"How can you lead without courage?"
"As the philosopher Mary Midgley once suggested, philosophers are best understood as plumbers: when the plumbing stops working, we call a plumber; when concepts no longer seem to work within our social framework, that is when we turn to philosophy." —@boredcalliope via
I confess i’m in entire sympathy with Delany (one of my favorite writers) but i don’t agree with the one-size-fits-all reading list. Reading is, before anything else, nutrition. Therefore what i advocate—& not only for those who “want to become writers” (what a ridiculous aspiration)—is simply to read 500 books, half of them written before you were born.
"I Know This World is Not My Home
"The frenzy of the lilacs strikes
against my old man’s heart, and yet
I know this world is not my home,
where I have hidden for so long
with pain alone to pay my pains.
I know this world
is not my home, where greenness trills
its singing to the chasing clouds
that I have chased and not once caught.
I know this world
is not my home, whose fragrance fills me
and whose kind breath’s movement makes
what I cannot choose to unchoose.
I know this world. I know this world
is not my home."
—Alex Rettie via
"Men respond only faintly to the horrors that take place around them, except at moments, when the savage, crying incongruity and ghastliness of our condition suddenly reveals itself vivid before our eyes, and we are forced to know what we are. Then the ground slides away from under our feet. But not for long." —Shestov
A language in which there is no word for 'I' (& other word-mysteries). More, just lately.
" I remember an interview I once read in which Allen Ginsberg was asked what a ‘hipster’ was. A hipster, he replied, was someone who could land on any street corner in the world and score some dope in minutes." —Sven Birkerts via
Several poor life decisions later.
sca hori zon lpel
pell s mell cirocco
cir cle rus ft t
der fen by
tos Lai ka bach
the to power will
sent f ences astness
spi Lar ral es
"Lilacenobite"
bell jar of the ballroom
belligerent fidget
photocopy Gliese
in my dustblue backpack
dog-eared, big black clamp
measure my head for Akubra
path perished · the meet apocryphal
only this poem stands
the future ravaged · unimaginably
guess where to hide stuff now
popcorn smell · smartly drifts
monkeyhump of map-cringe
mucho scar-escutcheon
bell jar of the ballroom
barcode from the Dark Web
"I keep coming back to this image. A forest of independent, human scale things. Small newsletters. Small studios. Small cooperatives. Small tools made by people who use them, for other people who use them, with no ambition to swallow the world. Not a return to some imagined golden age of the early web — that was its own kind of mess — but a quieter version of what we have now, where the layer between you and the people you want to read or talk to is thin enough that you can see through it." —Sascha via
"...not for real madness, but for its privilege of its exception."
"At ground zero in Ted Bundy’s Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers." —blurb for Murderland via
"war on all things good"
frontiers of repair
paradigm falters
textureplay
in the shards of the real
a rare whisper
a pure ulcer
what the real doesn't lack
peals in the wide sky
as the arrow knows
the air that lets it through
ultramarine's dim flow
this will does not refuse
in dawn's fizz
a rabbit sees me pass
after sev'ral days
of wheels & all that jazz
does he trace
as much do i recover
from step to step
my name with the monogram cup
Archimedean lever
"Neither author was aware that the other's novel contained a William Ashbless until the coincidence was noticed by the editor responsible for both books, who suggested that the two consult one another so that their references would be consistent." —"William Ashbless" at Wikipedia
"Still remember the crushing moment as a young researcher when I realised that proving something through evidence had damn near no impact on social policy unless it was politically useful to believe it." —@shrinkatlarge.bsky.social
"Dick makes imperialism in California seem unproblematic."
as i departed that depleted kingdom
at the high gate guards demanded
words, & as so far i'd mostly winged it
now something rose less random
the streetcar in the tutelary fog
will let you out in front of gargoyles
mind already ornament-surplus boggles
meets two-headed harg
& snarling angel. this is what i've learned
gentlemen; what i may not leave
encounter more bizarre than i deserve
more true, insight damascened
& what passed then between us i can't tell
but all i know that one look gave
thunder & rubies out to fingertips revv
wings in gold mesh flail—
& that's the book i left them with
shaking the dust from these unsteady sandals
giaourlight, Mars Red midrash
masquerade across taskbars
storage unit yarons
reality's treeline
jester dressed in giaourlight
"Beneath the new 90,000 square foot ballroom, a complex is being carved six stories into the ground."
"No call of the harp
shall waken warriors · after their battles;
but the black raven · shall boast to the eagle,
crowing how finely · he fed on the fated
when, with the wolf, · he went rending the slain."
