A Different Sort of List

This is the time of year to be making lists. Resolutions, things we'll change in the coming year, places we'll travel, etc. But towards the end of last year I came across a list of a different sort that I've been thinking about ever since.

It's this now-poignant list written by Nora Ephron of things she'd miss, from her book of essays I Remember Nothing, written about two years before her death. I don't mean to be morbid here, but I liked the idea of thinking about what you'd miss about life as a way to remember what you love in your life. And isn't that what resolutions push us towards? The good ones, anyway.

She first writes out a list of things she won't miss, like email, bad dinners, and taking off her makeup. What will she miss? Reading in bed, a walk in the park, butter, Paris... you can read the full list here, but the last two are my favorite:

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie


Photo by Stewart Mader

Writer's Envy

I have pretty serious writer's envy. A tiny part of me envies novelists, with their ability to create a story that draws a reader in for page after page. But what I really envy, in all writers, is the perfectly crafted  sentence. One that grabs me at first read and makes me wish there was a better way to collect sentences than underlining them in books or ripping them out of magazines and stuffing them into a box on my nightstand.

This article by Tom Scocca and Choire Sicha about the "the city beneath our city," the "viewless labyrinth" of Penn Station contained one of those perfect, envy-inducing sentences.



"Harried people surge through its concourses and tunnels in perpendicular lines, mean salmon in puffy coats going always upstream." Mean salmon in puffy coats! So perfect.

Image via bondidwhat on flickr.