thee istsfor manity reader

These Wires Are Live

I was begat by malpractice & malfeasance
Death had no use for me

Because I would not squat for death
There would be no dearth of fezzes
(and jaunty chapeaus)

Have I got a crazy memory for you—
Nine pigsties & a professional provocateur

Stop shivering in the cemetery
You’ve got bags under your eyes
Viper teeth & elfin ears

After 25 misconceptions
The monocle countess is 20 pilchards short

Wear my cassock
In roughly chronological order
Take me out & ridicule me

You are brimless & cylindrical

What I’m Reading:

“The universe is 95% dark stuff that we don’t understand. The remainder is this sticky matter that makes up things like you and smallpox.”

— Zach Weinersmith / Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness

A Stiction Fiction (redux)

“You fill me with stiction.”

“Friction?”

“No. Stiction.

“Shouldn’t it be inertia?”

“No, stiction, damn it!”

“Sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

He was filled with a horror and a hate so acute at that instant that his fist automatically clenched and his arm seemed to move autonomously driving that clenched fist to an inexorable meeting with his brother’s face…

The author’s stream of thought is broken here, and a lyric, and then a deconstructed thought impinges:

Anger is an energy. The certainty of reason is a tyranny.

Speak in aphorisms. Think in signifiers. Be the signified.

And so the author continued on another string. The nascent narrative broken…

“You fill me with inertia.”

“There, that’s more like it.”

“Like what?”

“Like what I like.”

And then unable to completely gather their wits the author’s work and discipline was irretrievably disrupted, and they were done for the day.

What I’m Reading:

“… I belonged to my mother
six hours west and only left
once a season
for the purpose of daddy laying his belts and
depression on me.”

— Courtney Faye Taylor / “Visitation”

Combustible, Not Tractable

There wasn’t any friction during the Mother’s Day conversation, except about the use of capital letters and hyphens—there was a heated discussion there. “Excessive uses! Much too much!” one of us said.

Hang up.

There is no equitable fashion. There is no forgetting.

I wrote nothing by design of distraction. By watching Python and reading Pynchon; reading Dreiser and watching Dreyer; then watching and reading W. Herzog all day long. Nothing but “this” at the eleventh hour.

How do we stay safe in this combusting world?

How tired are we of being cooped up in our minds without viable alternatives?

This is better than nothing—I did kill 5 or 6 moths today.

They just keep coming.

I broke my vow of silence when I broke the glass in case of emergency.

I croaked—in a muttering fashion most embarrassing: “Ra… rah… run. Run! There’s a moth infestation.”

We had moths.

We were underground in our hermetically sealed glass boxes—with an infestation of moths.

How was this possible?

Had we not paid our alms, and made our ablutions in the appropriate manner? Had we not prostrated ourselves, made (cretinous) burnt offerings (I was always against this affectation) pungent and breath-taking like good little pawns?

For our troubles, for our conceits to our deity—we get moths!

Was it worth breaking 137 days of silence over?

Documents were signed, codicils initialed, an ascetic’s vow taken.

The pomp.

The sacrifice.

Moths!

What does this mean?

What I’m Reading:

“I have not eaten cake since my sixth birthday. My lifestyle factors predict I will live at least 120 optimal, cake-free years.”

— Tom Ellison / “I’ve Optimized My Health To Make My Life As Long And Unpleasant As Possible”

Outcome

when you’re on the knife’s edge
you breathe
when you’re on the pivot point
you’re mindful
when you’re at the fulcrum
there is a binary
outcome

which way do you turn?
where does this go?
how does this end?

What I’m Reading:

“Some blind girls
ask questions of the moon
and spirals of weeping
rise through the air.”

— Federico Garcia Lorca / “After Passing By”

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“What would I do without tears,
I used to ask myself in another world.”

— Patricia Jabbeh Wesley / “Healing Will Come: Elegy after Nartural Disaster”

“A new disease caused solely by plastics has been discovered in seabirds … The birds identified as having the disease, named plasticosis, have scarred digestive tracts from ingesting waste, scientists at the Natural History Museum in London say … It is the first recorded instance of specifically plastic-induced fibrosis in wild animals, researchers say.”

— Helena Horton / The Guardian

“… the more I pared my prose to reach 100 words, a different kind of storytelling presented itself. The art of brevity. The art of excision. The art of compression. The art of omission. The art of spaces and gaps and breaths. The art of less.”

— Grant Faulkner / “Addition by Omission: An Interview Grant Faulkner by Curtis Smith” / JMWW

“… based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends, bookstores are projected to be the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023, followed by PR firms, interior design services, staffing agencies, and marketing consulting services.”

— Emily Temple / Literary Hub

“I think terrible things happen in the world every day on both a personal level and on a global level, but there’s a way that creative work can bring joy. It can provide relief—both as a reader and as a writer. It is a refuge. I think in trying to write about climate change and extinction was my way of engaging with ideas about how to deal with it.”

— Anne K. Yoder / The Creative Independent interview

“Possible to believe in a bearable sort of life
in a white room in one of the tidy anonymous streets
that flash by the elevated subway. Picture it:
a blue chair for reading, a gas ring
for coffee, the lamp in its cheap shade
casting its circle of light.”

— Katha Pollitt / “The White Room”

“Why the waste
God why?”

— Helena Kaminski / “Face”

What I’m Listening To:

“Thoughts and prayers won’t get you there
But I guess they do Make a pretty pair
Nowheresville”

— Quasi / “Nowheresville”