Archive (Page 2) • twelves • Buttondown

Passing Current 25: The Low Road

October 26, 2016

(Seems like the time for this Marge Piercy poem.) the low road “The Low Road” Marge Piercy (1980) What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set...

Passing Current 24: Infinitely patient

October 2, 2016

(If you’re in a dark place in the northern hemisphere the next two weeks or so and you wake up a few hours before dawn you’ll be able to see the zodiacal...

Passing Current 23: Carnaro

September 24, 2016

(Hello again! Some recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here are tuis and bellbirds singing in the rain at about 48 degrees and 52 minutes south latitude,...

Passing Current 22: The Moscow Refrigeration Institute

April 20, 2016

(All the flowering trees are blooming in New York City: callery pear trees, crabapple trees, eastern redbuds, hawthorns, magnolias, and the knockout kanzan...

Passing Current 21: He, She, Us, It!

April 12, 2016

(Short and sweet.) He, She, Us, It! Alfred Kubin’s The Other Side is a deeply unsettling novel from 1909 about a city, Pearl, constructed in isolation...

Passing Current 20: XXXXXXOOXXXOO

April 7, 2016

(Tomorrow is utopian dreamer Charles Fourier’s birthday! Who claimed, in later life, that at the age of nine he swore an oath to destroy trade and commerce,...

Passing Current 19: Solar's game

March 6, 2016

(This Tuesday, Jupiter will be exactly opposite the sun and visible all night.) Solar’s game Xul Solar lived more or less permanently in the future. “I am...

Passing Current 18: Found in Saragossa

February 28, 2016

(Tomorrow is a leap day!) Found in Saragossa The robots and the book turned up in the hands of French officers after the city of Saragossa (or Zaragoza) fell...

Passing Current 17: One-Way Ticket

January 23, 2016

(Back in New York at last, just in time for one of the biggest snowstorms in the city’s history. The Hudson’s slate-gray water vanishes into a whiteout...

Passing Current 16: Llano del Rio

December 7, 2015

(Here’s a way to donate to Planned Parenthood.) Llano del Rio In Llano del Rio, in the Antelope Valley in the farther reaches of Los Angeles County, you can...

Passing Current 15: PURE ENERGY LATENT OR RADIANT

November 21, 2015

(Bells ringing, bats out hunting, massive cumulus clouds gunmetal gray against the deep blue evening sky heading north over the Hudson. If you’re in New York...

Passing Current 14: of future nights / countless / stars

October 28, 2015

(105 days later, a little more than a quarter of a year. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The night after tomorrow a strangely dark asteroid more than 400 meters in diameter,...

Passing Current 13: Il pianeta come festival

July 14, 2015

(In California, around thirty eight degrees five minutes north latitude. Eucalyptus, madrone, coastal oak, fog, kelp beds in the blue Pacific, the red of...

Passing Current 12: More brightly than the sun

June 23, 2015

(Some recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4.) (In the peninsula: bears, seals, lobsters, stories, generous hospitality, cats, fires, birch and fir and maple, and the...

Passing Current 11: Every leaf, every flower, every fruit, forever

June 7, 2015

(Yesterday’s office. Making a fire is all about leaving space, letting it breathe. In Walter Benjamin’s diary he thinks about writing novels and telling...

Passing Current 10: Saint Tree-Eater

May 29, 2015

(A passage in one of Schumann’s piano sonatas is marked “As fast as possible,” and is followed a few bars later by another admonition, “Faster,” and then,...

Passing Current 9: Chambers in the Fun Palace

May 22, 2015

(Fogs in the morning, Mercury and Venus in the sky, music in the streets. Late spring slowly turning into summer.) Chambers in the Fun Palace Cedric Price is...

Passing Current 8: Dancers at Akasaka Space Capsule Disco

April 23, 2015

(Tonight, as the sun sets, you can see the young and waxing moon low by the horizon to the west, with Mars slightly to the north and Venus high in the sky,...

Passing Current 7: Peradam

April 12, 2015

(Highlight of the week: sitting in the Rockford Fosgate SoundLab pressure chamber – which has built-in panic buttons! – at the NY Auto Show: you can feel the...

Passing Current 6: Something not known to anyone at all

April 9, 2015

(On Saturday night, Venus will be in the Pleiades. It’ll be gorgeous.) something not known to anyone at all Anna Akhmatova, “Everything is Plundered,...