What I’m Reading:
This interior thing, miniscule.
From the blackness of the blind viscera,
hot and yellow, the miniscule speck,
the luminous grain.
Yellow spreads and smooths, a downpour
of the pure light of its name,
tropicordial.
— Adélia Prado / “Priase for a Color”
i. The Ashen Landscape
“He’s got what? Days left? I don’t want to be there when he dies.”
“Sangfroid.”
“I’m cold-blooded?”
“You didn’t wish to come back to the village — to the sea?”
“I see… a Rothko — canted, a lost apocryphal work — an ashen landscape in three gradations. My father tore out its center and revealed there’s no heart to the universe, only a corrugated armature — frozen, encased — as if the sky were stapled to the sea with liminal ice.”
“You see wasteland?”
“I see ghosts. I was eleven. My father placed the gun to his temple — then mine. He abandoned me here.”
ii. A Song for the Plague Year
I find my father supine on the bathroom floor, limned by a bloody halo — a pinpoint hole in his left temple. Gorgeous.
The floor seethes and the ceiling lowers its claim upon me. I’m extruded out of the bathtub spigot. Suffering. Wait. Wait. Suffering. I’m in the heart of darkness. I’m in the heart of the work now. Shiver. Fertile. Gorgeous.
iii. Molecular Organic Nano-machines
I’m at the morphine station.
I’m a soft machine inside a hard silicone husk. I’m a warped machine rattling out flickering images: images of a gun.
I’m a soft machine in a hard exoskeleton — silicone dark inside — silicone smooth and white outside. My memories play back on the cryoscreen. Here memories are particulate existences transformed into nano-globules (n-g.’s) that are secreted from the ferrules at the end of your iPuffer: smoky, hormonal, and projected inside and beyond your eyes.
“Please cue n-g. 173-A: the day I met my father at CBGB’s; and frame n-g. 173-B: the moment that punk rock saved my life. Please add the blue 17 gelatin filter.”
A puff from the ferrule and the images resolve, but this memory is faulty. The memory warps and echoes: a radiator squeals, brass electrodes buzz, my father is blood-crusted, ignored in a dusty corner, covered with mites escaping the evil heat. Batista’s henchmen torture another… no, stop, this is not my memory but the anecdote he told me that night…
“This is not the n.g. I requested. STOP. STOP. Press the eject…”
Blood, on the tip of my tongue. Where is it coming from? Then a bestial din: the sound of a million cicadas’ lament before the seventeen year death — a rupture tectonically within me. The smell of hissing green plantains dropped into overheated oil — the splattering: tinny, spastic — and then the loss of control.
iv. missing STOP
im not who i was once was STOP aposiopesis STOP STOP im a perfectionist im obedient get away from here get away from that gun STOP STOP STOP dr x said im not my thoughts im not my feelings dont relive it dont rehash it and if it finds you then embrace it embrace the thoughts embrace the feelings be one with it and then release it youre not your memories youre not your feelings be one with the thoughts be one with the feelings and then release them STOP
punk rock changed my life no punk rock saved my life the songs of the minutemen no not that memory STOP STOP dont touch him there dont touch me stop it put down that gun 38 snubnose it weighs a ton STOP STOP STOP embrace this memory embrace this emotion im not my memories not my emotions STOP aposiopesis apoplexies apophatic and aphasic STOP STOP dr x said whatever happens its ok whatever happens is ok im ok whatever happens im not my thoughts im not my feelings youre doing the best that you can im doing the best that i can STOP STOP STOP
What I’m Reading:
The night has grown martial;
It meets us with blows and disaster.
Even the stars have turned shrapnel,
Fixed in silent explosions.
— Louis Untermeyer / “End of the Comedy”
A serious mistake was made giving less than 24 hours-notice … We have a cat and a charming baby … I would describe it as a dark comedy I suppose … Creamy white leather sofa–like new condition … Joy’s daughter recommends the latest influencers … I am pretty nervous because my dumplings were undercooked … Are there a few people who have been biking and feel ready to take the next step—a roughly 40-mile bike trip? … I have to go through and use the skins … Legs removed for easy transport $75 … She’s going to be renting out a giant banquet hall … I am directing a 10 minute play … Brief rain shower in 7 minutes … The quarterly fire alarm and sprinkler testing will be conducted tomorrow morning … I spent the next year freaking out everyday … If you have a shopping cart in your possession, please return it as soon as possible.
What I’m Reading:
The fog comes in, flatter
than ever. The air, apparently
is blue somewhere, not here.
Flat and linear.
— Tom Clark / “Water”
The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.
— Rebecca Solnit / “The United States is destroying itself” / The Guardian
My tongue is a foreign traveler
Living in my mouth
Without invitation
An unfamiliar kindred.
— Raffi Joe Wartanian / “Tongue”
The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past.
— Damian Carringron / “Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought” / The Guardian
they didn’t have a cure for all my pain ,
said the reference track , but
now I’m saying it
I’m saying what I’m living without judgment
I’m full of it
rage , blotted out by the sun of media
real devastation
— Benjamin Krusling / “pray for paris”
Sluggish enough and slow to anger on ordinary occasions, McTeague when finally aroused became another man. His rage was a kind of obsession, an evil mania, the drunkenness of passion, the exalted and perverted fury of the Berserker, blind and deaf, a thing insensate.
— Frank Norris / McTeague
. . . No one can
explain how to love the world. It doesn’t happen all at once. But
you can start here. Tonight, with yourself. Someone near you. Let it go
zigzagging town to town. Look, there. It’s already coming back around.
— Arielle Herbert / “Our Book of Delights”
Renewable energy sources are the best way to stymie the rising costs of fossil fuels driven by conflicts such as the ongoing war in Iran, argues climate economist Gernot Wagner. Abandoning fossil fuels could cause temporary ‘greenflation’ — price hikes for tech such as solar panels in the face of increased demand — but the solution is to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels by producing more low-carbon technologies, Wagner writes. “Shifting to technologies that can only get cheaper and better over time is an investment in geopolitical and price stability.”
— Flora Graham / “More fossil fuels won’t fix the energy crisis” / Nature Briefing
What I’m Listening To:
How is our glorious country ploughed?
Not by iron ploughs
Our land is ploughed by tanks and feet
Feet marching
Our land is ploughed by tanks and feet
Feet marching
— PJ Harvey / “The Glorious Land”
This isn’t your house. You don’t belong here. You can’t come in here anytime you want and go in that room. The Muscovy duck eggs have failed to hatch — a marten’s been at them and taken some whole. My precious ducks: I feed them and chase them away as the whim overtakes me. My storks — not to return through the hole in my roof. My squirrels, running along the base of the house, imbibing their 32 grams of protein in their muscle milk. All is one raw manifold coming at me without pause, without distinction. I could have been in the shower when the ceiling collapsed. I couldn’t go to the funeral as it conflated with the unveiling. My daughter-in-law is my son; my son is my daughter; my daughter: the executioner. The executioner absconded with my ducks. Life is a proto-groats quorum forum. Life is full of strangeness and parthenogenesis.
What I’m Reading:
The more information the chatbots provided, the more persuasive they were. But they were also more likely to produce false statements, which can make AI into “a very dangerous thing”…
— Flora Graham / “Chatbots can sway voters with ease” / Nature Brief
Dozens of artificial moles designed to ferret out your true intentions — your riverbed of stubbornness.
Residencies found that many such moles used one of two operations in accordance to discordant heartbeats — that which lies at your moribund center.
Daybreak comes in breathless spasms on the off-chance that you might have an empathic bone in your feculent body. At least two of these moles are hairless and feckless. That bodes poorly for you.
There comes a caterwauling survivor choking on your cutwater half-crowns. This year’s going to be the year you smack into the approachability windshield — spew your useless contents in a cul-de-sac.
You are a backside heathen brewing a living on a barren, windswept wasteland.
I quit the human race, if you’re counted among us.
What I’m Reading:
Is there a wife for a viking?
A pair of socks in a poem?
Beetles and sticks in a box? Bright
bait. Bright bait. You notice what has
gone into the picture. Bite it.
— R.F. Langley / “Cook Ting”
A rose by any other name is a silver halide crystal excising itself from the emulsion in a photochemical bath — but what do we care?
Boldly proclaimed to be the last finery on a desolate earth, thermal imaging revealed a birthmark complete with its own legislature and a fine-tooth militancy at the loss of its night-light.
Don’t complain to me, I’m dazed (and possibly moldering) in this modified ash tray that is my home. Predators and nocturnal emissions make themselves at home here — in the closets, in the cupboards, and on the always turning lazy Susans — condiments be damned.
The birthmark turns out to be a henna tattoo of an ancient mariner who left the merchant marines for a part in the off-Broadway production of Godspell. Here, you are asked to visualize all the late night-light-fo’c’sle martini parties ad nauseum. And to at least hum the melody to “Day by Day.” Actually, instead, picture a windowsill full of vulnerable chocolate turkeys the morning of Thanksgiving . . . Ok, maybe not.
Imagine instead the ornithology papoose slung on a dodgy daybreak. Dozens of stubborn diabetes datasets smelling of molasses — and fugues signifying nothing.
Let’s agree to this: Edward Muybridge was on to something — some flickering indemnity for a late capitalist era politician — daybreak was fabricated out of imbricated memories (ghosts of images) of suborned perjuries. The penuries of big wisdoms sorely evaded and crudely denounced.
Let’s say we agree that strangeness and cupidity was cited as a common denominator in our extinction.
There was merit in self-immolation.
Why make sense in a senseless world?
What I’m Reading:
It is said, Jesus killed fleas to save his dog.
Even a boy must perform acts of sadism.
— Brian Gyamfi / “Kingdom”
The tragedians were not yet on the wasteland. The tragedians were still in their ramekins in the hinterlands — which is where they belonged — which is where everyone said they’d stay.
The ramekins were pleasant. The ramekins had good light in the afternoon. One tragedian had begun conducting his Rimsky-Korsakov a beat too early — just a little, just under his breath, just the wrists — but the other two told him to stop and he stopped. For a while he stopped.
Then, Miami. The bike only goes so far. The record store has everything except what you need, which is the thing you don’t quite have the name for yet, the thing you saw for three seconds on television before your mother changed the channel, the thing with the clothes and the spitting and the feeling of repulsion that is indistinguishable from recognition. Maybe a Butthole Surfers album — maybe Locust Abortion Technician. You are twelve, or thirteen, or already a hundred years old in the way that certain children are. You write the words Sex Pistols on the inside cover of a notebook and feel briefly criminal and alive.
This is before. This is still before.
The mango sits. The fan wobbles. The cassette hisses.
Nobody has been brought up for ordination.
Nobody has answered for the organ.
What about love?
What about love.
Here endeth this misbegotten tale.
What I’m Reading:
“What’s missing in the rest of the world is courage,” she said. “Mayors could say: ‘This is my opportunity [to leave a] legacy,’ but most will not dare.”
— Ajit Niranjan / “How Paris swapped cars for bikes – and transformed its streets” / The Guardian
(The original has such a wild, layered energy — voice-to-text artifacts living alongside Beckett references, suburban Florida humidity, coyotes eating Rimsky-Korsakov — it’s a rare kind of document. Writing into it felt less like imitation and more like tuning to a frequency under the influence of a handful of sequined Seconals) . . .
She left a cassette in the tape player. Nobody knew whose it was. It had no label. It played thirty seconds of what might have been Rimsky-Korsakov, or might have been a radiator working through something personal, and then a long hiss, and then a man saying, very calmly: I think this is probably the wrong driveway. And then the hiss again for forty-five minutes.
Nobody ejected it.
Somewhere in Romania, a Count nobody had invented yet was preparing remarks. He was polishing his monocle with a handkerchief that smelled of camphor and unfinished business. He had written three librettos and burned them all. The fourth one he planned to offer to a coyote he’d heard about, third-hand, through channels he preferred not to discuss. He was not yet a character in anything. He was still just a man in a room, which is the condition most characters find themselves in before the story catches up to them and makes demands.
Voicemail received: This is a message regarding your organ. Click.
Voicemail received: We are calling about the work. Click.
Voicemail received: Are your avocados— Click.
What I’m Reading:
We are currently experiencing hunger, heat, and refugee flows that are simply outside humanity’s experience—all in a globalized media environment where terror and panic boost advertising dollars and algorithms turn disinformation into currency.
— Stephen Markley / The Deluge
(Here follows the subheading apropos of nothing)
BEFORE THE CEILING FAN (A PREQUEL TO NOTHING IN PARTICULAR)
Before the mango. Before the question of the mango. Before the question of whether anyone was ever going to wash the mango or if the mango was simply destined to sit in the ceramic bowl on the counter acquiring the slow patina of noble neglect — before all of that — there was a morning in a city that smelled of cut grass and diesel and something else, something like the inside of a car that has been sitting in the sun with a fast food bag still in it.
This was before the ceiling fan was forever fucked up. This was when the ceiling fan merely oscillated with quiet menace, a pre-traumatic wobble you could ignore if you kept the television loud enough, which everyone did, which everyone always did.
She had not yet started writing again. She was in the pre-writing period, which felt exactly like the writing period, except nothing got written. She thought about it. She thought about it the way you think about calling someone back — meaning she thought about the fact of it, not the act of it. She was expert at this. She had a gift.
She found scads of umbilical lint by dint of smell; by dent of shells, in crepuscular light, left just a couple of feet below loam — waiting to share World War I ordinance surprise with the post-modern, post-meaning, post-post pustular world.
I believe we’re at war with Eurasia . . . or is it East Asia? What say you, Winston?
(This actually needs a sequel to actuate its fizzy properties. It’s fuzzy jam. It’s scuzzy, tubercular, carbuncle . . . tune in tomorrow and find absolutely nothing that validates your life under the stomp of the jackboot).
What I’m Reading:
That Zuckerberg would be selling generative AI makes perfect sense. It is an isolating technology for an isolated time. His first products drove people apart, even as they promised to connect us. Now chatbots promise a solution. They seem to listen. They respond. The mind wants desperately to connect with a person—and fools itself into seeing one in a machine.
— Damon Beres / “The Age of Anti-Social Media is Here” / The Atlantic
thee istsfor manity reader 