Memorable Stuff I Read This Week
Reading is an act of creation; unlike any other medium, books require the mind to fabricate its own sensory experiences. So simple, so inspiring. And as no two minds could possibly be alike, no book has ever been alike for any two readers. There’s nothing passive about it! Your mind is doing the work of director, designer, actor, cinematographer, all in the blink of an eye.
Engage with your mind, read the book.
— Paul Theriault / Brookline Booksmith Newsletter
How I still want to sing despite all the truth
of our wars and our gunshots ringing louder
than our school bells, our politicians smiling
lies at the mic, the deadlock of our divided
voices shouting over each other instead of singing together. How I want to sing again—
beautiful or not, just to be harmony—from
sea to shining sea—with the only country
I know enough to know how to sing for.
— Richard Blanco / “America the Beautiful Again” / How to Love a Country: Poems
Car dependency is not inevitable—it’s a design choice.
A new international study reveals that Rome ranks among Europe’s most car-dependent cities, while Paris and Zurich demonstrate that a different model is possible.
Their success is not based on banning cars, but on creating compact, accessible cities supported by efficient public transport, walkable neighborhoods, and high-quality cycling infrastructure.
The lesson is clear: when cities bring people closer to jobs, services, and public spaces, dependence on the private car naturally declines.
The future of urban mobility is not about moving more cars-it is about giving people more choices.
— IMM Design Lab / Facebook post
Because Indigenous Peoples did not live in societies that the colonizers understood, we were considered not civilized enough to govern ourselves. “It is on the British race, whether in Great Britain, or in the United States, or in the Colonies, or wherever it may be, that rest the highest hopes of those who try to penetrate the dark future, or who seek to raise and better the patient masses of mankind,” Britain’s Lord Rosebery told an Australian audience in 1883.
— Tanya Talaga / The Knowing: How the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Continues to Echo Today – A Native American History and Canadian Memoir of Intergenerational Trauma
shit flows downhill he who loves power
gets to be king he who loves love
gets to be priest kings and priests
resurrect absolutes deny existence
of excrement and orifice suffering
is proof worship is suffering he who
suffers shit will not have power
he may have peace peace is indifference
— Serena J. Fox / “Power Not Peace”
It happens chronologically, but it does not happen chronologically. For days and then weeks and then months and then years I cannot sleep. As soon as the sun begins to fade, my senses go into alert. There is no dulling them. The prickling scalp, the raised shoulders, the darting glances. They are waiting for something. I keep my eyes closed, count sheep, the usual tricks, but it feels as though someone is peeling my mind back, wide open, bony bald, preparing me for some unholy incision. I lie as still as possible in the dark, stiff as a board, hoping I won’t be found.
— Emily LaBarge / Dog Days
I want only to be a worn-down stone
on the ruins of time,
a dolmen
raised above this forsaken graveyard’s
terrain
— Alain Mabanckou / “{I Want Only to Be a Worn-Down Stone}”
What I’m Listening To:
I turned twenty-three
Lying in my bed
Rain blew through the windows
A thousand little arrowheads
Cracks in the ceiling Splinter in my palm
There’s a car crash at the doorstep
And nothing left to hold on
— Swapmeet / “Halfway”
thee istsfor manity reader 