Hitting The Links: 5/25/25
This one's got a lot of great links, questions about identity & self, thoughts on the limits of planning, and old pinball machine, BIRDY!, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
If a Tree Falls in the Middle of a 2,000-Year-Old Poem
“No man is hourly armed against surprise.”
—Horace, Odes, 2.13 (tr. James Michie)
There are no coincidences, just pattern recognition the more you put yourself into the world. At least, that’s where I am this minute. So I wasn’t freaked when, days after a big ol’ tree came down in our yard and would have crushed my car — and me, if I’d been out there — I came across one of Horace’s poems about getting crushed by a tree. The association was waiting to be made; the world was waiting for me to catch up.
After rueing the person who planted the tree, Horace writes of being in the underworld with other poets, Sappho and Alcaeus. I, as noted in Wednesday’s newsletter, made a joke about Final Destination. We work with what we’ve got.
I’ve got various crises and exigencies brewing this weekend, some of which I wasn’t planning for, but we’re not hourly armed against surprise. So no extended riff/profundity this time around, but I will share some love.
You oughtta do the same.
Birdy Of The Week
She’s taking it easy this morning, while I slave over this newsletter.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Keiler Roberts • Peter Kuper • Vauhini Vara • Craig Thompson • Ari Richter • Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak
RIP George Wendt . . . RIP Jonnie Boer . . . RIP Jim Irsay . . . RIP Monroe Milstein . . . RIP Sebastião Salgado . . . RIP Leslie Dilley . . . RIP Michael Roemer . . . RIP Susan Brownmiller . . .
My local college solved a 180-year-old cold case.
Long piece by Karl Ove Knausgaard on mystery in the digital age (Damion Searls was one of the translators).
Oral history of The Thick Of It, which means there’ll be cursing.
Great piece by Anna Della Subin on poet Dunya Mikhail.
Choire Sicha wrote about the memoirs of Keith McNally, Barry Diller, and Graydon Carter, and the NYC they made.
Speaking of whose NYC, I loved this profile of Clayton Patterson and his archive of the Lower East Side (which of course put me in mind of last fall’s podcast with Eric Drooker).
Derek Guy wrote about Michael Anton, the new administration, and “conservative business dress.” I was expecting a Hugo Boss joke somewhere, but no.
Related, here’s a WSJ piece about the costs of trying to make a navy blazer in the U.S. Punchline: that supply chain only works if there’s a lot of robotics replacing workers.
I appreciate the great work United’s ops people do, but I’m still glad I’m not flying anywhere for a while.
I’m a Shea Whigham mark, so I’m all in on this interview.
Daniel Mendelsohn (2020a, 2020b) wrote beautifully about Homer, the Odyssey and the nature of self in the NYT:
Just what is identity? What is the difference between our inner and outer selves — between the “I” that remains constant as we make the journey from birth to death and the self we present to the world, which is so often changed by circumstances beyond our control, such as pain, trauma or even the simple process of aging? How is it that we always feel that we are ourselves even as we acknowledge that we evolve and change over time, both physically and emotionally?
I, as you know, go on about this stuff all the time as I try to understand whether man is capable of change, what that looks like, whether the soul can, say, echo or mirror the mutation that my DNA has undergone, whether our fates are determined in our youth, what we can do when the whole karmic spread is laid out before us. Which is to say, I really need to get Daniel back on the show to talk about his new translation of the Odyssey.
Speaking of the self, Mark Harris wrote a great piece about gay people who stay/go back in the closet, through the lens of Pee-Wee Herman.
Current/Recent Reading
Horace: Poet on a Volcano - Peter Stothard
Where the Paths Do Not Go - Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Burton Pike) Speaking of change & mutation:
Will transformation. O be inspired by the flame within which a thing that glows with transformations withdraws from you; that designing spirit that masters what is earthly loves in the figure's changes nothing like the turning point. What locks itself in stasis already is the frozen: does it think itself safe protected by the nondescript gray? Wait, a hardest warns from the distance the hard, woe — absent hammer is raised! Who pours himself forth as a spring, him recognition recognizes; and it leads him charmed through the cheerfully created that with beginning often closes and with ending begins. Every happy space is a child or grandchild of parting, which they go through astonished. And Daphne transformed, since she feels herself laureling, wants you to change into wind.
Mourning Diary - Roland Barthes (tr. Richard Howard)
Every Man For Himself And God Against All - Werner Herzog (tr. Michael Hoffmann)
What does my average day look like? Who are my friends? What sort of life do I lead? I have trouble describing myself because I have a vexed relationship with mirrors. I look in the mirror when I shave so I don’t cut myself, but that shows me my jawline, not my person.
HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michael Houllebecq (tr. Dorna Karzeni)
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I missed weights last Sunday, but made up for it on Monday before leaving for Philadelphia. But I also missed Wednesday, because of that trade show. By that day, my calves finally felt normal after last Saturday’s 11-mile run. I didn’t get any running in this week, to my shame, but at least I got in yoga-weights-yoga Thursday-Saturday. Weights today, provided the aforementioned crises & exigencies give me 45 min. or so to wreck myself.
I missed my meditation sessions Mon-Wed because of the travel and such, but had an interesting one on Thursday, when I saw the bowling alley my old man used to frequent when he was still living with us. Recalled some pinball machines and video games, though I may have been mistaken about the XENON machine being there. Later, I found myself walking past an ‘80s-era arcade with a gorilla. It got freaked out by the noise and lights, and I had to take its hand and walk with it through that gauntlet, knowing it could flip out and kill me.
Lately, and maybe it’s a sign of sleep deprivation, I’ve been having more of those unspooling scenarios during these 15-minute sessions, mini-dreams rather than the bursts of images and words that I was experiencing when I started a few months ago. I have no idea what any of it means.
“I’m going out bowling” was Dad’s line when he was out catting around with one of his girlfriends, before he moved out. My childhood wasn’t fun.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe a new Instax, & some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
I'll take a quiet life / A handshake of carbon monoxide,