We'll be turning off our devices for the next five days. This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for time spent away from the computer, time spent having adventures elsewhere. Here are some other things I've been thankful for lately.

• Off The Shelf: Maud Newton's life - a novel, not a memoir; Zadie Smith: An essay is an act of imagination.
  Thoughts on narratives, essay, and fiction, from Maud (It was after discussing Margaret with my mother that I stopped trying to talk about my experiences. Instead, I became obsessed with the notion that I would, eventually, write them down.) and Zadie (There is a certain kind of writer – quite often male but by no means exclusively so – who has a fundamental hunger for purity, and for perfection, and this type will always hold the essay form in high esteem. Because essays hold out the possibility of something like perfection.).


• Stealing Souls by John Rosenthal
  Alice recently directed me towards Sun Magazine (buy the December issue; Alice is in it), and as I was browsing their site, I came across this great essay from 1983 — an essay that doesn't feel 25 years old in the least — on what it means to photograph other people. I'm also in the middle of Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment, and will have plenty more to say about taking pictures soon enough.


• late afternoon corn maze sunlight
  Jess R. has conspired with the heavens to get me to move back to Ohio.


• When My Baby's Beside Me - Big Star
  Currently written on my notebook in big swirly letters: "Todd is Temporary; Alex is Always."


• All of those amazing folks in the right-hand column. Go read their stuff; it will make you a better person. Or go have some adventures of your own...