Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
- Bertolt Brecht.

Welcome...

Personal websites seem so old-fashioned these days, in the post-Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram era. Like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the Pacific—a bit about me, a few dusty photographs, things I wrote when I had twice the hair and half the wrinkles. I was planning on reviving this and adding writing, but I've been having too much fun hiking, traveling, fostering cats, bingeing podcasts and lectures, hitting the gym, and enjoying the death throes of the pandemic. Writing is a sedentary, solitary thing, and I gotta say I'm in the mood for neither these days.


What I'm up to...

My goal for the season is to live more than write -- maybe get some photos and travel word vomit up on Word Press, rather than excavate my life further in order to finish a memoir I'm still living through. Hopefully I'll live long enough to write that a bit later. I'm trying to be more of an optimist, and trusting my tits not to rise up and kill me (breast cancer is a maternal family tradition, sort of like Christmas spritz cookies) is an act of good faith.


In the past few years, I've managed to get to Guanajuato, Mexico; Sedona, Arizona twice; and Canyonlands, Moab, and the Arches in Utah. Not to mention local havens like Lake Crescent, Lake Quinault, the Hoh Rainforest, Kalaloch Beach, Sol Duc, and Snoqualmie snow park. Washington also has amazing mountains to ruin your knees on only 20 minutes from the pantless drunkards and meth lab RVs of downtown Seattle -- Tiger and Cougar Mountains near Issaquah, Mount Pilchuck's Wallace Falls and Heybrook Lookout. Wilderness, brace yourself. Bape is coming. 


Click for list of current, recent, and upcoming books.

Books I'm Reading

Isaac Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare
Susan Cain - Bittersweet
Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Dilemma, How to Change Your Mind (again), and This Is Your Mind on Plants (again)
Harry Potter in Spanish
Brian Muraresku - The Immortality Key
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil


Books I Was Reading But Are Now Under My bed for Later

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker
Walter Isaacson - The Code Breaker
Stephen Fry - The Fry Chronicles
Fyodor Dostoeveky - Crime & Punishment


Books of the Past Few Years (Favorites have a *)

* Max Tegmark - Our Mathematical Universe
* Stephen Greenblatt - The Swerve
Viktor Frankl - Yes In Spite of Everything, * Man's Search for Meaning
Sam Harris - * Making Sense, Waking Up, The Moral Landscape
Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind, The Happiness Hypothesis, The Coddling of the American Mind
Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now
Yuval Noah Harari - * Sapiens, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Roger Scruton - Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition
Oliver Sachs - * On the Move, Musicophilia
Tara Westover - Educated
Stephen Greenblatt - * Will in the World
Jordan Peterson - 12 Rules of Life, Maps of Meaning
* Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe, Until the End of Time
Stephen Fry - * The Ode Less Traveled
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Gretchen Rubin - The Happiness Project
Karen Armstrong - The History of God
Alain De Botton - Religion for Atheists, book on Happiness
* Lawerence Kraus - A Universe from Nothing
* Neil DeGrasse Tyson - The Sky Is Not the Limit, Death By Black Hole, Starry Messenger
Ben Shapiro - The Right Side of History


Books I'm Interested In But Will Honestly Only Read 1 or 2 Of...

Steven Pinker - Better Angels of Our Nature, Blank Slate, The Language Instinct
Sam Harris - Free Will, The End of Faith, Lying, Letter to a Christian Nation
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Death By Black Hole
Charles Taylor - A Secular Age
Paul Strathern - Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes
Bertrand Russell - A History of Western Philosophy, Why I Am Not a Christian
Brian Greene - The Fabric of the Cosmos
Yuval Noah Harari - Homo Deus
Emile Durkheim - The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Immanuel Kant - A Critique of Pure Reason
Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation
Carlo Rovelli - The Order of Time
Seb Falk - The Light Ages (medieval science)
Russell Kirk - The Conservative Mind, From Burke to Santayana
Gilles Deleuze, Hugh Tomlinson - Nietzsche and Philosophy (Columbia Classics in Philosophy)
Stanley Rosen - The Mask of Enlightenment (Nietzsche)
John Mark Alexander Green - Atheopaganism: An Earth-honoring path rooted in science
Richard Polt - Heidegger: An Introduction

I'm enjoying the whole fitness thing, though my plan to save dough by working out at home with my adjustable weight set and resistance bands took a left turn, and I seem to have acquired not only an LA Fitness Signature membership, but a weekly trainer as well. His biceps resemble snow tires and he's whipping my this nearly 50-year-old carcass into shape. Yes, 50, as of August 27, 2023!! Am I officially too old now to sleep with a Gund stuffed bear? It is for my sleep posture.


A few older writing pieces...


Puccini's Piano Speaks

An essay

I took a class on writing experimental essays a couple years back at Hugo House, which hosts writing events, classes, and writers in residence in Capitol Hill, Seattle. This one played with point of view, and is from the perspective of an inanimate object—legendary opera composer Giaccomo Puccini's piano.


Hell on Wheels

LA Weekly

Found an old article on the joy of having my lemon of a car stolen.

Neutral Milk Hotel

No Ripcord

Old piece on my favorite short-lived and much-mythologized band.

Seattle Arts Subscriptions
Some girls love shoes.
I save my pennies for the arts.

I gave up the performing arts during the pandemic and have yet to rekindle most of them, but here's a list of my favorites. I still have season tix to Seattle Shakespeare.

Pacific Northwest Ballet
Seattle Shakespeare Company
Paramount Theatre (through STG)
Book It! Repertory
ACT Theatre
Seattle Opera

Town Hall Seattle
Seattle Art Museum
KEXP
Hugo House
SIFF Cinema
Annex Theatre
Theatre off Jackson
Seattle Rep
5th Ave Theatre
Seattle Symphony
Neumos
The Showbox


Podcasts

Now that I'm working out and don't need the volume up (love this Metabolic 360 modularized workout), I listen to a ton of podcasts in the morning -- mostly on physics, AI, philosophy, consciousness, brain science, and the arts. A few favorites: Sam Harris's Making Sense, Lex Fridman, Eric Weinstein's The Portal, On Being with Krista Tippet, Absolutely Mental with Sam Harris and Ricky Gervais, Poetry Unbound (from On Being, with Pádraig Ó Tuama), Hidden Brain, TED Talks Daily, The Dr. and the DJ (KEXP DJ John Richards and his wife Amy), Jordan Peterson, The Science of Happiness, Sean Carroll's Mindscape, Neil deGrasse Tyson's Star Talk Radio, The Experiment (from The Atlantic), Live on KEXP and KEXP Song of the Day

What I'm Reading Online

The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) is the 14-year-old child of Bulgarian-born Maria Popova, who single-handedly pens and packages the articles and art each week around a theme. Her knowledge of art, philosophy, literature, science, culture, history, religion, music, psychology, and anything else you can imagine is astounding.



All materials copyright 2023 by Kristin Fiore.
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