--Sullivan & Murphy's Beowulf
"My premise here is that the holes in the telling are the story." —Lisa Robertson, Riverwork (2026)
Earliest depiction of the Trojan Horse.
dun that fits in
And all the truly wild things
gather in my heart
it's got a crack but it doesn't leak
green arrow fixedly
not
adventures in packaging
special dark assortment
"The concessions of possession and the successions of time’s continual procession..."
Some Songs I Know, Goth or Goth-Adjacent.
"keeping up with the trash"
1.
forensic peer, puzzles
pitch sibilant williwaw
graygreen dusk
what is it now
threadbare but till · the last packet
of sweetener
2.
only the bad guys perish
in this film. finish
of bright lights. finish
of nevermind what you can't control.
waking not in the dark.
waking with a purpose
for the sound to cease
artists in 80s movies
3.
ev'ry last crime counted
correlations made
between breakfast & coffee
this shiny umber floor
prospect of weeks
while the world slides
into chaos & punishment
we've constructed something
precious, a feather poised
on the tip of a car aerial
"For a brief moment, the phone system had been dragged back into kit time."
" More and more, people are taking action to resist this death march toward the convenient, the cheap, the artificial, the synthetic, the homogenous, and the repressed toward a more authentic way of living and relating to each other, back toward what we know is real." —Seeds of Eden via
I have a lot of sympathy with the ideas here (especially with the primary texts & reading out loud)...except they are leaving a lot of tacit assumptions in the word "beauty" that require, at the very least, not just a syllabus but a 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 & 𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠, now that we can only by willful ignorance not take into account the many different things that have been called by that word. Otherwise, it's a stand-in for insular & ahistorical thinking. The accumulation of art & knowledge that we call a tradition deserves better.
"...for the record, as of today, I’ve sold 763 hardcovers; 127 paperbacks; 273 digital copies; 212 audiobooks: for a total of 1375 books." —Harold Rogers via
"TODTNAUBERG
Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
starred die above it,
in the
hut,
the line
—whose name did the book
register before mine?—
the line inscribed
in that book about
a hope, today,
of a thinking man's
coming
word
in the heart,
woodland sward, unlevelled,
orchid amd orchid, single,
coarse stuff, later, clear
in passing,
he who drives us, the man,
who listens in,
the half-
trodden wretched
tracks through the high moors,
dampness,
much."
—Hamburger's Celan
Because you do not wrestle with your angel.
shiny black grackle
in the WalMart parking lot
air full of other cries
You think this has nothing to do with you.
"I sometimes think of myself as one of those land mammals who have to keep moving toward the remaining source of sustenance. The time when the abundance of the wild could nourish everyone is long gone. That’s why you might find me in your garbage cans, my grubby little paws latched onto the carcass of your rotisserie chicken." —Lincoln Michel via
"Something will come after Trump. The work of recovery when he is gone will take many decades, and may be impossible in some areas." —James Fallows via
Now i know how to punish the top fascist cadre.
"Parliament Hill Fields
On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.
Faceless and pale as china
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous;
Nobody can tell what I lack.
Gulls have threaded the river's mud bed back
To this crest of grass. Inland, they argue,
Settling and stirring like blown paper
Or the hands of an invalid. The wan
Sun manages to strike such tin glints
From the linked ponds that my eyes wince
And brim; the city melts like sugar.
A crocodile of small girls
Knotting and stopping, ill-assorted, in blue uniforms,
Opens to swallow me. I'm a stone, a stick,
One child drops a barrette of pink plastic;
None of them seem to notice.
Their shrill, gravelly gossip's funneled off.
Now silence after silence offers itself.
The wind stops my breath like a bandage.
Southward, over Kentish Town, an ashen smudge
Swaddles roof and tree.
It could be a snowfield or a cloudbank.
I suppose it's pointless to think of you at all.
Already your doll grip lets go.
The tumulus, even at noon, guards its black shadow:
You know me less constant,
Ghost of a leaf, ghost of a bird.
I circle the writhen trees. I am too happy.
These faithful dark-boughed cypresses
Brood, rooted in their heaped losses.
Your cry fades like the cry of a gnat.
I lose sight of you on your blind journey,
While the heath grass glitters and the spindling rivulets
Unspool and spend themselves. My mind runs with them,
Pooling in heel-prints, fumbling pebble and stem.
The day empties its images
Like a cup or a room. The moon's crook whitens,
Thin as the skin seaming a scar.
