Noticed: This Blog

By me, after almost a month.  Anyway, beloved audience, I'm switching myself over to tumblr because the post editor stresses me out slightly less to look at.  So please find yourselves over at

havinganemptymind.tumblr.com


See you there.

Eastward Inwestments

One of my most dedicated and attuned readers has brought to my attention the Development of Eastern Poland initiative, and its cheeky ad campaign that seems to be going very sluggishly viral:

 The disappointed therapist, the largest and most brilliant jewel in this crown of suave insinuation and guilt.

Agreeable Nonsense

It's still February.  For some this may be a simple fact, or it may be something which requires a more complex strategy of coming-to-grips.  So I offer you this, a rhetorical tic that has become my only answer to so much, as daily life begins to resemble nothing so much as the deep and merciless but also inconsequential slush piles which are my constant companion.


Throw yourself into the sea.  Have you considered it?  When life on land can do nothing but disappoint, demand a constant shaking up of expectations, consider the freshness of a new medium of living.  You may die, yes, but you may die if you persist on land.  You may yet live, if you begin with the sea.

Helpful Holiday Suggestions on the Suggestive Holiday

Where I am, there's about an hour left of Valentine's Day.  If you're short on romantic ideas, consider having a picnic inside.  Bread, cheese, salads non-standard (such as potato, pasta or cucumber) or the normal kind, or just a large steak on a blanket.  Play nature sounds.  If you're feeling rich, serve sushi next.  Play ocean sounds.  This is my dream.

This Post Has Not Earned A Title

I spent tonight writing a post that I've somehow been writing for months, but cannot finish.  Since I've started I've had to change the opening anecdote several times, and the most relevant of the links has expired.  But you'll love it even in its bedraggled present state, I promise.

In the ever-fewer minutes I have until I'm not lucid enough to think of words I will make use of the ones I can lay my hands on to say that it took me over a day to find out that the Pope resigned.  For some reason this was the moment when I ceased to be my regular, relatively unconnected self and an almost imperceptibly different self, one who thinks she should maybe have a Facebook again.  The next threshold is the one between this self, who is terrified of Facebook and its ilk on a very visceral level but realizes it is useful in a lot of ways, and the one who isn't that worried about it.
I'm not sure what to think.  I'm tempted to say that I wish I had well-considered reasons for the present state of affairs that drew equally on an abstract ideological perspective and the demands of living a healthy, beautiful, productive but still very driven-by-practicality daily life, you know, just in case, but I don't actually wish that.  I think what I actually wish is that I had a very specific, eloquent glint in my eye, preferably my left eye, and when I looked at someone they would just see that glint and know, that's it.  That's why she doesn't have a Facebook.

Cold Month of Love

February seems to me like a month that doesn't demand a ton of you emotionally.  It is muddy, in a spiritual sense.  However, today is Prešeren Day, the Slovenian Cultural Holiday!  Spiritual mud and all, the imperative to celebrate love is constantly reinforced.  Let's submit.

My college-student status at my bank is expiring, which reminds me that about four years ago at this time I was opening a new bank account that would be relatively easy to access in Slovenia, where I would be visiting Marisa.  Most of the pictures you see below were taken by her steady hand.  It was a fun trip:

Fun.  This hostel was full of impudent French teens.

Slovenia is the kind of place that lurks in the back of your (my) mind--it could exist, and you could think about it, but what is there to think?

Things In My Life That Nest

 Spring is coming, kind of, with everything preparing to replicate itself.  My house is full of objects that strive to remind me of this.

Regular (czarist?  Stay with me) nesting dolls.

When I was first studying Russian, a man named Sasha would very occasionally come sing songs with our class.  Apparently, he attempted to come many times, but almost never succeeded.  In my memory this is because it was constantly snowing, because it snowed more in the past, and also Russia.  I think he lived in Windsor, which was the actual reason.