So she’s says to him, “when I was younger and finally got a prescription for Prozac and Lithium I thought my life was finally pivoting.”
He was nonplussed. He’d been talking about the horses and such.
But she went on: “I hoped the medication would uptake all that awful brain chemsistry and wash my brain in the good stuff. That the darkness that pervades my thoughts, my emotions, my outlook would somehow lighten…”
But he’s still thinking about trifectas and quinellas, and what if the odds are correct for that pedigree. He’s still engrossed in the Daily Racing Form.
What’s that?
The horse racing newspaper, dear.
Okay, and then?
Oh, she hadn’t paused a beat, she was still wound up, she said: “I never wanted to be an ‘up with people’ type person, and attend Sunday services, and say things like ‘praise the lord’ and ‘thank you, Jesus’ in conversation—I still wished to enjoy David Lynch, Joy Division, and Samuel Beckett, without having to live the life portrayed in their art. But much to my amazement the medication—”
And he hit her!
Don’t even!
He hit her with that Daily Racing Form. I remember it was the July 14, 1987 issue. The newsprint left that date marked upon her forehead.
It was the darndest thing!
What I’m Reading:
The fishermen spend Sundays singing karaoke salsa classics on the public beach, their voices trained by salt and resignation.
The reef rests, regenerates. The seafloor is a neon feast. Elkhorn corals celebrate, turtles come close to shore.
And he must hold on to the sink and stand firmly on his left leg because his right leg is useless. It doesn’t respond to his command all Henry can manage is to drag it along and he doesn’t dare stand upon it because he doesn’t trust it to hold him up.
In this fashion Henry starts his day, everyday. He doesn’t know how he will go on. But he goes on, and the next bit is the worst part of every morning.
Henry?
What, already?
What does regret mean?
A metal machine skronk segues to a lower register followed by a thin glass skittering from the closet.
Nothing. Nothing but the black suit, white shirt, black tie and demon shoes. A glint catches his eye, and there in the corner a drunken spider makes it’s way across it’s derelict web toward a sidereal moth in its throes.
“Henry, you were such a good boy. So tender to the touch. Remember the day you discovered the Sassaby’s? All you said for days was, I am a sassy Sassaby. Oh, you were such a dream, Henry”
Henry rotates the bird cage, shakes it, places his ear to the felt pad on the bottom.
It’s not that Henry is on the road to perdition as much as he is in Satan’s bowels. And then it all begins again.
What I’m Reading:
a stone near a cemetery suggests why give birth to children at all
The city of Boston will ramp up protections for bike lanes, including cracking down on illegal parking, and more broadly revive other street safety programs following the death of a City Hall transportation planner who was struck and killed by a truck last week while cycling on busy Tremont Street.
— Niki Griswold / “‘We just want to see change’: Wu must act on vow to make streets safer following city planner’s death, advocates say” / The Boston Globe
The heatwave that affected England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak, scientists have estimated. Across the whole of the June heatwave, plus the one in May, about 2,700 people lost their lives prematurely.
The data starkly illustrates the danger of extreme heat, which is being supercharged by the climate crisis. More than 40% of the people affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused global heating to date, according to the analysis. For comparison, about four people die each day as a result of road traffic collisions and about 35 a day because of alcohol and drug use, according to government statistics.
— Damian Carrington / “May and June heatwaves killed about 2,700 people in England and Wales, data suggests” / The Guardian
Sadness, fertilizer of my joys. It blocks us, this wire mesh spilled from inkwells everywhere.
— Jean Cocteau / “Soft Eyes”
I think there have been three World Cups: one in Canada, one in Mexico, and one in the United States, and I think they’ll all be remembered very differently.
Canada’s World Cup has been the most low-key, but what will be remembered is that for the first time they went deeper into the tournament – and with an overwhelmingly Afro-Caribbean version of Canada on the pitch, whereas normally the sporting representation of Canada would be big white dudes playing ice hockey. That’s been an extraordinary moment, particularly for a country where 30% of the population wasn’t even born there.
