Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The whole world was turning towards death.

— Anna Kavan / Ice

I moved through rooms without arriving.
I lived like a light you forget to turn off.

The cream soured.
And I was elsewhere
long before I knew it

— Eva Candelaria Sosa / “Afterwards”

The world’s oceans are under “severe and accelerating” pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations.

The “intensifying” stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under “severe strain”.

— Karen McVeigh / “‘Severe’ stress on oceans as rate of sea level rise doubles in 10 years, UN warns” / The Guardian

To be saved by ideas: a fantasy I harbored.
In those days, there was always something
from which I needed saving. The past, its
expansive grammar, the way my grief was
a kind of deranged hope. I wanted a different
country, an old language to burst forth like
a hidden river.

— Billy-Ray Belcourt / “Bildungssonnet”

Permafrost, or frozen soil, covers some 15 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere, and thanks to human-driven climate change, it is fueling a vicious warming feedback loop. As rising global temperatures melt the frozen soil, it releases stored carbon into the atmosphere, enhancing warming. Scientists have debated for years how fast this could happen and how much carbon the world’s permafrost might expel, but according to a new study, the situation might be far worse than past estimates suggest. . . In the new study, researchers estimate that that tipping point could happen by 2100—earlier than previous models suggest.

— Jackie Flynn Mogensen / “Earth’s permafrost could soon release hidden ‘deep carbon,’ supercharging warming” / Scientific American

. . . I’ll never get out of this world alive.
That was Hank Williams⁠—a bunch of molecules.
I hold my tongue, look across the moon and blink.
You never wrote so you didn’t know
a little colored ball of wool was my heart.

— Larry Fagin / “Self-pity (East River)”

I was oppressed by the sense of universal strangeness, by the chill of approaching catastrophe, the menace of ruins suspended above; and also by the enormity of what had been done, the weight of collective guilt. A frightful crime had been committed, against nature, against the universe, against life. By rejecting life, man had destroyed the immemorial order, destroyed the world; now everything was about to crash down in ruins.

— Anna Kavan / Ice

What I’m Listening To: 

Sometimes I think my skull’s just chicken wire

Carrying a thought like contraband

I land like an alien

But Shelley says, still, you’ve got to live with people

— Shearwater / “Slugs in the Marigolds”