i saw peahens doing peahen type things … foraging, say
i saw the best mimes of my generation destroyed by words, speaking hysterical phonemes
i saw trios of palms hovering over hobie beach looking for an angry fix,
strange days, friends, strange days indeed
What I’m Reading:
… there is no / first draft of / a life. It is only / and always / a final draft.
— Victoria Chang / “On a Clear Day”
behind your slipstream
i draft—contented to coast
drawn and effortless
into a soft blue vortex—
rebuttal that never comes
What I’m Reading:
I prefer a theology of silence, the eschatology
of the shrug, a religion of holding my wife’s hand
for now.
— Bill Hicok / “The Call to Worship”
What I’m Reading:
… The best thing about emptiness is if you close your
eyes in a field, you’ll open your eyes in a field.
— Victoria Chang / “With My Back to the World, 1997”
I am writing this because it is what I do. I write this. Often, when I’m not writing this I think about writing this. Often, I start thinking about writing this before I have finished writing that other thing. I usually think about writing this when I finish writing the other thing. I know this will happen daily—the thinking about writing this. Even when I’m not thinking about writing this—or actually writing this (as I’m doing now)—I know, eventually, I will think about writing this, and that I’ll eventually get around to writing this. Later, after writing that other thing—sometimes, that afternoon or evening after writing that thing—it often occurs that I’ll write this the next morning, sometimes the next afternoon, and rarely the next evening—but I almost always get around to writing this the next day. In this way my life of writing this proceeds—one day onto the next. Always aware that I’ll be writing this. As I am writing this now—for you to read this thing I have written at this exact moment.
What I’m Reading:
The first big heat dome of the season has settled over the southland, with Key West and Miami setting almost unbelievable records for muggy weather—the heat index down there topped 115 degrees last week. (That political savant Ron DeSantis chose the occasion to outlaw talking about climate within the state’s government).
— Bill McKibben / “Memo to Joe: Fight a Climate Election / Substack
we linger in the liminal
we linger in thought
we hunger for peace
we glut on war and waste
we strive
we survive
we fail
we fail again and fail better
that won’t always be the case
that is nature’s guarantee
What I’m Reading:
i don’t dream in languages / only in prophecies / & whale songs
— Ae Hee Lee / “Conversation with Immigration Officer”
What I’m Reading:
“We need to get angry. We need to get very angry at really the planetary vandalism that these companies have done.”
—Matt Simon / “Microplastics are everywhere. Here’s what that means for your health.” / Apple News In Conversation
“I don’t believe in the therapeutic effects of writing … I really think that the only healing possible will be through justice … “
— Cristina Rivera Garza, to Lillian Perlmutter / “‘The only healing will be through justice’: Pulitzer winner Cristina Rivera Garza on femicide in Mexico” / The Guardian
How can I feel lonely when I am submerged
in catastrophe? In the constant reminder that someday
this island could be gone.
But that’s not the official messaging—is it?
Instead, we say we will exist
indefinitely. Rooted against the tides,
rooted against trillion-dollar industries. We will,
we will. Exist. Exist.
— Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner / “Kaōnōn”
… around 390 years ago, B. germanica began to spread east from South Asia, with the rise of European colonialism and the emergence of international trading companies such as the Dutch and British East India Companies. Around a century later, the German cockroach hitched a ride into Europe, and conquered the world from there.
— Nature / “How cockroaches took over the world”
It is not that we’ll have to stop flying, or planes will start falling out of the sky . . . I’m just saying that for every 10 minutes you’ve spent in severe turbulence in the past, it could be 20 or 30 minutes in the future.
— Paul Williams / “Singapore Airlines turbulence: why climate change is making flights rougher” / Nature
No matter where I went, even if I went somewhere I felt I could stay forever, it would be only one stop on my journey, a journey with its own specific and predetermined chronology, which would override my individual choices, even if I wished my life and the various forces orchestrating it to be otherwise.
— Maya Binyam / Hangman
To love myself in patriarchy, I’ve often had to put a lot of distance between myself and men . . . But when men are socialized to identify their humanness as masculinity and to associate masculinity with power, we get some real problems. These are the problems of patriarchy.
— Laura Killingbeck / “A Woman Who Left Society to Live with Bears Weighs in on ‘Man or Bear’” / Bikepacking.com
We are not speaking of gender violence as something extraordinary that happens for unknown reasons. We’re talking about a violence that is structural, that we can identify … And of course, the powers that be are not going to be welcoming of this language.
— Cristina Rivera Garza, to Lillian Perlmutter / “‘The only healing will be through justice’: Pulitzer winner Cristina Rivera Garza on femicide in Mexico” / The Guardian
What I’m Listening To:
Something here isn’t right
Something feels out of place
Who’s that man there in the mirror
‘Cause I don’t recognize his face
— pigbaby / “Meep Meep Said the Rat”
the royal poinciana are ablaze
the studio apartment bare — save
a thin mattress on the floor near the bathroom
a hot plate boils lettuce near the door
a new twist in his veganism
he still has his wits about him
in this humble place i last saw him
What I’m Reading:
Grief is the end of loneliness
— Cristina Rivera Garza / Liliana’s Invincible Summer
What I’m Reading:
We are all bodies of change.
— Laura Killingbeck / “A Woman Who Left Society to Live with Bears Weighs in on ‘Man or Bear’” / Bikepacking.com
my head in a vise
seventeen electroshocks
a peppery taste
What I’m Reading:
For liberty is a capacious term
A jettisoned framework . . .
. . . Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition
Of a deeply rooted right, full of hydras and crocodile
— Jena Osman / “Dissent and the Hydra”
thee istsfor manity reader 