On the calendars I keep im my house I mark the beginning of spring training as the first day of summer and the last day of the World Series as the last day of summer. I was delighted when I read this from Bart Giamatti in Austin Kleon's weekly wrap-up—

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Thoughts accidentally thrown together become a frame in which more may be developed and exhibited… Having by chance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and brought them into juxtaposition, they suggest a whole new field in which it was possible to labor and to think. Thought begat thought.

Via Austin Kleon

For a long time after I got married, I used to have this vague idea that the purpose of marriage was for each partner to fill in what the other lacked. Lately though, after 25 years of marriage, I’ve come to see it differently, that marriage is perhaps rather an ongoing process of each partner’s exposing of what the other lacks….Finally, only the person himself can fill in what he is missing. It’s not something another person can do for you. And in order to do the filling in, you yourself have to discover the size and location of the hole.

—Haruki Murakami via Austin Kleon

Margaret Renkl finds a solution for dealing with our times that is much like Austin Kleon’s.

In recent years, I’ve been looking for a solution to this conundrum. How is it possible to be a well-informed citizen and simultaneously a calm, mostly cheerful, more or less sane human being?

The closest thing I’ve found to a workaround is the right dosing. I follow the news during daylight hours. At night, I read a book.

Sometimes it’s a poetry collection I can finish in an evening. Sometimes it’s a memoir or a thick, juicy novel that will carry me through a week or two. Often it’s an essay collection, a genre which comes with those lovely, built-in stopping places that make it easier to close the book and avert a wrestling match with the clock.

Short Books Are Perfect for Our Distracted Age