Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

In the end, we are all existential pathfinders: We select among the paths life affords, and then, when those paths no longer work for us, we edit them and innovate as necessary. The tricky part is that while we are editing our trails, our trails are also editing us.

— Robert Moor / On Trails: An Exploration

[We Paint the Rocks Blue]

so they look less like tombstones.
So the riverbeds—dry now,

just paths for deer to walk—
seem less like ghosts.

— Rob Carney / “We Paint the Rocks Blue”

Accumulate, accumulate. That is the Moses and the prophets. Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production.

— Karl Marx / Capital

And you could say we’ve been living in clover
From Walt Whitman to Barack Obama.
Now a dictatorship of vicious spineless slimes
We the people voted in has taken over.
Once we’d abolished slavery, we lived in clover,
From sea to shining sea, even in terrible times.
It’s over. 

— Frederick Seidel / “Now”

There are nights that we remember
like words engraved on stone pillars
There are nights so long
so very long
they could form rivers of tears

— Irma Pineda / “There are nights that escape”

Boxturtles who enjoy bickering with lesbians are usually fervent proponents of the functionality of Bauhaus … Ptarmigans have a tendency to feel cold and often need five or six cardigans to get warm. Rattlesnakes love riding the monorail.

—Anne Tardos / “Considerations”

In one thunderous clap the Planet hurled 
an instant standstill to our haywire 
to our decapitation of mountain tops 
our butchering of tree-communities 
to our murdering sprees of elephant 
and whale, tiger infants 
and elders, mothers and girls

— Nancy Mercado /“2020 A Year to Forget“

What I’m Listening To:

In the lost motel
there’s rust in your eyes
birds in the sky
Maybe you lost your way
I’m already here

— These New Puritans / “I’m already here”