thee istsfor manity reader

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.”

— Werner Herzog / “I Rant Against The Jungle: Werner Herzog Interviewed” / The Quietus

“where there once was prairie / a few remaining fireflies abstract / themselves / over roads and concrete paths / prairie wants to stretch full out again and sigh—“

— Camille T. Dungy / “let grow more winter fat / wine-cup / western wild rose”

“Never did I think so much, exist so vividly, and experience so much, never have I been so much myself—if I may use that expression as in the journeys I have taken alone and on foot. There is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. When I stay in one place I can hardly think at all; my body has to be on the move to set my mind going.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau / Confessions

“The universe is filled with Nothing, it is the Yawning Black Void. Systems of the Milky Ways have condensed into Un-stars. Utter blissfulness is spreading, and out of utter blissfulness now springs Absurdity. This is the situation.”

— Werner Herzog / Of Walking In Ice

“The problem of the twenty-first century remains the color line. Yes, we are mired in overlapping societal struggles and challenges. But white supremacy and its many manifestations—some of them sly and cloaked, some of them clear as a Confederate flag flown by marauders in the US Capitol—has been a fundamental problem for every generation in this country since Black people first came to this land.”

— Elizabeth Alexander / The Trayvon Generation

“… we have an inherent urge to wander that we seldom think about but that we are reminded of every time we follow a path.”

— Torbjørn Ekelund / In Praise of Paths

“Why is walking so full of woe? Since no one else encourages me, I encourage myself.”

— Werner Herzog / Of Walking In Ice

What I’m Listening To:

“Pilgrim out of mind, out of depths
Depths does not exist
Hittie man emerges, from sands
(Sands)”

— The Fall / “Hittite Man”

badlands

a liminal state
both the simplicity and the purpose
you can’t escape yourself

What I’m Reading:

“The reason I’m an artist is because it’s a place where you can be totally free.”

— May Stevens / My Mothers

What I’m Reading:

“You pass a lot of discarded trash as you walk.”

— Werner Herzog / Of Walking In Ice

Low Bar Calisthenics

I’ve set the new low bar, taking left turn after left turn. I’m walking circular—or in squares, I should say.

I should say I hope this makes sense (but know fully well it won’t). I should say these are the reasons to be cheerful—but I spout only maxims and aphorisms (all of them meaningless [truly so]).

I’m now thinking in brackets (within parentheses) with long tangential digressions outside of any transitive laws. I’m cooling in increments of Celsius in a Fahrenheit culture.

My chia seeds have become chia pets. I’m now a colander and I’ve lost the will to sieve.

Look it up and see for yourself.

What I’m Reading:

“History hangs inside me, like a dependent clause.”

— Fanny Choi / “Time-Sensitive”

Perdo’s Pox (redux)

Night falls—

A black feather,
A white hair,
A brittle bone,
A rasp for air—

The moon unmoored.

What I’m Reading:

“The wind worries the woods outside. This morning Night was drowned on cold gray waves.”

— Werner Herzog / Of Walking In Ice

change

denuded ideas in chopped
ready to go-mix sources
of wisdom set one
against the other:
change

u
try
so hard
but u can’t
u won’t but
u try again and again
u fail better again and again

What I’m Reading:

“A train stopped on the plain / Deaf stars sleep / in every puddle / And the water trembles”

— Vicente Huidobro / “Hours”

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; / But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.”

— Wallace Stevens / “Of the Surafce of Things”

“Some time ago, I wrote an essay about napping outside how I would, for instance, see a carpet of moss in the forest or a cradle of rocks on a summit, and then feel inexplicably tired, lie down, and fall asleep quicker than I ever could in a bed. How, also, I’d awoken in a blizzard on a mountainside; another time in a graveyard with two men standing over me, asking if I was ‘practicing’; woke in a field with a mouse in my pocket eating the peanuts I carried. I felt a freedom to be in the wilderness that I know is not given to everyone.”

— Ben Shattuck / Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau

“The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.”

— Robinson Jeffers / “Rearmament”

“What is this secret power of trees that makes us so much healthier and happier? Why is it that we feel less stressed and have more energy just by walking in the forest?”

— Dr. Qing Li / Forest Bathing

“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an indicator species, ‘to use an ecologist’s term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble.”

— Rebecca Solnit / Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“I’m winding down. The daylight is winding down. / Only the night is / wound up tight. / And ticking with unpaused breath.”

— Charles Wright / “Time Is a Graceless Enemy, but Purls as It Comes and Goes”

“A week of black, amnesiac sleep followed my homecoming. Exactly what I wanted—to be obliterated by the insistent presence of the sea, as the sea had done to Cape Cod.”

— Ben Shattuck / Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau

What I’m Listening To:

“I got high I thought I saw an angel
But he was just a ghost
He was making wooden posts out of my family
What if birds aren’t singing they’re screaming”

— Aldous Harding / “What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming”

Autocorrectionals

I was assigned a sanity rating at birth that does not compute. The birds don’t sing as much as they scream—a singer once sang that, and it was recorded—go and check. I’ve checked my packets, and all the seeds are missing, not even so much as a coating of seed dust. I ingested my ulterior motives and they are now the extra padding in my posterior. None of this has been pasteurized (or proof-read for that matter) and it’s been proven that dingoes occasionally will eat scabies. Hold on … something seems amiss with my autocorrect. Just keep holding there. I’ll be back.

What I’m Reading:

“The world I see looks to me like a game of children.
Strange performances and plays go on night and day.”

— Ghalib / “Some Exaggerations”

What I’m Reading:

“I’m waiting for the words / to catch up to my heart / which is / elliptical at the moment”

— Jason Bayani / “Someday, Again”