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.”
image: william swainson / “leilus occidentalis” / zoological illustrations volume 3 / 1829 / in public domain
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?
image: john case / the angelical guide shewing men and women their lott or chance, in this elementary life / 1697 / in public domain
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”
“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”
I don’t like the song that you sing the way that you sing it the key that it’s in I don’t like the lyrics That turn of a phrase The bridge or the chorus The tempo it’s in You sing like you mean it But it’s truly a sin The way that you phrase it The pitch that it’s in I don’t like the song that you sing The verses are cryptic Your ear’s lined with tin You say that you like it Without any chagrin You snort like a trumpet Sound reedy-thin I don’t like it The song that you sing
What I’m Reading:
“Music for when the music is over Is what a poem is. There’s no music In a poem, just the imaginary Composer breathing beneath the deep wreck…”
When you awaken your dictionary is large—the days of abridgment have long passed.
You search for globes with a friendly eyebrow cormorant and press on.
You seek out varied terrain, and the enemy of trance, riding with fully loaded pageants—prospecting and westward.
You might try for a chain of mountains to the north—you seek out hired hands among the wolves.
You have a foul expectation of the liveryman who speaks in tongues and whispers to an invisible mate—a tumbril escapist with gold-fringed epaulets and a torn pannier for a hat.
You billet with a cardiovascular tactician that speaks of hernia surgeries and the resulting black scrotum. The mule driver speaks of shaving his nipples.
You’ve hired a team of champions and you’re off for the call of the northwest—a place of intractable weevils.
Oh, the pure joy of being alive another day in this millenium.
Blindly devote yourself to formulary Z-074. Make triplicate copies send one to me, one to Human Resources, and one to the Department of Repressive Operations. Sing, glory be! Glorioles and halo benders and everything is ordinary until it is not. Then we’ll have to consider how I melt, multiphasic, multiplying the meaning of nothing—this is something unseen… what doesn’t kill you makes you spastic and ekphrastic. Please don’t embarrass me in front of the secular pilgrims, they’re in a hurry and frying fast. They’re fasting at the speed of light, gasping at the site of blight. Remember the feeling you had when your teeth were removed with a mallet. Remember the pity you felt at shaving your beard with a hatchet? The nicks and the deep lacerations from running in place with shaving cream in your eye sockets and one hand in your pocket? Well, that’s what I’m feeling now.
What I’m Reading:
“Today she was wearing an old flowered bathrobe with all the threads pulled out. For a split-second, my mother appeared to me wearing the pelt of a wild beast … All that I have standing between me and death is my demented mother.”
thee istsfor manity reader 