The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“The human eyelid is not teartight (happily for the human eye).”

— Samuel Beckett / Murphy

“Mom makes a list of chores for my brother and I to avoid being slapped
Or asked to assume the position from across the room.”

— Diana Marie Delgado / “People to Run From”

“hope you can find a poem or two in these; if not return those you cannot use, or the works. rejection is good for the soul. my soul is now a mule.”

— Charles Bukowski / On Writing

“It was my mother who taught me the one worthwhile thing: when they ask if you like what you see in the mirror, pretend that what they mean is what’s behind you—the shower curtain, the tile, the wallpaper, whatever’s there.”

— Garielle Lutz / “Mine”

“Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even
As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.”

—Horace / from “Ode I. 11”

“… What if part of the reason so many of us have failed to act is not because we are too selfish to care about an abstract or seemingly far-off problem-but because we are utterly overwhelmed by how much we do care? And what if we stay silent not out of acquiesence but in part because we lack the collective spaces in which to confront the raw terror of ecocide?”

— Naomi Klein / This Changes Everything

“Neary leaned against the Pillar railings and cursed, first the day in which he was born, then—in a bold flash-back—the night in which he was conceived.”

— Samuel Beckett / Murphy

What I’m Listening To:

“And I
What if I’m a weirdo?
Maybe I’m a weirdo
What if I’m a weirdo?
Maybe I’m a weirdo”

— Girl Scout / “Weirdo”