Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

For me, the biggest shift was deciding that cycling wasn’t optional, that it was just as important as sleeping, work and family. Because without cycling, all of those things suffer. The cool thing is, once we start thinking that way, we naturally start prioritizing it.

— D. Klein / Everything’s Been Done

When I hear the young poets describe the algorithms
by which search engines will generate
sundry fragments and whimsical text-stubs

from which to cut-and-paste their latest
aleatory verses, I think, yes,
I too shall stick needles in my eyes…

— Campbell McGrath / “When I Hear The Young Poets”

Dreams are terrifying things. No-they’re humiliating. They reveal things about you that you weren’t even aware of.

— Han Kang / We Do Not Part

… Weapons are created. To / deter their own use. To make null their own / necessity.] / [Monster yourself. / Exert evil to dissuade evil / in others.] / [Preventative measures. As motive to conquer.]

— Mai Der Vang / “Notes in Rebuttal: What They May Have Known about the Possibility” / Yellow Rain

There are people, new people, living in big houses, on high floors, and for them the end of the world didn’t matter, because disaster had already been priced in. Safely hedged, they could dream their timeless dreams. For the rest of us there was no choice. History did not stop for us. It came howling on.

— Hari Kunzru / Blue Ruin

To bed, as sleep extinguishes
The planet in whirring dreams
Where slowness flows to be
Breathless, like a bicyclist.

— Tom Clark / “Where I Live”

I don’t know if this is what happens right before you die. Everything I have ever experienced is made crystalline. Nothing hurts any more. Hundreds upon thousands of moments glitter in unison, like snowflakes whose elaborate shapes are in full view. How is this possible, I can’t say. My every pain and joy, all my deep-rooted sorrows and loves, shine, not as an amalgam but as a whole comprised of distinct singularities, glowing together as one giant nebula.

— Han Kang / We Do Not Part

What I’m Listening To:

Diversity
Tribal
Transgender
Hispanic
Green
Fluoride
Female

— Kim Gordon / “Bye Bye 25!”