thee istsfor manity reader

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God-who knows all that can be known-seems powerless to change.

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

will we inherit everything
on the internet:
miles of sand melted into windows, click

— Nell Wright / “the future”

It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.

— Miranda July / All Fours

The smiling moonwoman dips in cloudy swells,
And my wan, suffering psyches know new power, 
Finding their strength in conflict’s tortured hour.

— Else Lasker-Schüler / “Sphinx”

Research shows people break traffic laws across the board—drivers, cyclists, even pedestrians. A 2020 Colorado study found 7–9% of both cyclists and drivers commit infractions. The difference? Motivation. Cyclists often roll red lights for safety—to stay visible, or ahead of overtaking traffic. Drivers usually do it to save time.

And the consequences? A missed signal on a bike might annoy someone. The same in an SUV could be fatal. Context—and mass—matters.

— Ron Johnson / “Your Comeback Guide to all the Anti-Cycling Arguments You’ll Hear This Year” / Momentum Mag

We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain.
Our old souls and our new souls
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years,
And a thousand years as a day.

— Vachel Lindsay / “Meeting Ourselves”

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I’ve thought a great deal about my life and about my country. I think there is little that can be truly known.

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

What I’m Listening To:

Search for conviction
With eyes open wide
Feeling so restless
So empty inside

— The Feelies / “Slipping (Into Something)”

Gormless Writers (redux)

— No more talk of fish.
— Let’s talk about the month long break from writing.
— Let’s not.  
— Let’s write about the month long leave from writing. 
— Let’s  not.
— Let’s consider the month long abstinence from writing.
— Let’s not.  
— Let’s…
— Let’s not. 
— Stop.  
— No need for a post-mortem. 
— Well… let’s start writing again?  
— Yes, let’s do that.  
— Haven’t we already done that by doing this?
— This here?  
— Um… yes.  
— Yes, I think we have.  It’s a start anyway now, isn’t it?  
— Yes, I suppose it is.  
— Is that what you think, too?  
— Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.  
— Well?
— There!
— We’ve done it.  
— Yes. 
— Yes. We have.
— Please pee on me…

What I’m Reading:

What the sadness is like:

You are a sculptor and you cannot move your arms. The marble stares the way desire waits.

— Hossannah Asuncion / “Suspending Disbelief While Brown, Part II”

six-example drawing-room

several dozen residents in 16mm flesh
pray tell of inexhaustible human folly

from crossbows and smokes
to choral singers and amateur potters

hive terminology in a six-
example drawing-room

youve got british east india co. tea
ive got ill-fitting small pox blankets

the flesh is a synecdoche
of puritan america

all cudgel and capitalist malice
without explicit commentary or voiceover

an endlessly hilarious tribute
to self-deception and craven will

a particular geographic conceit
and manifest delusion

What I’m Reading:

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else the’d have no heart to start at all.

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

no place to hide

signal frenzy tableau
a narrative fist

the travails of a proletarian
exquisitely composed of static fucks

he had none to give

breathing with slow regularity
descending into some deeper illusion

trips dark saturated depictions of netherscapes
underground in sooty color palettes

all stench and subterranean
rank and sweaty

a show fortune trigger finger
frozen in time

What I’m Reading:

Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he’d seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be.

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

13 Ways of Looking at a Jabberwockbird (redux)

1
A hot wattle thing of the new wave—a heel trestle tactician of new sex.

2
A treble tabernacle template … condolences!

3
Heathen tree table temple—tinplated condom.

4
The hot new textile and treetop heating tableau concluded. (normal tempos at operettas not included)

5
The necessary texture of watermarks and towropes. A trek of heaved temptation. (opiate condor forward)

6
The advised necessary heaven tenancy. (refill the tablespoon of conclusion)

7
The hot heavyweight tremolo of the opossum conductor.

8
Thatcher and heckler tremor of the tablet concluded. (tendencies normalized going forward)

9 (a. – e.)
Your waterspout trachea. Your tender tabloid resignation. Your conclusive and necessary thaw. Your hectare trench. Thee conduit opportunist.

