Five Bullets 2.13.26: Love Is Too Strong

Feb 13, 2026

Hi Friends -

Happy Friday! Here’s what’s capturing my interest this week:

This week I’m reading Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, a collection of (sort-of) detective stories which contain all the elements of great writing Auster spoke about in this interview. On the face they seem like simple mysteries but engage with some deep topics. The stories have a rhythm and space to them which I really enjoy. Each story also delves into writing and reading which makes me wonder how much Auster was writing about himself (there’s even a character named Paul Auster). I read that he wrote City of Glass after receiving phone calls from people trying to reach a man named Quinn, making Auster wonder, ‘What if?’
I heard Parliament’s Flashlight blasting over the sound system at 9:30am while shopping this week. I always loved this tune, especially Bernie Worrell’s funky bassline, so I couldn’t help but dance and nod my head in the aisle. When I got home I found out that funk mastermind George Clinton stole the song’s melody from his friend’s Bar Mitzvah!

“The world is such a complicated place to be in. I think art gives you this kind of weapon for attempting to understand some of that profundity.” Megan Rooney’s paintings capture a sense of movement and depth in the city around her. In fact, you can see Rooney dancing around the canvas as she creates, translating the movement she observes into her paintings.
On Sunday February 13, 2000 the last Peanuts comic strip was published following creator Charles Schultz’s passing the day before. Back in December, I wrote about when Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on television.
From 1903 to 1908 poet Rainer Maria Rilke kept up correspondence with an aspiring poet. Rilke’s responses to the young man, compiled in Letters To A Young Poet, give us Rilke’s roadmap for the artistic soul: to feel deeply, to consider with patience, to write only if you truly must. Among Rilke’s words that have stuck with me are those on love:
“To love is good: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

What’s capturing your interest this week? Email me by hitting reply or by leaving a comment below.