On the packaging.Hidden in the terms and conditions. Who knew it’d be so foretelling, so prescient? “Some assembly required.” Like a chant. Like a mantra. Like the Rosary. A testament to how you’d spend your time and your days. A lifetime with tiny pieces. Trying to fit them in. Trying to figure out where they go...
This is a stuning piece that resonates with me in ways I can't put into words. Thomas Merton says that “those who cannot be alone cannot find their true being and they are always something less than themselves.” But over time with overuse the kind of withdrawal that makes it possible can become its own kind of lessening.
Is there anything that makes you invincible? Can you coat yourself in kevlar? Some new invention of polymer chemistry? Ballistic panels and stab protection. Blunt force resistance and polycarbonate shields. You try to be normal. You enter the world in riot gear. Defensive. Fragile. Scared...
It's funny the way poetry sometimes appears, unexpected and unknown. Even when I try write something else, even when I mean to write another way, even my essays, even my prose, turns into a poem.
From a bed in a bedroom, to a bathroom, to a mirror, to a kitchen, to a sink, to a stove. Through the vertical rectangles with a handle or a knob, into a garage, into a car. From the squared off edges of a parking lot, yellow and white lined squares within, into a office building. We live in a world of little boxes...
On his substack, @delong makes connections between Hornblower, Vorkosigan, Elizabeth Bennet and @marthawells 's Murderbot (he just read the new SYSTEM COLLAPSE)
We spend so much of our time trying to use our time more effectively, more orderly. Trying to be more productive. More structured. Trying to streamline all our procesess. But what if the best of what we have to give, the best of what we have to offer, the best of what's inside us, might come out best through inefficiency?
As a species we specialize in calculating with and by what we can observe. Coordinates by which we measure all things. Four cardinal directions on a compass. An angular distance in a spherical system. But "a wealth of possibilities breads dread" Walter Kaufmann says. Couldn't it be condensed or simplified?...
There are two things that direct all my efforts. Two things I give all my time to. Two things I try so hard to be good and I just quite seem to do it. And then there’s Grant Snider who writes and makes art seamlessly.
Even bound and covered, books never stop releasing oxygen. Never stop planting seeds. Never stop taking root. They never stop trying to reach up and out. Never stop trying to branch and grow. They never stop trying to help us do the same.
"There are four kinds of people in this world", Umberto Eco says, "cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.” But it could fewer than that. Or couldn't it be?. Some one like me is capable of being stupid, imprudent, half-witted, and mentally-ill. All in one day, all before noon. Four horseman of apocalyptic idiocy in one living being.