thee istsfor manity reader

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Something remarkable happens when you walk a long-distance path. I think you find an honesty that you don’t see in normal life. It unites those who walk in a sort of trail-induced euphoria that gives you a sense of openness, where normally we’re all so closed. I think that’s the place where trail magic comes from.”

— Raynor Winn / Landlines

“My belief in the fluidity 
of the self turns out to mean 
my me is a flow of wellwater,   

without the well, or the bucket, 
a hole dug and seeping.”

— Brenda Shaughnessy / “Liquid Flesh”

“… men pushing themselves as hard as they could push themselves, not exercising, but training, and perhaps not even training, but fighting, fighting the gravity the world exerts on all those who walk upon it, exerts seemingly equally, though in actuality not equally, not equally at all.”

— Moshin Hamid / The Last White Man

“I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.”

— Muriel Rukeyser / “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)”

“I believe we still have a window of time during which we can start healing the harm we have inflicted on the planet—but that window is closing. If we care about the future of our children and theirs, if we care about the health of the natural world, we must get together and take action. Now before it is too late.”

— Jane Goodall & Douglas Abrams / The Book of Hope

“List of things to banish 
Can include words, people, theoretical apparatuses 
Can take the form of a grocery list, a scientific experiment, or a manifesto 
Can read like a personal ad of unwanting 
Can summon aid to help with banishing 
Can be uncertain of what will remain”

— Mia Kang / “Abracadabra”

“Isn’t this the way humanity should approach everything we do on this precious planet? Keeping ourselves to a narrow corridor of use, treading on this one earth lightly and with care.”

— Raynor Winn / Landlines

What I’m Listening To:

“Bunga Bunga or
You’ll
Never work in
Television again”

— The Smile / “You’ll Never Work in Television Again”

Dredging Up (found email)

I’m not saying you did anything “wrong” but the comment about academic fangs upset me. I’m not sure how that could not be pejorative. However if that’s how I’m coming across I’d rather know so I can tone it down. Though that means cutting a lot of who I authentically am off and shoving it in a suitcase. Which I am rather sick of. I had fun responding to his work, and C’s, and now I will feel less free with my responses because I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Except yours: F*** OFF!

What I’m Listening To:

“I was an open wound
Looking for a good time
A time that nobody could show me”

— Squirrel Flower / “Open Wound”

Things I Heard Yesterday

It dries up my mouth, it sucks all the moisture out of it.

Do you remember last year’s medication shortage?

Like a fisherman’s black boot …

Celebrate the bullet. If you’re not ska, you’re dead.

It’s a different version of the same cavil.

Did you see Hopper in Apocalypse Now?

What do you have? Oppositional defiant disorder?

Well, bless him, he’s looking out for us.

Due to disagreements a group of men sway public opinion and gain office operating with intimate friends.

Deliquescent means what?

Did you know osmium is the heaviest element?

I don’t know if they did claim it in their tax returns or not.

Woop, woop, wooooeeeeaahh!

Anyone who deals with abused and traumatized kids … sexual abuse speeds up their biological clock and secretes sex hormones.

Juan recommends the latest influencers.

Is that empty?

No study had ever followed mollusks in these conditions.

A bodily fluid spill kit?

We laughed as we watched the dog try in vain.

The rampaging sans-culottes wrecked churches.

Thank you for your order.

Lacking friends in elementary school makes a crucial difference.

Fevers, fevers and pustules!

It’s a complex and rocky time when friends can suddenly turn on one another.

Standby power is wasted electricity.

Allow the actuator to air dry completely.

There’s neither intelligence or support from family and peers.

Good morning, South Florida, I’m …

What I’m Reading:

“I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.”

— Ocean Vuong / “Not Even” / Time Is A Mother