfit

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 10:48:35 -0500

I want to dropkick a Chihuahua into an active volcano every time a photo of a beautiful woman is posted on the interweb and some needle-dicked, ass-hat says something stupid like, “What’s ‘his’ name?” We know damn well that’s bullshit.

The skinny-fat worship prevalent in pop culture is partly at work here. Couple that with natural insecurity and malcontent Internet trolls, and you have a perfect environment for the greater Internet fuckwad theory to proliferate.

Having policed such comments, I’ve taken an interest in their origin. Each time one of these ingrates comments on a picture of a super-hot CrossFit woman with drivel like, “How much does that guy bench?” I’ve made a point to check out their Facebook pages and/or Google them. I’ve learned a few things.

These people are almost never CrossFitters — usually aren’t athletic, into working out nor possess anything we’d call fitness. Interesting. It’s pretty clear that the ladies in question wouldn’t touch these dudes with a cattle prod and the Trojan army pushing them from behind, either. So, why do they follow CrossFit pages on Facebook and say hateful shit about people they don’t know?

These women are gorgeous. The offending assholes have massive inferiority complexes and their comments are futile attempts to feel superior by cutting someone else down. As if to say, “My light doesn’t shine brightly, so I’ll dim yours,” instead of giving respect where it’s due and improving themselves. Fuck that.

The comments from these trolls do have negative impact. If I hear one more beautiful, fit, strong, capable woman tell me she’s ashamed of her lats, calves, hamstrings or butt, I’ll go Tony Blauer and Outside 90 these oxygen thieves into the middle of next Games season.

CrossFit makes better people. You’d be crazy not to admit it makes people hotter, too. We feel more attractive and our brothers (and sisters) in arms look even more so to us. There are reasons for this, which are far deeper and more meaningful than the physical ones imbued by training and nutrition.

But that is not what this article is about.

Go ahead, call me sexist. At work and the gym, I’m surrounded by men and women who are attracted to the same women. This isn’t a unique perspective. There are many body types in the world of functional fitness, and varied taste of men and women alike can find lots of things to agree on. There are a few traits uniquely appealing to CrossFitters though. Assets that rev us up like the first 400-meter run in Helen. Ladies (I’m talking to all of you), you have several of these. Be proud. And we’d appreciate it if you showed them off more often.

For organizational purposes — and because it’s fucking awesome — let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.

Calves of Capitulation

Surrender. You’re powerless to resist. If you’ve been to a rare formal event with CrossFitters and seen these ladies in heels, you’re already in the know. It’s like, “Damn … I bet this chick can rebound 48-inch box jumps.”

Shit is hot. I don’t know how they shave these things — razor blades typically don’t fare well against twisted steel. Guys see girls with jacked calves and think that maybe we’d like to race you, and see how fast you are.

Heavenly Hamstrings

I can’t imagine hearing this phrase anywhere except CrossFit. Usually, legs are accepted or rejected as a unit. That’s just unfair to the women amongst us with hamstrings that could pull an eighteen-wheeler off the ground. So, it stands to reason they have no trouble raising things that are much, much lighter — if you know what I mean.

If you’re a dude, you’ve been there. You’re in class, and one of the beautiful creatures we call female CrossFitters bends over to stretch — or, my heavens, pick up a barbell — and you’re staring at their … hamstrings. Yup, the biceps femoris. One of the sexiest muscles, you know. You could be staring at their ass — we’ll get to that later — but hamstrings?

Lots of deadlifting, squatting and other things that make us hot and bothered go into making these. Their lovely physical appearance and the capabilities that appearance implies are … umm … exciting.

Perfect Posterior (Chain)

A rear end that could empty 100 percent of a toothpaste tube with no assistance of any kind from the hands trails behind many a CrossFit woman. Your ass is your engine — it drives everything you do. From squats, to deadlifts, to opening the hip on lifts and kips. It’s the supercharged, big displacement, V-8 engine of the body. It’s appealing to see a big, honkin’ motor peeking out from the hood of a muscle car, right? Same goes for butts built by CrossFit. Functional and aesthetically pleasing enough to dilate the pupils more than creepy noises in a dark room.

Lovely Lats

Angels have wings. CrossFitters have epic latissimus dorsi. Lifting, rowing and a fuck-ton of pull-ups build lats that cannot be contained by the pittance of lycra comprising the sides of a sports bra. Thank god.

Women have had it backwards all along. They’ve spent decades trying to make their waists smaller when they should have been building bigger lats — that’s where that nicely tapered shape comes from — not the other way around.

If you’ve been lucky enough to enjoy the company of someone equipped with a set of these bad jacksons, you’ve no doubt noticed their ability to hug and squeeze is dramatically increased. They also provide a convenient lifting and/or grasping point, for you know, whatever.

Look, I’m telling it like it is. Guys (or girls) you are actually interested in love all these things about you. Listen to us. Keep pushing, pulling, jumping, lifting, grunting and sweating. Remember this the next time someone says your arms look “manly.” People don’t tell unattractive girls they’re ugly. That never happens — the truth is too intense for assholes to handle.

