String Gardens.

Dutch botanist Fedor van der Valk’s hanging string gardens – rooted in crocheted netting and suspended in mid-air – are living, breathing works of art. I'd like to fill a room with them - I can't think of a better cure for the soon-to-be winter blues. (Below, hand-illustrated care instructions by Elsa Dray Farges, a paper-mache artist whose work is a wonder in itself.)

See more at the String Gardens website, here.

Familiar Faces.

Are You Really My Friend? is a project by Maine-based photographer Tanja Hollander, who is attempting to photograph each of her 678 Facebook friends - some of whom are strangers - in their homes around the world. (So far, she's captured 300.)

She reflects: "I have crawled on the floor to play legos and read books with children I just met. I have been shown urban gardens, admired chickens and prize roosters. I saw a bee sanctuary being built in North St. Louis as part of an urban beautification project. I took part in a dance festival on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. I shared a bowl of gumbo in New Orleans with a friend I hadn’t met in real life. In Washington DC, I toured the West Wing with a friend who was a staff photographer for President Obama. I have listened to stories of family tragedy and strength, and the difficulties of surviving in this economic climate – especially for artists. Most importantly, I have learned about human kindness and compassion. I continue to be surprised by the number of people, especially (the real life) total strangers, who have opened their homes to me – offering me a place to stay, sharing their lives, their stories, their food, and their families while allowing my camera to document it all."

While I have very few Facebook friends who are total strangers, I wonder what the experience of spending a period of time with each would be like. Friends from elementary school; college dorm-mates; people I've met on trains, buses, and in hostels while traveling - I'd love the opportunity to catch up, see where our lives have taken us.

Visit Are You Really My Friend?, here. Found via Feature Shoot.

POV: Flight.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV will focus on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.

  

Earlier this year, I went for a run in the snow and fell, hard, hitting concrete face-first.  Blood dripped from somewhere - my nose, I guessed - and I walked home with a sweatshirt over my face.

No one was on the street to ask if I was all right. Am I all right? I remember thinking, and I didn’t know.

“I bet you’ll never run in the snow again,” someone told me months later.

“I haven’t run since,” I said.

Chandler's Travels.

"I am the one who will choose the squiggliest line on the map," says artist and travel enthusiast Chandler O'Leary. "I am the one who gets excited about driving 200 miles out of my way to see a giant concrete prairie dog." She continues: "I also have a thing for jackalopes, I brake for any coffee-pot-shaped building, and I have a bright yellow hat shaped like cartoon Swiss cheese." A woman after my own heart.

Chandler chronicles her adventures using watercolors, in Moleskine notebooks and on her website, Drawn the Road Again. Below, a few highlights.

Speaking of travel: with cooler weather approaching, my friends and I are planning on taking one weekend trip per month in hopes of avoiding winter doldrums. Later this month, we're thinking of going to Montreal. Then upstate, to see the leaves change. Then perhaps back to Brattleboro. (I'd also like to visit this "jackpot of rare cave pearls" - but that may have to wait.) East Coasters, do you have any recommendations for easy weekend trips?

See more of Chandler's work at Drawn the Road Again. Happy wanderlusting. 

Water.

Megan and I recently reread David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech "This Is Water" - whether you've read it before or are seeing it for the first time, I thought I'd share an excerpt today. I remember reading this bit for the first time years ago and thinking, someone just explained the meaning of life.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing...The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness."

Read the full speech, here, and have a wonderful Wednesday. (See also: George Saunders on kindness; Jonathan Safran Foer on being attentive.)

Photo by Max Wanger.