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The men began to prod the unforgiving earth with their spades, then reached down and lifted up the once white casket, now dirt blackened, and forced open the lid. An awful vapor, death itself, filled the air.
“Maybe all exiles are drawn to the sea, the ocean. There is an inherent music in the working sounds of docks and harbors and there were times when he thought that all the melancholy beauty of the blues was present in a foghorn, wailing out to sea, warning men of the dangers that awaited them. Increasingly”
― But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz
― But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz
“In photography there is no meantime. There was just that moment and now there’s this moment and in between there is nothing. Photography, in a way, is the negation of chronology.”
― The Ongoing Moment: A Book About Photographs
― The Ongoing Moment: A Book About Photographs
“Photographers sometimes take pictures of each other; occasionally they take pictures of each other at work; more usually they take photographs - or versions - of each other's work. Consciously or not they are constantly in dialogue with their contemporaries and predecessors.”
― The Ongoing Moment
― The Ongoing Moment
“People realize that a life that had seemed enjoyable (travel, social life, romance) and fulfilling (work) was actually empty and meaningless. So they urge you to join the child-rearing party: they want you to share the riches, the pleasures, the joys. Or so they claim. I suspect that hey just want to share and spread the misery. (The knowledge that someone is at liberty or has escaped makes the pain of incarceration doubly hard to bear). Of all the arguments for having children, the suggestion that it gives life 'meaning' is the one to which I am most hostile--apart from all the others" (201).”
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
“The perfect life, the perfect lie … is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances. It is a very elaborate, extremely simple procedure, arranging this web of self-deceit: contriving to convince yourself that you were prevented from doing what you wanted. Most people don’t want what they want: people want to be prevented, restricted. The hamster not only loves his cage, he’d be lost without it. That’s why children are so convenient: you have children because you’re struggling to get by as an artist—which is actually what being an artist means—or failing to get on with your career. Then you can persuade yourself that your children prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out. So it goes on: things are always forsaken in the name of an obligation to someone else, never as a failing, a falling short of yourself.”
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
Jason’s 2025 Year in Books
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