It’s a sign you’re doing something right. There’s no such thing as a car, or shirt, or video, or article that people love intensely, which is not also hated intensely. If someone hates your body and they have to tell you about it, know that someone (hi!) loves it just as intensely.

Find

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 12:17:34 -0500

Let’s (together).

All that is gold does not glitter: Identity.

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:45:56 -0500

All that is gold does not glitter: Identity.:

aswiftsunset:

I found myself
in smoky breath
from winter lungs,
in falling leaves
and setting suns,
in whites between
broken lines,
and they have shown me
what lies inside
the darkness of
my grey eyes.

I found myself
in the wetness
of your lips,
in the arid desert
between your fingertips,
where left no spell

Absolutely gorgeous. Sparked my writing flame for poetry once again. Alas.

Enfin, je possède une presse française ! (at Mr. J’s...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:42:25 -0500

Enfin, je possède une presse française ! (at Mr. J’s Garden of Love)

theparisreview: The development of the art of writing, from...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:49:19 -0500

theparisreview:

The development of the art of writing, from English for All, Fortnightly for Germans, which was issued to German prisoners of war in England to teach language skills. (Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Libraryr’s Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities).

workaholics: Not sure what to get Mom for Christmas? Just...

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:27:19 -0500

workaholics:

Not sure what to get Mom for Christmas?

Just kidding. Dad already got her that. How do you think you got here?

theparisreview: “From time to time the stillness is broken up...

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:51:14 -0500

theparisreview:

“From time to time the stillness is broken up by a car or a child or a stray dog crossing the green. Sometimes a ball rolls into view. These are all quietly interesting but sooner or later they meld into the stillness of the place.”

The latest in Matteo Pericoli’s Windows on the World series: Mike McCormack, Galway City, Ireland.

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:51:08 -0500

Now I was sitting waiting wishing
That you believed in superstitions
Then maybe you’d see the signs
But Lord knows that this world is cruel
And I ain’t the Lord, no I’m just a fool
Learning loving somebody don’t make them love you

Must I always be waiting waiting on you?
Must I always be playing playing your fool?

I sing ya songs I dance a dance
I gave ya friends all a chance
Putting up with them wasn’t worth never having you
And maybe you been through this before
But it’s my first time
So please ignore
The next few lines cause they’re directed at you

I can’t always be waiting waiting on you
I can’t always be playing playing your fool
I keep playing your part
But it’s not my scene
Wont this plot not twist?
I’ve had enough mystery.
Keep building me up, then shooting me down
Well I’m already down
Just wait a minute
Just sitting waiting
Just wait a minute
Just sitting waiting

Well if I was in your position
I’d put down all my ammunition
I’d wondered why’d it taken me so long
But Lord knows that I’m not you
And If I was I wouldn’t be so cruel
Cause waiting on love ain’t so easy to do

Must I always be waiting waiting on you?
Must I always be playing playing your fool?
No I can’t always be waiting waiting on you
I can’t always be playing playing your fool, fool

abandonedporn: (by odin’s_raven) Beauty.

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:24:58 -0500

abandonedporn:

(by odin’s_raven)

Beauty.

The Sun Also Rises

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:25:34 -0500

The Sun Also Rises

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce high, bounce for her too, till she..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:46:24 -0500

“Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce high, bounce for her too, till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!””

- Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

Love Letter

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 10:37:03 -0500

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I’m alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn’t just toe me an inch, no—
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn’t it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter—
LIke my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn’t convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn’t know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn’t fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It’s a gift.
-SP

theparisreview: Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:22:32 -0500

theparisreview:

Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while.
The morning sea and cloudless sky
a brilliant blue, the yellow shore: all
illuminated, beautiful and grand.

Here let me stop. Let me pretend that these are what I see
(I really saw them for a moment when I first stopped)
instead of seeing, even here, my fantasies,
my recollections, the icons of pleasure.

—Constantine P. Cavafy, “Morning Sea”
Photography Credit Suzanne Opton

theparisreview: “You see things differently when you’re in...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:22:22 -0500

theparisreview:

“You see things differently when you’re in love.”

Read more from Anna Wiener on falling hard (and Renata Adler’s Speedboat) here.

So we beat on,

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:22:04 -0500

boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Yes.

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:58:05 -0500

Isn’t it pretty to think so?

"Le Monocle De Mon Oncle" by Wallace Stevens. Masterpiece.

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 19:40:30 -0500

“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

II.
A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.
No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry connaissance.

III.
Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat tittivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards?
I shall not play the flat historic scale.
You know how Utamaro’s beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.
You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.
Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?
Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

IV.
This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.
When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.
An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.
But it excels in this, that as the fruit
Of love, it is a book too mad to read
Before one merely reads to pass the time.

V.
In the high west there burns a furious star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly’s quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.
And you? Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

VI.
If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.
There is a substance in us that prevails.
But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.
When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.
It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

VII.
The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

VIII.
Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter winds.

IX.
In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.
Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too lusty for your broadening.
I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit. Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

X.
The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.
I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.
I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.
But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.
It stands gigantic, with a certain tip
To which all birds come sometime in their time.
But when they go that tip still tips the tree.

XI.
If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour!
Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink,
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

XII.
A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On sidelong wing, around and round and round.
A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground,
Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study. Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.