thee istsfor manity reader

Legend of Howling Man

I forgot to tell you! The hairy (back hair) guy we saw the other day, on Perkins St., is howling man!

I saw him yesterday, shirtless and in shorts again, in 36 degree weather during my bike ride.

He was doing a variation of his howl (much lower) and rubbing his hands over his forehead and eyes (like Curly from 3 Stooges—I swear!) and everybody stopped at the intersection of Perkins and Jamaicaway were staring, mouths agape, at him. Traffic locked.

Poor Howling Man cracked. (world was too much with him)

What I’m Reading:

“… I’m tired, so I lie down. The earth spins for me and
the dead continue their orbiting. It gives me strength to remember there is
no such thing as an immovable object.”

— Ae Hee Lee / “A Study through Homes”

7 Seconds So Salubrious

1. This writer’s weevils are roosting in the endive.

2. Debug your respirator if you have not.

3. Retrieve your half-brother & samovar from the half-note sanatorium.

4. The Englishman’s welt & the enema sampler will clear out your endowment of weight & indictment of rosebuds.

5. There is a weird energy in this world.

6. Endorse nothing but your nightmares.

7. Consider “the huge unknown wave that is already rolling toward us.”

What I’m Reading:

“… if you live another thirty years and are still enjoying it, or most of it – if anyone will be enjoying, or indeed living, considering the huge unknown wave that is already rolling toward us – I expect you will look at a picture of yourself as you are today, supposing your personal effects have survived flood, fire, famine, plague, insurrection, invasion, or whatever – and you will say, ‘How young I was then!’”

— Margaret Atwood / “Widows”

She Can’t Remember

A new year brings the promise of more longanimity and asceticism. Nothing is as safe she expects in the age of vulnerability and shame.

She liked it more when every emotional situation didn’t need a “name” where you could “hold” it in its “safe space.”

There is no room for nostalgia, but she has no use for these “isms” either.

She wants to crawl into a garbage can large enough to hold her and live out the rest of her days like that lady in Beckett’s Happy Days — remember, she has no room for nostalgia.

But there are bills to pay and some sort of food preparations to be made if she wants to continue on living in this hovel.

And there is the crow.

Always that crow! She inherited it from someone she cared about deeply once, but she can’t remember quite who.

The crow is tethered to the radiator and has to be fed often. And if the food isn’t placed just so, on time, the cawing is insufferable.

No room for nostalgia, but she longs for the halcyon days of pandemic when she knew what to expect — even if it was the worst.

This new post-apocalypse state of being is a bit dull. And this noisome, pediculous crow leaves much to be desired.

What I’m Reading:

“Power, when threatened, pulls an invisible narrative from the clouds that only others in power and afraid can see.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib / A Little Devil in America

Again, She Said…

She said to herself: Thanks for renting a space in this life. Despite the scrofulous and desiccated people in this life you stayed around to witness the swirling swallows above, and their reflected pantomime in the water below—a whirlwind of life all about you. Now get some sleep and start all over again tomorrow. Your boulder always awaits you…

What I’m Reading:

“… because when nothing makes sense everything can make sense.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib / A Little Devil in America