Posts in category "Random"

Wow.

A read­er sent me this let­ter (post­ed with her per­mis­sion, of course):

Almost a year after I had man­aged to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape — I acci­dent­ly end­ed up on your blog entry called “The begin­ning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feel­ings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to sup­press and scare off so that I nev­er again would open up to any­one, nev­er trust any­one and there­for nev­er end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again. At that time, all men were a poten­tial threath to me.

Reading and watch­ing that very blo­gen­try have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feel­ing and being ‘beau­ti­ful’ again. Your video grant­ed me the sen­sa­tion of how sin­cere, pure and giv­ing love and affec­tion tru­ly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remem­ber blocked out feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions and it made me start to long for some­thing that I had com­plete­ly shut out for over a year.

I have been want­i­ng to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would sur­vive and I did­nt want to make this into a sun­shine sto­ry if it real­ly was­nt — but after many down­hills, tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the­r­a­phy and social inter­ac­tion, I am there, I am back and I am stand­ing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifelov­ing in over­load and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that any­thing is pos­si­ble and that you can recieve “help” from the most unex­pect­ed sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beau­ti­ful? I know per­fect­ly well that you nev­er meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most dif­fi­cult times in my life and for that I will be for­ev­er grate­ful. Thank you.

Yours sin­cer­ly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

Featured at Perishable Press

10.0 is cur­rent­ly being fea­tured at Perishable Press, the first in a series of arti­cles explor­ing min­i­mal­ism in mod­ern web design. From the arti­cle:

Equivocality’s new min­i­mal­ist design is very impres­sive. The site appears clean, bright and refresh­ing and nav­i­gates with nat­ur­al sim­plic­i­ty. Jeff has elim­i­nat­ed clut­ter to focus on con­tent, which is strong­ly uni­fied with­in the site’s sharp, spa­cious design. Attentive vis­i­tors will rev­el in the site’s exquis­ite­ly restrained details, such as the sub­tle tex­ture pro­vid­ed by the bleached back­ground grid, or the dynam­ic inter­play between com­ple­men­tary type­faces, Arial and Avenir. Overall, the design’s the­mat­ic neu­tral­i­ty and uni­ver­sal approach inspire vis­i­tors to relax, focus, and enjoy.

In addi­tion to a detailed site review, Jeff Starr did a mini inter­view with me. I’ve come across Perishable Press sev­er­al times through my WordPress wan­der­ings and it was great to work with some­one I’ve always known but nev­er met.

An Unspoken Bond

I met her a few times. She was nice. Quiet. I was one of the more junior stu­dents and she would occa­sion­al­ly give me words of encour­age­ment.

But what endeared her to me was the way she inter­act­ed with him. A com­fort­able famil­iar­i­ty, an unspo­ken bond they nev­er overt­ly dis­played in pub­lic but kept hid­den between them, a secret they shared as if to reveal it was to spoil it.

Sometimes, they’d talk about their kids. They were get­ting old­er. Getting mar­ried. Moving out.

When they found the can­cer in her body, he sus­pend­ed class­es imme­di­ate­ly. He told us we could find new teach­ers with his bless­ing. I looked up their address and sent a bas­ket filled with pâté and dip­ping oils. That was over a year ago.

They buried her last Wednesday.

And as much as I’d like to do some­thing, any­thing to make him feel bet­ter — offer my con­do­lences, tell him he has an ear — there isn’t any­thing I can do. Nothing will make up for his loss.

Our bond will remain unspo­ken too.

Portraits of Tiana

Tiana smiles

If you gave me the hypo­thet­i­cal option of pho­tograph­ing any­one I want­ed, I’d ask if it could be some­one who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or anoth­er one of the 19th cen­tu­ry Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron him­self.

If I could choose some­one liv­ing though, I’d choose Tiana.

Continue read­ing “Portraits of Tiana”…