> 169: Suppose this poem were about you—
Dahlov Ipcar, World Full of Horses, 1955
It is, indeed, Thursday again.
Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:
I didn’t know much about David Graeber’s work before reading this long New York Magazine portrait of him and now I want to go out and read everything he wrote. Among his core jumping-off points as a thinker: People are better than we think.
A tangential part of the Graeber piece I liked was this description of his writing philosophy. Graeber and David Dubrovsky's plan for writing a book together "was to pursue it strictly ‘in a spirit of fun,’ as a respite from their other work. It was how Graeber liked to approach writing generally, said Dubrovsky. He’d write propped up in the bathtub or lying on the floor; that way, it didn’t feel like work.” See also: Kate McKean’s “How to like what you write.”
“please tell me about a time you laughed so hard you cried.”
“How am I, a regular if somewhat fidgety person, supposed to reconcile this doomsday blanket narrative with reports that one guy with a Roman numeral in his name has put his family coal business (and/or his principled dedication to the hardworking miners of West Virginia, long may they wave) ahead of, like, biological life on Earth? It is hard to read these two related but seemingly contradictory news stories and not feel like maybe some person of conscience should do something, because what we have here is a trolley problem.”
How to do Thanksgiving like Tucci. Key word: Martinis.
Let us celebrate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, blogger.
If you generally like Wes Anderson movies I predict you will like the new one, The French Dispatch. It deploys selective black and white well; a thing I found humorous is they don’t give Tim Chalamet, an actual French speaking person, any lines in French; Richard Wright makes the movie and people should cast him in more things. End of movie review.
I don’t know how to explain how good this lentil and root vegetable recipe is other than to say it is the truth. There is a lot of butter in it. It is vegetarian.
Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
I was telling you about.
Well, not much has changed. I still can't figure out
how to get from the post office to the swings in the park.
Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,
and my hair is the color of dandelion fluff.
Suppose this poem were about you—would you
put in the things I've carefully left out:
descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily
people behave toward each other? Naw, that's
all in some book it seems. For you
I've saved the descriptions of the chicken sandwiches,
and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement
from the bronze mantel, and will never be appeased.
—John Ashbery, The Problem of Anxiety
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Laura