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.
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
Cycling was a way of staying in motion and coming home to myself. When nothing else made sense, I could go—dissolving into breath and sky—and let the wind rearrange me.
— Laura Killingbreck / “Into the Wind” / Bicycling
. . . “Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal.” It might also be said that a city becomes extra-cityish, more seething and carnivalesque, from the vantage point of a bicycle. Danger is a sensory intensifier, supercharging the scenery, making everything appear volatile and alive.
— Jody Rosen / Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
Jan.22.2022 The sky is crooked at my feet. I’m tired of someone else’s dying. I’ve lost two pounds because I’ve been chewing rain instead of swallowing it.
— Victoria Chang / “Today”
. . . and perhaps most importantly, our impending doom leaves us feeling paralysed. If we’re already screwed, then what’s the point in trying? Far from making us more effective in driving change, it robs us of any motivation to do so. I recognise this from my own dark period when I nearly walked away from the field entirely. I can assure you that after reframing how I saw the world, I have had a much, much bigger impact on changing things. When it comes down to it, doomsday attitudes are often no better than denial.
— Hannah Ritchie / Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
I understand: for years, perhaps, you have lived underground. Handling only darkness, you have not become accustomed to it. You want to get out.
— Everette Maddox / “Welcome Home”
A bicycle in traffic must be predictive to the point of clairvoyance, must know the cars better than the cars know themselves, must understand their motivations and their common blunders. Cars don’t always signal their intentions. And cars aren’t always nice to each other, though they usually show each other some respect in deference to the damage they can do to each other. They are like important men in conversation with other important men. Bicycles are sometimes kindly accommodated by cars, often ignored, occasionally respected, sometimes nervously followed, and frequently not even seen. In this sense, riding in traffic is not unlike being a woman among men.
— Eula Biss / Having and Being Had
But in spite of these riders who prize the utility of two wheels above its art, riding a bicycle is one of the few street activities that can still be thought of as an end in itself. The person who distinguishes himself from that purposeful crowd by conceiving of it as such should be call a cycleur. And that person – who has discovered cycling to be an occupation with no interest in ultimate outcomes – knows he possesses a strange freedom which can only be compared with that of thinking or writing.
— Valeria Luiselli / Sidewalks
But for those of us who have bicycling in our bones, the arguments against it are worse. Bike riding can kill you, but to trudge through your days without biking-that’s no way to live.
— Jody Rosen / Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
What I’m Listening To:
Send in the clowns Send in the army You want to be American Get your gun You’re so free You can shoot me
For hours or days or weeks, you still don’t know how to ride a bicycle. You wobble and lurch and wipe out, locked in a pitiful struggle with the pull of gravity and the weight and waywardness of the obstreperous metal machine. Then, suddenly, you are breezing along a road that stretches toward a limitless horizon.
— Jody Rosen / Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
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
watch how i go blind on glassless coronal bliss i stare at the flares regale the mass ejections eyeless pinhole dejection
What I’m Reading:
This option of ‘giving up’ is only possible from a place of privilege. Let’s say we stop trying and temperatures climb by another degree or two, taking us well past our climate targets. If you live in a wealthy country, you’ll probably be okay. It won’t be plain sailing, but you can buy your way out of serious danger. That’s not true for many less fortunate people, though. Those in poorer countries cannot afford to protect themselves. Accepting defeat on climate change is an indefensibly selfish position to take.
— Hannah Ritchie / Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
It’s like coquina rock It’s like Barbara wrote It’s all ridges and teeth Waiting Waiting Waiting to take a layer of skin Like a slice of oblongata Like other lower brain sections Like the Shell sign superimposed Over the Chevron chevron Like the freedom tower building Cubans called cielito lindo Like nothing truly beautiful under the sky Not for you in 2024 It’s roiling It’s a tempest And you’re just getting used to it But you’ll never get over it
What I’m Reading:
Bikeless days are a bummer. They do happen. Rain drowns the city, or snow dumps down. You have appointments to keep, and you have to show up looking more presentable than you would after an eighty-block bike ride. Maybe your bicycle is in the shop. Maybe your bicycle has been stolen. When you’re used to traveling by bike, the condition of bikelessness is disorienting and debilitating.
— Jody Rosen / Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
thee istsfor manity reader 