The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“The first cop that handcuffed me / [was my father] / left me bound / till my fingers blued.”

— Torrin A. Greathouse / “On Confinement”

“What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”

— Henry David Thoreau / “Walking”

“Reflecting here, I think I understand something more of why Henry journaled, and why there is so much good writing in it, so little lazy writing, so many elaborate metaphors and full sentences. Writing is willing permanence.”

— Ben Shattuck / Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau

“Draw an imaginary map.

Put a goal mark on the map where you want to go.

Go walking on an actual street according to your map.

If there is no street where it should be according to the map, make one by putting the obstacles aside.

When you reach the goal, ask the name of the city and give flowers to the first person you meet.

The map must be followed exactly, or the event has to be dropped all together.

Ask your friends to write maps.

Give your friends maps.”

— Yoko Ono / Map Piece

“… In 2021, full-time, year-round working women typically earned 84 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts … CAP analysis also shows that if the gender wage gap continues to shrink at the rate it has between the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and 2021, median full-time, year-round working women will not achieve pay parity with men until 2056… Women and their families cannot afford another 30 years of suffering the negative economic consequences of the wage gap, and even this rate of progress is not necessarily guaranteed—particularly without any structural change.”

— Rose Khattar & Sara Estep / “What To Know About the Gender Wage Gap as the Equal Pay Act Turns 60” / Center For American Progress

“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didnt. I dont blame him. If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that he does.”

— Cormac McCarthy / No Country for Old Men

“When human beings look at other human beings in their midst and instead of seeing other human beings see a threat, see something monstrous, or don’t see at all, our very humanity is at stake.”

— Elizabeth Alexander / The Trayvon Generation

What I’m Listening To:

“I wonder where I am
I wonder if the water is swallowing the land
I wonder if an image is realer than the thing”

— Swans / “The Parasite”