> 192: I will constitute the field
Well,
Here in America, we're unfortunately going through a coup right now where the worst people in the world are voiding the Constitution to dismantle the federal government and enrich themselves. Not great! I really wish we had been wrong about how much worse things could get with these people's return to power, but perhaps we didn’t doomsay enough. Anyway, the group I am most consistently impressed with that’s organizing action is Indivisible, which I have mentioned before. If there is something smart and strategic to be done, Indivisible is doing it. Generally, if you have Republican representatives, it's especially important you put pressure on them to not cede their power and stop some of this. (But Democrats need yelling at too.) They are already sweating.
This is the headline and piece I think will stick with me from this era the way “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” will define 2017-2020: “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down—I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”
“Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce… You have opportunity after opportunity to create something lovely for yourself or others. Every moment you choose to sit and think about horrors beyond your control, every time you make the choice to look for more and more details about just HOW bad... you are turning away from those opportunities.” This whole thread from Mishell Baker is worth your time.
Judith Butler: “If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic.”
Have some museum ASMR.
A house tour of Gloria Steinem's New York City apartment; a map of New York City bars with real jukeboxes.
A nice thing: Bookshop has started selling ebooks, so you’re not locked in to purchasing from Amazon anymore.
A search tool that emphasizes text-heavy sites, like a portal into the old good internet.
I’m a bit late to Kaliane Bradley’s book “The Ministry of Time” but I loved, loved, loved it. It’s like history and scifi and a search for identity and romance and thriller all in one. If you hate it I don’t want to know. They’re making a BBC adaptation too!
Please do yourself a favor and watch Conclave, even if you don’t care about popes or organized religion (I don’t). Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci swishing around in robes making drama! Isabella Rossellini doing more with four minutes of screen time than most actors do with 40! Come on.
Looking forward to: Buffy reboot (imagine infinite exclamation points here); Ryan Coogler/Michael B. Jordan vampire movie!; Bowen Yang/Lily Gladstone gay wedding farce; new Knives Out.
Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
One enemy—I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.I will constitute the field.
—Witchgrass, Louise Glück
Bye,
Laura
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