If we’re talking about vibes and energy, then Mexico won the World Cup. The Azteca has been an extraordinary experience – one of the most beautiful and historically weighted stadiums, for all the controversy around its rebuilding. Mexico showed North America what a football game is meant to sound and look like: the atmosphere at the Mexico-England game was extraordinary, very few World Cup games can match it. And Mexico coped with mass protests, teachers’ strikes and protests over the disappeared, all without resorting to tear gas – which, of course, was Brazil’s method in 2014. I wish I’d spent the World Cup there.
The United States is another matter. The charge sheet is very long, for both the federal government and FIFA, and both of their presidents. It’s been ugly: eye-wateringly expensive tickets, rapacious resale sites, hydration breaks turned into ad breaks for Fox, the infantilising kick-off countdown, and of course the disgrace and desecration yet to come: the 30-minute half-time show in the final match.
And then the federal government – above all the meanness, the cruelty, the pettiness of refusing entry to the Somali referee, of effectively racially profiling the Senegalese and the Uzbeks at the border, making the Iranians stay in Tijuana, and above all Trump boasting about fixing the Balogun red-card – infecting everything with the same bottomless cynicism that consumes what’s left of his soul.
— David Goldblatt / “Football 1-0 Fascism” / equator.org
So much for the fighting and the sex, I want to be alone with you in the next room.
— Kathleen Ossip / “Marriage”
Many enemies of the United States seek to undermine faith in American elections—but “no regime, no spies, no saboteurs have yet matched the damage that America’s own president did tonight.”
— Tom Nichols / “Trump Just Did More Damage to American Elections Than China” / The Atlantic
Suddenly it became all too apparent that riding in a bike lane, being adept at handling two wheels, or knowing the location of every jagged pothole, dangerous pinch point, or blind intersection was not enough to simply stay alive, much less avoid a bone-breaking brush with a multi-ton vehicle.
— The Editorial Board / “Louisa Gag’s death demands a full investigation — and an end to Wu’s slowdown on bike lanes” / The Boston Globe
What I’m Listening To:
I don’t want to be lectured. I like to burn my food up. Flames baptise the filth of plastic surfaces that has migrated onto my precious natural ingredients.
There is no lodestar here. All is coal, bituminous and gas fires. Everyone wears a sheen of black. Coal dust and gas floats through the atmosphere. The air is sharp with the tang of petroleum and machine fluids. The ground is never dry, always a thick sludge that swallows the heels of your boots and sucks them off your feet. The food tastes of petrochemicals and your sense of taste is attenuating quickly.
There are tendrils of perfume pin pricking the air and you follow that scent to the end of a street where the bodies are piled chest high. At the foot of the mound a boy with a tank on his back is spraying the bodies with the sweet scented aerosol. A moment of beauty among the nightingales. A twist of sobriety in a world full of drunkenness. This is what you live for in this world.
What the child does is what every child his age does. The aerosol not only kills the bacteria on the decaying bodies and counteracts the stench, but also hastens the decomposition of the bodies. There are many neighborhood dumping areas about the entrepôt — just like the Middle Ages, some say, back in the days of the death carts and plague pits.
There was no place left to put the countless dying and recently dead, the land would tolerate no more bodies; there wasn’t any free space. There was a constant coming and going from these dumping areas. People would come with hands and arms full of family members and leave lighter, empty handed.
The gas vents punctuate the night far into the distance. The belching stacks and fires from these vents are constant. You’re happy that what little you can see of the sky, during what passes for daylight hours these days, is not the continuous fog of your childhood.
Of late some wisps of anemic blue sky have been spotted. The weather has cooled too. There’s been some talk of a returning atmosphere, but mostly uneducated conjecture you figure. What does anybody really know about what’s happening beyond the barrens. No one is certain. Everyone that has ventured out in recent memory has never returned, and even though you’ve given thought to it, you’ve never seriously considered it. Until now.
“Hey, wake up there. Move along.” A soldier prods you in the shoulder blade with her truncheon.
“Oh, fuck off,” you say. “Miserable pig.”
“Oy, you!” A larger soldier approaches from an angle you did not expect. “Ey, fucker, move the fuck on.”
A blow to your temple sends you cantering down the street. You wobble. A couple of kids playing with garbage snicker and run. The others walking by avert their eyes and move in wide arcs around the soldiers. You run back to your room, unsteady at first but then gaining momentum and resolve. You hear the soldiers laugh as you run. You’re not worth their time and energy. You decide you’re leaving tomorrow night, after your shift. You’ll venture into the barrens, anything is better than this dead place.
“William, you’re bleeding, there on the side of your head. You didn’t tangle with the police again, did you?”
You head directly for your side of the room, past the sheet hung up between you and your mother.
“William?”
“Shut up. Shut up, please. I’ve had it with you, with the cops, with The Factory and with this god damned place. I’m going to leave. I’m heading out tomorrow after my shift. I’m going out beyond the barrens.”
You tear the sheet of its moorings. “You can have this shit hole all to yourself after tomorrow.”
The call of The Factory siren next door rattles the window. The shift is changing. Doors in the hall open and close in unison, and your mother aghast and about to speak automatically turns and leaves the room and heads for The Factory.
You stare at your broken dirty hands, gnarled from the digging, always digging. Somewhere there must be more, something different. It can’t all be like this, you think.
What I’m Reading:
But inevitably, some things must be lost to the driving community, whether that be parking spaces or extra traffic lanes, if streets are to be made safer for everyone.
Those who oppose giving up any road space for cyclist safety should understand just how harrowing even short bike rides through the city can be, as Gag’s death tragically underscores. Many would-be cyclists will tell you that is the main reason they will not ride a bike in the city.
— The Editorial Board / “Louisa Gag’s death demands a full investigation — and an end to Wu’s slowdown on bike lanes” / The Boston Globe
End abruptly, midway through the narrative, and append a long footnote that elucidates nothing.
Add Autocorrected Texts and Overheard Conversational Automatism.
Include two single word chapters: “Isotope” and “Gunplay” on pages 33 and 66, respectively.
Include the anecdote about the Girl Scout merit badge you were awarded for “Sailing.”
Title the work:
Lime Automatic See Thru Three Cats Aging in the He Code Other Using Nixon No-Stow Straws
Include the anecdote about Harry and Jerry not having cottage cheese on their plates at your Sweet Sixteen BBQ. And how Stone took the big wooden spatula and rammed it in Orpheus.
Remember people are usually pessimistic about rain.
Include the scene where you make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every potential boyfriend on the first date.
Include the line: “I’m a hipster.”
Don’t disappoint everyone.
No one was mad at you.
Remember what Dr. Greene said:
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic, and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
Include the words THE END.
What I’m Reading:
Although many people find it helpful to discuss their feelings with ChatGPT, mental health experts have warned that users who have intense conversations with the chatbot can develop beliefs that are potentially harmful. The phenomenon is sometimes called “AI psychosis,” although the term is not a medically recognized diagnosis.
OpenAI estimated last month that 0.15 percent of its users each week — more than a million people — show signs of being emotionally reliant on the chatbot. It said a similar number indicate potential suicidal intent
— Gerrit De Vynck and Jeremy B. Merrill / “We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for.” / The Washington Post
There is no point In doing anything, There is no resisting The monstrous god Who devours His own children.
— Fernando Pessoa / “Ode I”
Cars are, without exaggeration, one of the most significant and negative environmental, political, social, and cultural forces in the history of humanity … Instead of unbounded freedom and rugged self-reliance the never-ending proliferation of automobiles has delivered a host of costs and burdens. Among them are the demolition of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to make way for expensive car infrastructure like freeways.
— Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon & Aaron Naparstek / Life After Cars
My disorder stacks to the sky. Those whom I loved were attached to the sky by an elastic. I turned my head … they weren’t there.
— Jean Cocteau / “The Red Packet”
Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess energy in the Earth system, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and gas. That imbalance hit a record 23 zettajoules last year, more than double the average of the previous two decades.
As a result, the oceans are warming at an accelerating rate. In 2020, the amount of heat being added to the oceans was equivalent to about five Hiroshima bombs per second. Last year, it was closer to 11 Hiroshima explosions per second. The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned “Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.”
— Jonathan Watts / “On the Longest Day of the Year, Ocean Surface Temperatures Hit a Record High” / Mother Jones
Where there is violence there is always a trace of an echo buried deep deep down
— Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme / Until we became fire and fire
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
We don’t know anything You don’t know anything I don’t know anything about love But we are nothing (Whoa-oh-oh) You are nothing I am nothing without love
— The Magnetic Fields / “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure”
thee istsfor manity reader 