Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

… I’d like to write
a children’s book called everybody dies. Upbeat, of
course, and pragmatic. You only got so many
days. Don’t think about death; when you’re
ready, death will think about you.

— D. A. Powell / “Positivity”

The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.

— Samantha Harvey / Orbital

I am a thimble of O blood cells 
bluffing each time 
to let other objects through me 
it is possible for the tender wish to become a bone 
to beckon to tend the animal and temper it 

— Asiya Wadud / “number four”

We know that Earth, if it’s not destroyed by us or an errant asteroid first, will likely be incinerated when the Sun expands into a red giant. Luckily, that probably won’t happen for at least another five billion years.

— Dr. Alastair Gunn / “Here’s how our Universe will (probably) end” / BBC Science Focus

To think there was a time I thought birds were kind of boring. Brown bird. Gray bird. Black bird. Blah blah blah bird. Then, I started to learn their names by the ocean, and the person I was dating said, That’s the problem with you, Limón, you’re all fauna and no flora.

— Ada Limón / “Calling Things What They Are”

Researchers are anxiously awaiting data from the midwestern state about a mysterious bird flu infection in a person who had no known contact with potential animal carriers of the disease. The data could reveal whether the ongoing US bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has reached a dreaded turning point: the emergence of a virus capable of spreading from human to human.

— Heidi Ledford / “Is bird flu spreading among people? Data gaps leave researchers in the dark” / Nature

Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

— Najwan Darwish / “A Violet Darkness”

What I’m Listening To: 

Did you read the news? I’m a bit confused
The gun fever is back, the gun fever
Rudeness and gun is the talk of this town
The gun fever is back, the gun fever

— The Valentines / “(Gun Fever) Blam Blam Fever”