Anatomy of a Disappearance
I was catching up on some old NPR podcasts this weekend and happened to catch an interview with Hisham Matar, a Libyan-American author who now lives in London. Inspired by his own experiences, Matar has written a fiction novel called Anatomy of a Disappearance that describes the effects of a father’s disappearance on his son. Matar’s own father, a Libyan dissident, was imprisoned in 1990 then disappeared somewhere in the prison system and the family still doesn’t know whether he’s alive or dead.
In listening to his story, I was reminded of the many missing people we hear about every day.
I think we all inherently understand the need for “closure” — even if the outcome is not the one we hoped for.  But I have never heard anyone put it as eloquently as Mr. Matar:
“When somebody dies, it’s final, or at least to us it seems final. But when somebody disappears, the possibility of them existing in the same moment, in the same day, the same year, under the same moon, under the same sun, is a very vivid possibility. And what it does to the nature of the grief is uniquely different from the nature of the grief and longing when somebody dies.”
You can read more and hear the entire interview with NPR’s Renee Montagne here:Â Hisham Matar on the Power of Libyan Fiction (NPR) .
You can see and hear Hisham Matar read from Anatomy of a Disappearance here: Hisham Matar reads from Anatomy of a Disappearance
3 Things I Can Do Better This Week
Chris Brogan had a great list of awhile back of “10 Things You Could Do Better Today”. A few really resonated with me this week:
1. Improve your response time to requests.
…..
7. Resolve three pieces of unfinished business, no matter how painful.
8. Live closer to your goals and your main points of focus, and less by reaction.
…..
Check out the rest of the list here.
Incredible Time-Lapse Video of “A Day in California”
Really incredible time-lapse and tilt-shift video created by Ryan and Shari Killackey. The video, a year and a half in the making, was created from over 10,000 photos taken throughout California.
Improvise…and Freak Out…
This weekend is all about Improvisation…. ending in a Free Jazz Freakout!
“Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small steps.â€
— David Lloyd George
Image: “leap” by tricky [via flickr]
Going up!
“Life is an escalator: You can move forward or backward; you can not remain still”
– Patricia Russell-McCloud
Image: “escalator” by trentroche [via flickr]
If You Love What You Do….
“If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.”
Clowns are Creepy…
I ran across this mural for The Children’s Hospital the other day on Guerrero St. in San Francisco. It’s a little creepy for a Children’s Hospital mural….
