Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The thread of the story fell to the ground, so I went down on my hands and knees to hunt for it. This was at one of those patriotic celebrations, and all I saw were imported shoes and jackboots.

— Iman Mersal / “A Celebration”

Life struck me as a simple series of adversities, relatively easy to overcome, which led to a death that was perhaps not simple but was inevitable and thus didn’t merit thinking about. I didn’t realize, back then, that in fact that was what happiness was, what youth was and what death was. And although I wasn’t in essence mistaken about anything, I was making mistakes about everything.

— Andrés Barba / A Luminous Republic

His mind kept the airspace but sold the sun.
At night, he ordered his own sun, which was
Supposedly arriving soon, they said,
In entourages of azures and clouds.

— Rowan Ricardo Phillips / “Hole in the Sky”

Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said.

Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The perception among many political observers of a rejection of climate policies was a result of this campaign, rather than reflecting the reality of what people think, he added.

— Fiona Harvey / “‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy” / The Guardian

Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

— Kim Stanley Robinson / Pacific Edge

I’m winding down. The daylight is winding down.
                                                       Only the night is wound up tight.
And ticking with unpaused breath.

— Charles Wright / “Time Is a Graceless Enemy, but Purls as It Comes and Goes”

So often we begin and end our rides in the same place but return a slightly different person. We are, in all sorts of little and beautiful ways, changed by the journey. We ride to find things and to find ourselves.

— Peter Flax / Live to Ride: Finding Joy and Meaning on a Bicycle

What I’m Listening To:

The sky is blue
The sky is the deepest, purest blue I’ve ever seen
Points on the globe are just points on the globe

— Sonic Youth / “Eric’s Trip”