“Every little tilde valve, every lifted seawall, every raised house only purchases time, not a permanent fix.”
— Madeline Ostrander / At Home on an Unruly Planet
“XBB is a nasty little subvariant. But it’s not the final word on COVID. The novel-coronavirus will keep mutating, and finding new ways to evade our antibodies, whether or not many people are paying attention. The virus isn’t done with us. Which means we can’t be done with it. Get boosted. And be prepared to get boosted again in 2023.”
— David Axe / “The Nightmare COVID Variant That Beats Our Immunity Is Finally Here”
“One minute you’re alive, the next you’re dead. Those were the conditions of the world, and even to attempt to assign any logic to them was to fall into the deep dark vat of religion and other associated forms of voodoo.”
— T.C. Boyle / “Dog Lab”
“… what needs to be stressed is the importance of ritual in the creation of work. I tell my students that they must ‘write every day and walk every day.’ It is not essential that they write a lot; only 150 words each day is enough. All that matters is the routine.”
— Amitava Kumar / Everyday I Write the Book: Notes on Style
“We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day…”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley / “Mutability”
“I can’t really think about, you know, the 2100 scene—or whatever the projection is that we’re going to be so severely impacted that our city may not be accessible . . . But we’re still trying to think within that range of the lifetime of the mortgage—so like fifteen to thirty years—to put it into bite-size pieces.”
— Jenny Wolfe, as told to Madeline Ostrander / At Home on an Unruly Planet
“At the edge of every green lies an ocean. When I saw that blue, I knew then: This world will end.”
In extremis slender fungus, milk and coffee, fun among us. What was the propellor doing in the twisty-too bar with the rudder? What’s the shakes, handbrake? In some far-off land where the Jaberwock lives, and hard and pointillist sense is a thing anathema, these questions make sense. Why must everything make sense you ask? I don’t know. We’re not necessarily wired that way, but we’re certainly socialized in that manner. And mind your commas ,,,,,,,, and d a n G! l i n G participles. Dangle this, nut case! I read this morning that an 89-year-old author is set to publish his, ostensibly, (mind the commas!) last two works in the next two months. Think of the finality of that. No more new work from this genius scribe—and we, he, know(s) this in advance of the action. Twittery-too and fongobblet is what I say. The jabberwock bird alight on that frumpus tree is slavering at you. It’s cold and dark there. Watch out.
What I’m Reading:
“Evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure.”
Massive black horses in water—a marsh, blue sky, angry cumulus darkness roiling in the distance.
They need this, a disembodied voice says. They stand in this water to take the weight off their veiny haunches. It’s therapeutic.
Instantly, she and her horse are a mile out at sea in deep swelling water. The horses swim as if a maelstrom wasn’t upon them—they’re enjoying it—the ocean breaking over their heads.
She isn’t enjoying this—briny fear and seafoam in her nostrils.
And in another instant the sea is drained, there is no tumult, but she is suspended two feet above the seabed, just feet from the old beach line. The marsh is now reedy savanna.
Someone is screaming—bear, bear—in the reeds behind a tall chain-link fence. She has to start her long hike, but she can’t get out of her frozen hover. She can’t move.
These were a few of the dreams. Then she remembers her Shelley. She mutters: We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day…
This is a bit of the wreckage.
What I’m listening To:
“Imagine your father was naked and you had just fallen through the ceiling into a room full of soft moist eyeballs… I can’t tell you but my mind keeps fading away And you keep trying but you don’t got nothing to say So we tried stealing but somebody took it away…”
This Halloween, Monday, Oct 31, respirator chipmunks will be trimaran-or-treating in the tract and the tractor houseplants. If you would like island chipmunks to labour on your dose, show off their counsels and receive individually wrapped canticles from you between 5 and 7 PM on Halloween, please silo up on the shilling at the fry detector.
Thank you.
What I’m Reading:
“I’ve avoided opening my throat in fear the dead would rise, walk out of me, leave me emptier after their fleeting…”
Digby stomps on his shadow in the schoolyard. He tries to blot it out because it won’t stop following him. Digby believes the shadow rains down the indignities he suffers, although he doesn’t put it that way. He tells Funti that the shadow makes his father beat him, and his mother smoke too much.
“My shadow is a ruin I don’t want to visit, Funti. My shadow causes my father to think bad thoughts, and then to act on them. It’s the reason he beats me and my mother, although mother sometimes starts it when she drinks the whiskey after she finishes the wine.”
Digby has his shadow pinned by the ball of his foot. He applies so much pressure to pin his shadow his calf quivers and he balls up his fists.
“But Digby, your shadow has nothing to do in that. Do you see your shadow lurking at home when these things happen?” Funti says. “Your shadow stays out in the sun. It’s an outside thing.”
“Outside, inside, no matter. I know it’s at fault for our troubles. It lives in the walls, in the rug, in the ceiling. It moves about, Funti,” Digby says. “Just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not causing all my troubles.”
What I’m Reading:
“I don’t know about amphetamines, but I can attest to the power of books.”
— Amitava Kumar / Everyday I Write the Book: Notes on Style
thee istsfor manity reader 