Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

. . . your world totters upon an unspoken labyrinth of questions. And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire.

— Cormac McCarthy / Cities of the Plain

I have taken to photographing
my every moment
in an attempt to locate
the place where I lost myself.

— Cynthia Cruz / “Phosphorescence”

Humans are by far the planet’s most destructive species, but we’re also the only species that has ever worked together to ensure other forms of life don’t go extinct.

— Connor Knighton / Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia to Zion Journey Through America’s  National Parks 

Make me dirt. 
Gone are the days of serenity. 
Guns are the words of humanity. 
I have no food but a thorn, 
No sport but a sigh. 

— Refaat Alareer / “O Earth (Land Day Poem)”

The Indian Empire is a despotism—benevolent, no doubt, but still a despotism with theft as its final object.

— George Orwell / Burmese Days 

The signs pointing to doing something right
and failing. Educated and I lost
my job. Bipolar and I cannot lose
my mind.

— Erica Dawson / “The Month When I Watch Joker Everyday”

Colonialism demands history begin past the point of colonization precisely because, under those narrative conditions, the colonist’s every action is necessarily one of self-defense. The story begins not when the wagons arrive, but only after they are circled. In this telling, fear is the exclusive property of only one people, and the notion that the occupied might fear the doing of their occupier is as fantastical as the notion that barbarians might be afraid of the gate.

— Omar El Akkad / One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

What I’m Listening To:

A man wants to smell like a man
To crumple a can in the palm of his hand
This is a man . . .

— Reverend Fred Lane / “The Man with the Foldback Ears”