why lists? well, why not?
a list of list-like things
- this list
i have nothing to say. only to show. i will purloin nothing valuable and appropriate no ingenious turns of phrase. but the shards, the trash: i do not wish to inventory them, but simply give them their due in the only possible way: by putting them to use.
— walter benjamin, the arcades project
i have wanted to get better at listmaking. maybe all the productivity propaganda that has been floating around the internet has gotten the best of me? but i don't want to make lists to be productive, i want to make lists to remember things in relation to time and place. as a geographer, and often as a part of my job, i am making lists and creating geographic inventories. it is a part of my job i really enjoy. but beyond my work work (the work that pays the bills), i want to practice listmaking as a hobby and as a part of my journaling process.
over on my special.fish, i have some lists (below). in fact, special.fish is a space that celebrates listmaking. here are the lists i have made there:
🫦 mouth fuel
- tacos de lengua ⊘
- costillas en chile seco #
- aguachile negro ∫∫∫
- machaca con huevo
- escamoles con tuétano °
- chocolate y pan de yema
- smashburgers ≡
- trucha con salsa de chiltepín
- coffee ☕
- tlayuda o blanda con tasajo D
cosas que veo en mis paseos 👣
- crushed flower petals on road
- someone dropped their taco
- single running shoe, no laces
- orange rind, spiral peel 🍊
- cat beneath a truck, calico, cute
- broken headphones on cathedral steps
things to do from bed 🛏️
- knit 🧶
- write a love letter 💌
- eat breakfast 🍳
- listen to dock boggs 🪕
- get lost in google maps 🗺️
- wear double socks in winter 🧦
∞⊟ 2025 summer reading list [complete]
- the coming insurrection :: the invisible committee
- plague copie manipule robe reescriba este libro :: no solamente valeria mata
- lesser arts :: willam morrisason
- the age of wire and string :: ben marcus
- aka bpnichol :: frank davey
- work: capitalism, economics, resistance :: crimethink
- pacifism as pathology :: ward churchill
- microscripts :: robert walser
- wanderlust :: rebecca solnit
listmaking takes practice to turn it into a habit. beyond my daily checklists at work, and those i make for fun, i have been working on making simple physical lists for shopping, contacts, to-dos, and general daily observations. still, i often forget to reach for my notebooks, or just forget them at home. i will do better!
well, enough rambling, here is a list of a few famed listmakers:
| who | what they said | where |
|---|---|---|
| susan sontag | "i perceive value, i confer value, i create value, i even create — or guarantee — existence." | journals & notebooks, 1964–1980 |
| anne carson | "i could list things i saw but that's not why i put them together. i put them together by accident." | interview, 2004 |
| italo calvino | "each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles." | six memos for the next millennium |
| wisława szymborska | "i prefer movies. i prefer cats. i prefer the oaks along the warta. i prefer dickens to dostoyevsky. i prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. i prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case." | possibilities, 1972 |
| umberto eco | "the list is the origin of culture." | the infinity of lists, 2009 |