You can read this art project as an exploration of religion and belonging… or simply as someone working deftly with the joys created by surreality. You win both ways.

I felt something profound about this from the phrase “lost earrings, collected into a chandelier” (I anthropomorphize things some, and left-behind twins of objects make me a little sad), but when they got to the part about them coming with notes about grandmothers and daughters and other lost owners of the lost objects… well. There’s truth in the ordinary, and I think it gets overlooked a lot, especially when we’re talking about ordinary things from the world of women.

I think I’m glad I wasn’t there, but I have mixed feelings about it. And if you like that, you should also like this.

A generally, it seems, little-known thing: there are cottages in this P-Patch in Belltown that are the last freestanding single-unit homes in the neighborhood. They sit atop a slope, beautiful and old, and represent the types of homes that once filled our beloved drinking-and-barfing space. And these cottages house writers in residence for Hugo House, which I’ve always found kind of circular and perfect.

There’s a story in The Stranger this week from one of these writers (and a fine writer too – I like her work). So I got stuck at the picturesque part, the part where you get to live somewhere unique and unavailable to most people. I did not let my imagination run ahead to the part about a rat’s nest made entirely of used condoms.

Oh, Belltown. I had a surprisingly good time in you on Friday, but my point stands: you nasty.

A li’l history about the diner in St. Louis with my favorite name. Fun fact: in South County, there’s an Eat Right Dentures. I would like to live in a world where each distributed coupons for the other.

From my weird, admittedly unexplored point of view, I feel like the internet has kind of ruined a kind of exploring. The term “urban exploration” makes me roll my eyes a little for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Maybe it’s having little patience for people who would like you to think they’re terribly daring? I don’t know, but I do realize it’s my damage.

I am telling you this because, despite all of that, I really liked this story about the last days of the now-abandoned Clermont Hotel in Atlanta, and its photo tour of the peeling paint, weird artifacts, and other leftovers soon to be wiped out by its impending renovation.

Sometimes doofiness turns a corner and becomes weirdly brilliant.

Last night, I got to tell a friend about Seattle’s history of involuntary suicides. So it feels somehow appropriate to post this mortality record from 1665. It can always be weirder.

And for listening, I recommend this: PodCastle 294: Sand Castles. It has a touch more “aimless boyman is so inspired by pretty girl that he grows a spine and a purpose but still has nothing to offer” going on than I like, but its description of an air-conditioned hotel room fighting fruitlessly against the humidity and heat is so well-phrased and well-observed that I’m suggesting it to you.

There’ll be a bit more exploring and a lot less relying on the link roundup for proof of blog life next week, I promise. I’ve been pretty submerged in work and school these last several days, and I haven’t gotten to go outside or process and post pictures nearly as much as I’d like. But I’m still here and still making plans. I live, and I shall persevere. It’s the thing I do best, underneath it all.