Now, on the nursery wall,
The blue night plants, the little pale blue hill
In your sister's birthday picture start to glow.
The orange pompons, the Egyptian papyrus
Light up. Each rabbit-eared
Blue shrub behind the glass
Exhales an indigo nimbus,
A sort of cellophane balloon.
The old dregs, the old difficulties take me to wife.
Gulls stiffen to their chill vigil in the drafty half-light;
I enter the lit house."
—Sylvia Plath, 1961
Where's the miniseries of this.
50 years of Goth in 100 songs.
"...the crux of their distaste is just that: a distaste, a shudder of aesthetic revulsion. What they are reacting against is the texture of life under liberalism." —Becca Rothfeld via
yellow Corvette
troubled sky
encounter soon forgotten
"The world of word-coining has more Margaret Mitchells in it than James Pattersons:..." (via @lori-wike.bsky.social)
"When the Soviet Union Was Disintegrating
i
The reason why I’m learning Spanish
by reading Neruda one word at a time
looking most of them up in the dictionary
and the reason why I’m reading
Dickinson one poem at a time
and still not understanding
or liking much, and the reason
why I keep thinking about
what might be a story
and the reason why I’m sitting
here writing this, is that I’m trying
to make this thing.
I am shy to name it.
My father didn’t like words like 'soul.'
He shaved with Occam’s razor.
Why make up stuff
when there’s enough already?
But I do fiction. I make up.
There is never enough stuff.
So I guess I can call it what I want to.
Anyhow it isn’t made yet.
I am trying one way and another
all words — So it’s made out of words, is it?
No. I think the best ones
must be made out of brave and kind acts,
and belong to people who look after things
with all their heart,
and include the ocean at twilight.
That’s the highest quality
of this thing I am making:
kindness, courage, twilight, and the ocean.
That kind is pure silk.
Mine’s only rayon. Words won’t wash.
It won’t wear long.
But then I haven’t long to wear it.
At my age I should have made it
long ago, it should be me,
clapping and singing at every tatter,
like Willy said. But the 'mortal dress,'
man, that’s me. That’s not clothes.
That is me tattered.
That is me mortal.
This thing I am making is my clothing soul.
I’d like it to be immortal armor,
sure, but I haven’t got the makings.
I just have scraps of rayon.
I know I’ll end up naked
in the ground or on the wind.
So, why learn Spanish?
Because of the beauty of the words of poets,
and if I don’t know Spanish
I can’t read them. Because praise
may be the thing I’m making.
And when I’m unmade
I’d like it to be what’s left,
a wisp of cheap cloth,
a color in the earth,
so they’ll do something else the same way.
Seventy years for nothing.
And the dream that came before the betrayal,
the justice glimpsed before the murders,
the truth that shone before the lies,
all that is thrown away.
It didn’t matter anyway
because all that matters
is who has the sayso.
Once I sang freedom, freedom,
sweet as a mockingbird.
But I have learned Real Politics.
No freedom for our children
in the world of the sayso.
Only the listening.
The silence all around the sayso.
The never stopping listening.
So I will listen
to women and our children
and powerless men,
my people. And I will honor only
my people, the powerless."
–Ursula K. Le Guin
1991
This is Ursula’s final blog post.
25 September 2017 via
Who Died When Elon Musk Killed USAID?
"It's 2036: software is not written, but generated on-the-fly for each user.
Code is no longer deterministic, so bugs can't be fixed manually. Instead, "vaccines" are injected at the prompt level, and apps self-repair over time.
After too many rewrites, codebases eventually die and get replaced." —@sachagreif.com
What interests me more are the artists of one tradition that tried to learn from the other. Takemitsu, for instance, arrived at a point where his music sounds as much western as non-western. The painter Zao Wouki is another. It’s not so successful going the other way. Lafcadio Hearn, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts—these have value, but in no way measure up to their models. Maybe the composer Messiaen has done best in that regard. And also, strangely enough, the scifi writer Cordwainer Smith.
Also: i completely forgot about the Post-Impressionists who learned from Japanese woodcuts & Picasso & friends who looked at African sculpture.
"Suction Marks
I watch an octopus
immerse itself in absence,
not hiding,
more a careful reduction
until only suction marks remain,
small sticky moons
left on stone
evidence
that presence briefly lived there."
