thee istsfor manity reader

Détentes (redux)

There’s a tool they use to set things right.

But it won’t protect them from the bitter cold of a nighttime swim through the shark infested straits.

A tool of last resort — shaman life hacks! Tabernacle huckster butters!

And us!

We. Decked out with finger guns.

“Be a papper slapper with a doot doot doot doot do!”

Birdsongs for birdies in glam processsion of hip slapping.

“Hingum, Jingum — do do do.”

Milkweed in the shadows and other docile locations.

Détentes from a muddled past — prepaid insurgencies dropped out of Monroe’s pants into a bay of pigs —

“wheepa deepa poo pow pow!”

Whistling childhood advertising ear worms — jingling out of key — these jagged equations validate nothing but the phlegm in our souls.

“You can’t please yourself, but you might can please your soul.”

Grazin’ in the grass is where I wanna be scattering my dead father’s ashes — throwing a handful over my shoulder once, and filling fire ant monticules with the next.

Watching the magic 8 ball answer requests from another world.

What I’m Reading:

“An author is just a temporary state, anyway, a way to get from a story to reality.”

— Debbie Urbanski / After World: A Novel

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

— George Orwell / 1984

“I think I can see why we humans rarely deal with the big stuff, why we get hung up over borders, will never face the climate crisis, or solve world hunger. However hard we try to hold our thoughts on what’s happening in the game, our human brains will always want to scratch around in the small stuff.”

— Raynor Winn / Landlines

“looking out at old snow,
how the streetlight
illuminates heaps and cracks as if
to prove something unpleasant”

— Alice Mattison / “During the Night”

“It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.”

— Blake Crouch / Dark Matter

“Sen used to sit on the porch and stare at the stars. She did this until one night when she felt herself disintegrating into multiple bright pieces. Not literally but this is how it felt. She felt herself scattering into pieces of light. The brighter light was the color of an animal’s eye, the pieces were the shapes of animals. Until she couldn’t feel anything human in her left.”

— Debbie Urbanski / After World: A Novel

“Since 2014 the price of renewable energy has dropped 90 percent and the planet’s temperature has spiked; it’s indefensible intellectually or morally to pretend we should just carry on as before.”

— Bill McKibben / “Different Kinds of Winning” / Substack

“Sun guzzles quick down August’s throat.
Final flagging gags of heat.”

— Sylvia Legris / “As If These Objects Were Moving and the Bird Itself Were Quiet”

“By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him.”

— George Orwell / 1984

What I’m Listening To:

“What have you got in that paper bag?
Is it a dose of Vitamin C?
Ain’t got no time for Western lesson
I am Damo Suzuki”

— The Fall / “I Am Damo Suzuki”

Stained

I know of no one who considers themself a veteran. A Venetian, maybe. A Venusian, most definitely. A Velvet Undeground-ian … well, that’s me.

I play “Sister Ray” everyday. I start each day with 17+ minutes of “a good time … just like Sister Ray said” before I get out of bed. If I don’t start my day in this way, I don’t get out of bed. And I get out of bed everyday. So you may imagine my life as one of utmost principle and decorum. It is. While it’s “no way to earn a dollar,” I know how to “hit it sideways.” I am most adept. That is all you need know.

Life is distortion and static.

Life is full of stained carpets.

What I’m Reading:

“This isn’t, on her part, a lie. Humanity really did believe it would be around for much longer than this. No one and nothing would ever trigger a human extinction event to save the planet, people believed.”

— Debbie Urbanski / After World: A Novel