The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“It is clear that reason and facts alone no longer suffice to move people and society to action.”

— David Suzuki, Tara Cullis, Miriam Fernandes, and Ravi Jain / What You Won’t Do for Love: A Conversation

“It was a culture constitutionally inclined to sacrifice the future in order to satisfy the present.”

— William Rosen / The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century

“It seems to me there is a surplus of terror and delusion in the ether, but spare few visions of how you and I, relatively ordinary people, might live otherwise. I believe the future of the world depends on those visions. If our descendants are alive and well in a hundred years, it will not be because we exported our unexamined lives to another planet; it will be because we were, in this era, able to articulate visions of life on earth that did not result in their destruction.”

— Lisa Wells / Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World

“I grew up on the border and though I left
I have brought it with me wherever I’ve gone.
Its line guides me, this long, winding thread of memory.”

— Alberto Rios / “Border Boy”

“Our social world, with its rules, practices, and assignments of prestige and power, is not fixed; rather, we construct it with words, stories, and silence. But we need not acquiesce in arrangements that are unfair and one-sided. By writing and speaking against them, we may hope to contribute to a better, fairer world.”

— Jean Stefancic / Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge

“Man, the egregious egoist,
(In mystery the twig is bent,)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient”

— Elinor Wylie / “Cold Blooded Creatures”

“My love of life is tentative so I write to ensure my survival. I try to write well so I won’t be caught shitting out of my mouth like a politician.”

— Jim Harrison / The Search for the Genuine: Selected Nonfiction, 1970-2015

What I’m Listening To:

“If we don’t grow outwards towards love
We’ll implode inwards towards destruction”

— Bjork / “Atopos”