downloading darkness
im full of sleepy time pills
breathing deep silence
done filing the air with words
the void is swallowing me
What I’m Reading:
“Why are the world’s richest people obsessed with preparing for the apocalypse? Because they’re edging us all toward it. It’s as if, Rushkoff writes, they’re trying to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.”
— Malcolm Harris / “The Defector” / Wired
Friday, 11 August 2023 08:20:00 · D. L. in Help Needed / Offered Other
Hi neighbors
A removal that M. is available for joists you may have ranging from recycling to watering plastics to feeding your cataract and more.
It can be a one-off of courtroom or if you have a weirdo or even daily taunt, he is open to the posteriors.
He is awake early (!) so if it’s an early mortgage taunt, M. might be just the tie!
Happy August!
-D., A. and M.
What I’m Reading:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.”
— Philip Larkin / “This Be The Verse”
“She weeps because she can see our dead uterus lying sadly on a pillow—mura gyud ug pagod na tocino looking very much like the burnt pork belly at breakfast no one wants to touch”
— Therese Estacion / “The White Lady of the Philippines”
“You’re old, and suspect you’re senile,
but there’s one thing you’re sure you remember
correctly: that since you were born
the basement has been deepening,
at a rate that is always increasing,
and at the bottom there’s something you want,
though you don’t remember what.”
— Robert Louthan / “Something You Want”
“a pretty girl
in a floral dress
asks me how
many books
i will have to write
to account for all the
US war crimes”
— Andrea Abi-Karam / “Standing
“Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / Get out as early as you can, / And don’t have any kids yourself.”
— Philip Larkin / “This Be The Verse”
“We are all carrying our mothers, and we are / all better / daughters with the dead.”
— Diannely Antigua / “We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers”
“The earth is really quite sick right now … And this, today, is as good as it will ever get within our lifetimes: every day that we step out into the uncanny weather, we experience a better and more stable climate than any we will ever experience again.”
— Joyeeta Gupta / the co-chair of the Earth Commission & contributor to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007
“I should have stayed in that coma
Why did you wake me?
Death is possible”
— Therese Estacion / “Coma Dreams”
What I’m Listening To:
“All the beautiful things are opaque”
— The Clientele / “Lady Grey”
Good afternoon
Sorry to bother you again Mr. X but in my narrative, I need to clarify your profession (Writer) Can you please elaborate a little more? What do you write? Novels, sports, politics, etc.
Thanks
C.
From: X. >
To: C. S. >
Yesterday at 5:53 PM
Good afternoon
I write fiction: novels & short stories
I write nonfiction: essays & memoir pieces
I write poetry: lyric, experimental
I write scripts: for non-narrative, non-linear films
I write screeds: invective-driven intransigent harangues full of obstreperous blue meanie cavils
I try to write as few emails as possible
I’ve given you much for a narrative, Ms S.
All the best.
You’re welcome
X.
Sent from my iPhone
What I’m Reading:
“The road before this of blood
The apples tumid with grief”
— Snigdha Koirala / “Fragments on Naturalization”
she served me a bouffant vegemite
sando—a behemoth shovelful
of pasty organic bloboid—una plasta
culturally speaking—oh yes delicious!
gastric burble rumble
lachrymose facial tics
no i couldnt eat another
so dense + unusual?— no
please u r too kind
(somebody hit the rewind)
What I’m Reading:
”Publishing is making public your own enthusiasm.”
— Robert Gottlieb / Turn Every Page
headdress for a coup
coolness —- alien june air
mother harangued into impromptu
three days —- national
piled into our small 800 miles
dysfunction sloughs
marriage at this 500th of a second
june is inarticulate
defiles of the truth
like family
mountains recede us
greens drain to grey
anonymously we low
at fair weather
aerodynamic flashes
vague parallelograms angle
shoehorned pregnancies —- edge
of safety feet dangle —- she
flashes emptiness
What I’m Reading:
“Puke yellow pandesal, / sour orange Tang left my throat in chunks / You will feel better now / We’re almost there / The horizon was still far away / I hate enduring”
— Therese Estacion / “Staying Present”
ive seen too much already
+ i aint seen a thing
drip drip drip
o the blood in the system
a constant hum
a low churning
charnel house whir
night + day
aint we a thing
delightful in hubris
not just me
but u + u + u too
What I’m Reading:
“I’d put on twelve pounds eating steak and doughnuts, and my face was screwed up and tight from chain-smoking Chesterfields and trying to talk at a faster clip. I was feeling a bit antisocial, and I was underdressed.”
— Ottessa Moshfegh / “When Stars Collide”
we bleed
with alarming frequency
we blister
under the heat dome
we bleat
like so many sheep
we blunder
+ blandish our lives away
we bloat
like corpses we’ll soon be
we blend
well with the earth
What I’m Reading:
“The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and everything that you have chosen to care for. There’s the true brotherhood.”
— Cormac McCarthy / The Sunset Limited
What I’m Reading:
“I gravitate toward fiction that some might call strange. I like stories that are free from the logic that governs our reality.”
— Rebekah Bergman / “When Cause Doesn’t Follow Effect: How to Structure the Strange” / lithub.com
“We have a narrow window for change … and the projections from our research suggest that the window is closing fast.”
— Climate Scientists at the SCAR Biology Symposium / “Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity—and we have only a narrow window to save the planet” / The Guardian
“Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.”
— Raymond Carver / “Happiness”
“Waste body / garbaged / while I was anaesthetically asleep / naked under medical fluorescence / — intubated dead bits cut off / — dead bits deemed / “biohazard”: / waste / feet / ankles / fingers / Uterus / biohazardbodyparts / all go into their fucking garbage can”
— Therese Estacion / Phantompains
“I can’t explain it. She broke something loose in me and swept away the splinters. I didn’t blush or bat my eyes or do anything as I spoke. I was saying things I’d never said before, and yet I felt nothing. That was Elizabeth’s power. That was her magic. I felt absolutely nothing around her.”
— Ottessa Moshfegh / “When Stars Collide”
“She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years—you
won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving,
because it is all happening on a wheel that spins
so fast.”
— Sheila Black / “The Earth”
“We’re in a mess, but together we have some chance of working our way out of it.”
— Bill McKibben / “Where Should I Live?” / Substack newsletter
“This is a critical moment, impacting our well-being, future generations and ecosystems globally. Confronted by this evidence, we urgently call on nations to intensify and exceed their current commitments to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. An immediate increase in ambition is required to reach net zero and to go beyond it. Pledges are not enough.”
— Climate Scientists at the SCAR Biology Symposium / “Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity – and we have only a narrow window to save the planet” / The Guardian
What I’m Listening To:
“Zun’s a feeble lamp
O’er leery land
Stares a’chat in code
Lark a meagre note”
—PJ Harvey / “I Inside the Old Year Dying”
thee istsfor manity reader 