thee istsfor manity reader

agitator cola

i love me an agitator cola—drank many thru the years—during the revolutions and convolutions of martial law and coups—upon the ferment fringes, the ferry boat frivolities, and mere highlighter battles with the brittle page—a brush with agent coils and deadbeat plenipotentiaries—many a casual contrainsurgency compote consumed—electroplated and anodized death from above—daisy-chained and strafed—a full life of fingermark detonations and finicky trigger fingers—oh, what a feeling, that subtle wisp of menace before the darkness—i’m the hand of the man who leads—the hand of the man u voted for, or supported on his rise—i’m ur hand by transitive property—aren’t we a peach?

What I’m Reading:

The end is coming. I picture a radical turning away from thought, argument, and image, not just an approaching darkness in which certain objects can still be felt, but a condition where they no longer exist at all, a darkness filled with fear, with imaginary monsters.

— Werner Herzog / Every Man for Himself and God Against All

Charles River Murk

He composed a text to her, intending to say: “I’m going to be a strong arm robber,” but the auto correct produced: “I want to be s thong arm tobber.”

She responded: “U mean a strong arm fibber?” She had turned off her autocorrect months ago, confident in her speed and accuracy.

He responded: “no a string arm ribber.” His fused thumb again unable to hit the mark.

She threw her phone in the river from the Mass Avenue Bridge. She’d always wanted to see something she’d thrown disappear in the Charles River murk. 

A few yards later, she dove into the river. Nonplussed, he watched her disappear into the murk.

What I’m Reading:

Riding downhill can be a serene exhilaration after a strenuous climb. But it can also represent the decline after a peak experience. I don’t want there to be an ultimate summit. Instead, waves. Crests falling into vales with a momentum to carry me down and on back up ad infinitum.

— Tree Abraham / Cyclettes

[straitjacket lies . . . ]

the straitjacket lies we tell:

undesirable midriff chicken thieves
the long hock of american frippery
gentlemen strategists and exponents of farewells to rooks and frontispieces
filaments upon the dockyards of miracles
an inexorable western expansion
employed by eugenecists of privilege
and destruction

uneven accountability for our past
never look back
no reiteration required

What I’m Reading:

The real ogres are the ones who are complete gentlemen.

— Matthew Thomas Meade / “Sunshowers” / Strip Mall: Stories

The Pivot Point (redux)

I’m not really hungry just now… she wrote longhand, the first time in weeks, in her journal.

And she thought that odd because she’d been ravenous all throughout her illness, and hadn’t written a thing, but now she felt a shift. She didn’t necessarily like what she intuited lay ahead, but on her life unspooled. A shrunken head, lifeless and truncated, appeared before her again. It floated and shimmered — a self-contained Fata Morgana, hovering above the ottoman in a slow pulsating light. The heavy odor of ammonia filled the room.

“I am the shrunken head,” she said, “and the shrunken head is me.” 

She tried to suppress a cough but it scratched its way up her throat, and in a paroxysm she expelled a smaller shrunken head — golf ball sized — which rolled end over end down the marble hallway and eddied below a gilded full length mirror. 

The sound of a theremin swelled from beyond the living room and a small red spot of light framed the smaller shrunken head.

This would be her pivot point in life. The one moment by which she would measure the rest of her life. There would be her life after this shrunken head moment, and all the other inconsequential living she’d done up until this singular moment.

A ululation came from the smaller shrunken head —  at first like a sweet distant trill, as if she were looking for scarlet tanagers in a clearing at the edge of dark woods — but the sound became shrill as it grew louder. And the bird broke out of a thicket and headed for her, with every flap it transfigured itself: first flap, from scarlet tanager to a pileated woodpecker, with its second flap it became a crow, and with its third flap (making up the distance to her with great speed) it became a red shouldered hawk, and as the shrill ululation began to sound like a fire alarm the bird transmogrified into a turkey vulture lancing at her eyes with its talons. 

In this manner she awoke to the original, larger, shrunken head hovering above her bathed in a golden light. She swatted at it, but it was just beyond her range. She let out a meek, “fuck you,” and placed the pillow over her face. 

“Today you’ll find and bring me the most beautiful starfish in the world,” the shrunken head said.  “I demand it of you. Go!” 

After her long illness, it’s what she felt compelled to do…

What I’m Reading:

“It’s confusing. It’s an absurdity. But hardly the only one: We fall in love. We know we are going to die. We do strange things like make art, and dream, and put each other in prison, and cut ourselves when were depressed. And try to be kind when we can.”

— Andrew Boyd / I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor