Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

I don’t think I have much time left, so I’m going to say what I want to say. Even if nobody’s listening, it won’t bother me any. I just want to say what comes to me, the way I want to say it. Because I really don’t think I’m going to be thinking or saying anything for much longer.

— Mieko Kawakami / “No Flowers”

my emptiness has a lake in it   deep and watery 
with several temperaments milk   cola  beer 

— Deborah Landau / “Dear Someone”

Populations of bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) that feed on humans boomed approximately 8,000 years ago — around the same time as the first cities started to form. The findings hint that these insects were the first urban pests. “When we started to live in cities, we brought all these people together, and they all had their own bedbugs with them,” says entomologist Warren Booth.

— Ian Sample / “Humans moving to ancient cities sent bedbug numbers soaring, say scientists” / The Guardian

Hands in my pockets, I came up with nothing
but keepsakes of dust, a dulled archipelago of air
stretching past my arms

— Christopher Buckley / “Desire”

The brazenness of [Donald Trump’s] self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.

— David Frum / “The Trump Presidency’s World-Historical Heist” / The Atlantic

my emptiness has an aqueduct in it 
selves rushing through channels 

dissolving    washing away in streaks 

— Deborah Landau / “Dear Someone”

Death means not being able to come back to this place, to this body. It’s the inability to ever come back, the goneness, that makes death death. But I’m not afraid of being gone, and I’m not afraid of death.

— Mieko Kawakami / “No Flowers”

What I’m Listening To: 

Never tips over
Stands up on his own
He is a blockhead
Thinking man, full grown
He comes well prepared

— Devo / “Blockhead”