—@thedevilstuna.bsky.social
gold less golden starry
giddy as well pillbug
clock watching in dimness
walk through walls
here in former times
packaging changes
somehow the poem carried
arrives at its quarry
gold without golden
the rich black soil
“Line endings: you go to the store at regular intervals, Sense endings: but you run out of this & that, continually.” —The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism
"Garshin explained to Rybakov the reason for not marrying Akhmatova: he had a warning in a night dream from his late wife not to marry Anna." —Larisa Rimerman via
another gnostic castle
near ricochet seiche
road through faded forest
affright parking fractals
sky full of gods scowling
El Niño skald's Walden
this moment marked lacking
its mission wasted
"upgrade bullying"
palimpsest lore · catalyst car
spraypaint sutra · disaster hole
watchtower tidings · baroque orchid
scattered brawl
in brown liquid
cast iron foyer
an old reader · of written clouds
beneath crenellated · crabgrass
on 8-track intrude · no conversation
among brownshirts · & certain poets
slim passage
for green parrots
a watched eclipse · clamoring crowd
hubcap hooky · & dire reprieve
borrowed word · wending earthward
these random streets
& forks offered
drumly sweepstakes
remarks watchtower · tenderly threatens
what time is left · leaves swirl
old guitar solos · on scratched records
place of the skull
placates vicars
& antique pistol
"You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab."
—Allen Tate via
"...salient frameworks of causation..."
"When heavy flooding hit a number of provinces the following year, hardliners took the unorthodox approach of turning to the moronic 2017 movie GeoStorm, starring Gerard Butler, for answers. 'The GeoStorm film gives us a special message,' wrote Tasnim, the in-house news agency of the Revolutionary Guards, in an in-depth report by its investigative unit. 'The United States has a specific programme for manipulating the climate.' " —30 Months in Iran via
"mice helium"
fingerprints on the crossbow
crafted from spiced plastic
machines with brains breaking
briskly as sticks
gnat torent gnarly
waiting for the tsk
of toast hop
coming in there
finding it cold
“not sick & not well”
Miyazaki AI
Floats a Taco Bell burrito
Exhibit of flags
Exhibit of lost causes
Put-off follow ups · pestered by carers
Shoe shine · in a burning barn
Traffic lights that lurch · into blinking mode
Inkpens sputter & die
Write what really · erosion’s embrace
Bracketed with broughams · full of masked thugs
The morning’s rolled out · marchshadows
So tired, tired
By the beautiful weather
"... I can’t prove that Jamir Nazir is not a real person..."
"The world is full of things that seem way too implausible for a Pynchon novel. The Italian dictator’s son founded a pretty good jazz band called Romano Mussolini and the Mussolini All-Stars." —@secretsquirrel2
Creation of Eve and Fall of the Rebel Angels from The Hours of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
"Please never give up on your dream that one day, you will finally have a bookshelf with a rolling ladder." —@whimsicalmuse.bsky.social
"The Blue Deneb"
lungs, fluid, layaway
alert to word hurdles
May's silver
insolence braved
start a bookwork file · for all my old torts
lit lines grimace looming
elect a face specter
if illness
has an address
circumbendibus · sorry all the time
count the pothole pummels
portal of gauche notions
road of owns
or red scansion
this part lost · to the storied lurgy
"Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favours call;
She comes unlook'd for, if she comes at all.."
Dreading the need to talk to a robot.
My journal of tea toned Cyanotype experiments.
"the hunt for red drogulus"
rich sparks mog murk's crescent
immiscible hiss-cage
frail tracker of follies
defunct rock, stilb echo
when word perfect fumbles
& firmware smiles grimly
patterned shadows capture
past story & Rorschach
into sidewalks summoned
no secret left teflon
the blank page bludgeons
what might bloom foam homelands
"Everyone loves the end of the world
We all hope to enjoy the apocalypse
from a distance. A good storm
spares the roof but rattles the glass.
Children know: destruction is funny, sometimes beautiful.
A distant inferno would enchant your night
if you saw it from the next coast.
So much torment is shut away, you might even be comforted
by a Hell with space for your friends.
We build great telescopes to watch stars die
send divers to explore drowned cities, give prizes
for pictures of flaming sinkholes
or bones bleaching by a dry lake.
An old man reads of a decade he won’t see
lethal heat, scarcity of food.
It aches softly, like a sunset.
A new desert at the edge of town, some murders on the news."
—Tom Sastry via
"finding it hard to put into words just quite upsetting I find the idea of Google getting rid of the 'ten blue links' format of search entirely, genuinely feels like your landlord announcing he's removing your kitchen and replacing it with a bouncy castle, I need my kitchen, let me keep my kitchen" —@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com
The Grateful Dead Dream Telepathy Experiment Revisited.