10
A tendon that should be taboo.

11
Hedge proctor trend-setter, tendril tabulator, theatregoer waterspout in the guise of a chancellor of the exchequer.

12
Hedgehog trespasser—tenement confessor at default opposition.

13
As hot tether and heater treaty—a tempest as scheduled maintenance.

This transmission has concluded.

What I’m Reading:

I go among
the stones stooping
and pecking like a
sparrow, imagining
the glacier’s final push
resounding still.

— Philip Levine / “Breath”

unlocking the vault— (redux)

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:

The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone.

— Miranda July / All Fours

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Nobody knows what’s going on. We are thrown across our lives by winds that started blowing millions of years ago.

— Miranda July / All Fours 

Yet amid this atmosphere of nationalist triumph, Remnick identifies a submerged sense of dread—and a glimmer of resistance. The writer Etgar Keret attends weekly protests against the government, even as he acknowledges the “nonexistent” political influence of liberals like him. “When we go to the beach, you can hear the booms from Gaza. When you eat a lollipop or an ice cream, you hear things being blown up,” Keret explains. “We are doing horrible things, and it’s important for me that people know I oppose this.” Such expressions of moral clarity are rare, though, in an age of confusion and endlessly contested facts that has been harnessed by the Netanyahu government, which speaks a fluent dialect of the MAGAlanguage of politics. “Not only is reality horrible,” Keret notes, “you also don’t know what the real story is.”

— Ian Crouch / “Israel’s Zones of Denial” / The New Yorker Weekly

I write,
“The rope dangling from
darkness will execute
the enjambment of everything.”

— Garous Abdolmalekian / “How Can I Bring This Poem to a Halt?”

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president “gutted the independence of his country’s anti-corruption agencies,” Franklin Foer writes. “In the world Trump is building, there’s no need for disguise—corruption is a credential, not a liability”

— Franklin Foer / “Zelensky Learned the Wrong Lesson From Trump” / The Atlantic

Last night
the fire died into itself
black stick by stick
and the dark came out
of my eyes flooding
everything.

— Philip Levine / “Breath”

Living a moral life in an age of bullies requires collective action; it cannot be done alone. Each of us must organize and participate in a vast network of moral resistance.

This is what civilization demands. It’s what the struggle for social justice requires. It’s why that struggle is so critical today, and why we all must be part of it.

— Robert Reich / “How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies?” / The Guardian

There was no way to fix it, nothing to open-source; life was just a struggle. It was supposed to be. 

— Miranda July / All Fours

What I’m Listening To:

“You’ll figure it out,” is what they say
What they say
You’ll figure it out
But when?
But when?

— Jeanines / “You’ll Figure It Out”

Breaktime (redux)

Time off from his seedling firebomb.
A ferment.
A long liquidizer, he calls it.

He’s the provost
of powerful concussives. Cursive clash
send-off specialist for hire.

Spontaneous handicrafter and score-
keeper.
Author of sharps embedded in walls.

The outsider poet of archangel
dynamic plosives. Send you
on a one-way trip.

What I’m Reading:

The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that’s probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I’ll tell you what. I’m a long way from bein convinced that it’s all that good a thing.

— Cormac McCarthy / All the Pretty Horses

we bl— (redux)

we bleed
with alarming frequency

we blister
under the heat dome

we bleat
like so many sheep

we blunder
+ blandish our lives away

we bloat
like the corpses we’ll soon be

we blend
well with the earth

What I’m Reading:

Trump abducts thousands of hardworking people within the US and puts them into detention camps – splitting their families, spreading fear. His immigration agents are accused of targeting people with brown skin.

He usurps the powers of Congress, defies the courts, and prosecutes his enemies.

He and his Republican lackeys cut Medicaid and food stamps – lifelines for poor people, including millions of children – so the wealthy can get a tax cut.

Hate-mongers on rightwing television and social media fuel bigotry against transgender people, immigrants, Muslims, people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

Powerful men abuse women. Some of the abused are children.

Powerful male politicians make it impossible for women to obtain safe abortions.

— Robert Reich / “How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies?” / The Guardian