Today may or not be David Thomas' 70th birthday. Yesterday I had to drive to Cumberland because L's car (she is in Cumberland on a week-long plein air competition) died and she needed help, I listened to the new Pere Ubu album going to and coming from, it all came wonderfully rushing back to me, why Pere Ubu/Thomas projects one of two permanent members of My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, so much so good. Lots of songs here. I was at this show:
Cormac McCarthy died. I read *The Passenger,* the first of his two 2022 novels, earlier this year (it may be the last novel I started and finished) then started and failed a first read of *Suttree* and started and quit my xth (but the first in a decade after reading it every other year for twenty-five years (though multiple attempts in the past ten years)) reread of *Blood Meridian* and bought but haven't started a one volume edition of his Border Trilogy, it'd be my 5th or 6th reread. I wrote about *The Passinger* simultaneous to Jon Fosse's *Septology,* which I started and quit and haven't thought about once since until this sentence
Just stood up and took that Border Trilogy from the bookshelf open randomly, here, page 536, somewhere in the middle of *The Crossing,* the middle novel of the trilogy:
Drinking too. In these matters drinking is always present. And then the fear. The other mules are screaming. Tienen mucho miedo. Screaming. Sliding and falling in the blood and screaming. What does one say to these animals.? How does one put their minds at rest?
Serendipity be blessed, I have no witnesses but vouch it's true, everything I love and hate about reading McCarthy, can I skip the horrifically graphic and continual and relentless human violence against animals, no I can't, so whatdoIdo? I'm in the middle of McCarthy's beloved Dostoyevsky's *Demons,* I'll see if I try *All the Pretty Horses* once I fail *Demons* but after news of McCarthy's death at least a week old. Have I mentioned of I'm a sadhappy messhot?
COMBUSTIBLE MOOD
Sandra Simonds
COMBUSTIBLE MOOD
Sandra Simonds
Inside every
hole punch
there is
an undelivered speech.
Yesterday, it was wet towels; believe
you me, they were guts.
Today, it’s the oatmeal dried
on a spoon, the white felt
and popsicle sticks I must
procure for my child’s diorama.
The ghost orchid
is what she’s chosen to depict.
A leafless crown, our floating
diadem of climactic dread.
on some level i think this might possibly be true, despite its apparent unlikelihood
ReplyDeleteWe can win this thing and create a healthy, harmonious world, and the work each of us does to help bring this about makes a real difference. The more I observe and learn about human behavior, the more convinced of this I become.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/06/14/your-efforts-make-a-difference-and-we-can-win-this-thing/
caitlin continues to express her optimistic opinions
ReplyDeleteHuman psychology is laden with easily exploited cognitive biases which the science of modern propaganda has learned to take advantage of with remarkable success. But it's still very possible to resist its influence.
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/why-propaganda-works
I'm writing this from the future, where B.B. King and Daniel Ellsberg died on the same day. Now they know what we do not. It's either the Bardo, or Michael Mcconaughey's character in True Detective saying, "Hope that old lady's wrong... 'bout death not being the end". I have to assume that other talented and principled humans were also born today, because that's kind of how it works. A friend at work in the mid 2010's was part of a Buddhist meditation group Ellsberg's wife hosted at their home in the East Bay; the friend started showing up early, just to talk with Ellsberg in the kitchen while waiting. "All the lights on," the friend said, "Everybody home, man,"
ReplyDelete