dont appease / go back — all the background to destroy — liberate urself
cut-up / marinate ur mind stew in random abandon
What I’m Reading:
“’Genesis … your task from now on is to tell me . . . HOW DO WE SHORT-CIRCUIT CONTROL?’”…
“… Once you decide to devote yourself to this cut-up technique, it joyfully contaminates every aspect of your life. A kind of truth virus. And, for me, it remains the only reliable filter through which to observe this earth and the overriding culture with any hope of accuracy.”
— William S. Burroughs + Genesis P-Orridge / Nonbinary: A Memoir
“‘For years, you read all the articles,’ Wehage told me recently, over the phone. ‘You look at pictures of the pollution, you think about the greed that fuels it, and you feel upset. But then, when you’re there, you understand that it’s so much worse than anything you could read.’”
— Chris Wehage, to Jia Tolentino / “What to Do with Climate Emotions” / The New Yorker
“I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying”
— W.S. Merwin / “For A Coming Extinction”
“The human psyche naturally rebels against the idea of its end. Likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today. It is hard work for us to remember that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like we are forever: burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coalmine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our collective fantasies of perpetual growth, constant innovation, and endless energy, just as the reality of individual mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.”
— Roy Scranton / How to Die in the Anthropocene
“Even if they survived — even if they could be perpetuated indefinitely in laboratories and zoos — their extinction would already be in progress. Like a neurodegenerative disease, extinction was a slow hollowing, not a sharp cut. The death of the last holdout was in some sense a mere formality.”
— Ned Beauman / Venomous Lumpsuckers
“I yearn for the darkness. I pray for death. Real death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I’ve known in life I don’t know what I’d do. That would be the ultimate horror. The ultimate despair. If I had to meet my mother again and start all of that all over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to? Well. That would be the final nightmare. Kafka on wheels.”
— Cormac McCarthy / The Sunset Limited
“in some cheap room they will find me there and never know my name my meaning nor the treasure of my escape.”
— Charles Bukowski / “old man, dead in a room”
“The luxury I had of pondering my emotions at length was evidence of how much closer I was to the problem than to the solution: climate change’s worst effects will always fall on the poor and disenfranchised, both locally and globally, and in this context it was hard to believe that the project of teaching the world’s most fortunate people how to feel was more than another form of self-absorption.”
— Jia Tolentino / “What to Do with Climate Emotions” / The New Yorker
What I’m Listening To:
“Onward Buffalo Alone Onward, no herd, I heard You killed them”
image: detail from jenny holzer’s the living series / clark art institute
unlocking the vault—
where i dont upbraid myself continuously—where john currin paintings dont come to life—where id like to be in some remote place like yellowknife—but as the earth is burning there—and there remains no place to go—that isnt burning—and there remain too many places to go to upbraid my fellow man—because life is one endless upbraiding—i unbraid myself some more—upbraid my boulder—upbraid existence—upbraid the cure— because they remind me of camus—with that song—i even upbraid myself—again—i dont upbraid my curry chicken—because its ethiopian—or should i say eritrean—but as im not certain i upbraid that as well—im upcycling my upbraiding—im braying in my seat right now—as i mute my video and sound on zoom—which i often upbraid—which brings me joy—oh joy—
What I’m Reading:
“you pray and pray your barrio’s economic / situation will improve. / you’re answered by machines that offer you numerical options.”
— Raquel Salas Rivera / “and because you were born here”
wayward talk of chile and ecuador, the prime stops on the silk road, techniques of the boustrophedon, raging poppy fields + too much hash…
the one-upmanship: sharp…
a peripatetic call and response about the tang + other merits of uzbeki beer + uruguayan women, the obscurity of radiohead + the future is m(h)aol + have u listened to attachment styles?…
the timbre maudlin the umka a perfect puff…
declamations of wanderlust in the south, remaking the ruins of venezuela in the image of argentina, death by clear cutting rainforest, petrodollars are the ruination…
somehow the talk turns to czars…
the plov congeals in its oil…
meandering laments of the rarity of this ritual, forecasts + promises to do this more, something in the voices belies that certainty…
the crash of a kazan clanging a death roll in the kitchen…
peregrinations of assiduous maths—parsing a $109 bill 3 ways to the tenth of a cent, then a drunken 3 card pile up on a plastic credit rectangle…
yes, let’s, more often…
a terminal point chicken is beheaded in the alley…
What I’m Reading:
“The United States has already endured 15 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters this year, underscoring the dangers of and need for humanity to combat the fossil fuel-driven planetary emergency.”
— Jessica Corbett / “A Record 15 Billion-Dollar Disasters Have Hit US So Far This Year: NOAA” / Common Dreams
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.”
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.”
image: detail from carolina caycedo’s “maternidad” / clark art institute
The Best Stuff I Read This Week
“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”
image: detail from carolina caycedo’s “in yarrow we trust” / clark art institute
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
Re: ACTUALIZACION DE CUENTA
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
image: from yellow submarine / apple films
What I’m Reading:
“The road before this of blood The apples tumid with grief”
thee istsfor manity reader 