Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

the noise would weave a net to bounce against: no wonder
she’d lean from the edge and leap, yes, leap
straight into it, falling
through a bubble bath of air

— Jack Anderson / “Girl on a Roof”

This is the crucial distinction between the rich, or the owning class, and the rest of us. Most of us make our money from working, but for the rich this is only sometimes the case. The ability to not just have a giant income, but to have a giant income from assets your family already owns, is an economically existential distinction.

This position of ownership of the productive economy, and the social and political power arising from that, is what defines the ruling class, and it goes back centuries to the advent of capitalism in the enclosure movement.

Economist Douglas Dowd recalls the origin of capitalism in “the exploitation of workers whose farming land had been commodified by “the enclosure movement.” Those who had worked the land, free but far from rich, were swept off the land…and were transformed into desperate and powerless laborers.” The land became private property, its new owners the ruling class.

— Rob Larson / “As Much Power As the President: How Billionaires Became More Influential than World Leaders” / Mastering the Universe

in unison we sing:
we have no future but ourselves
our infinite realms contain our past
all we will ever feel are
New Periods of Pain!  

— Daniel Borzutzky / “Painblank”

We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.

— David Neiwert / “The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About” / The American Prospect

I’m a Keats bot
so are you
our living hands
held toward each other
on the internet
solution sweet

— Maureen N. McLane / “Haptographic Interface”

This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before . . . The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic.

— Maximiliano Herrera, to Jonathan Watts in interview / “Unprecedented number of heat records broken around world this year” / The Guardian

When I listen for what will not appear,
I hear my own voicelessness amplify.
My hearing is most acute when I’m naked
in front of the bedroom mirror.

— Rusty Morrison / “To measure internal activity while it turns all I know to rubble”

What I’m Listening To: 

The freak in my reflection sparkles into view

— Kim Deal / “Crystal Breath”