Hitting The Links: 8/25/24
A 'poem' on relearning hunger, a ton of great links, my new episode, + a LONG drive, & some fitness-wackiness
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
A Hunger Artist
[This started less as a poem and more as a heap of broken images] [which isn’t to say it’s much of a poem now, but it’s not prose]
For two weeks now
I have been
A Hunger Artist
Not inspired by
Kafka
Hamsun
Tisha B’Av
But rediscovering will
and savoring emptiness
I know it’s strong
When I feel it
In my teeth
And I am burning away
What I’ve stored
All the while
Like some shaman
I expect a vision
The digits on the morning weigh-in
The calculation of percent
Lost shed sliced away
Arcing toward
Kabbalistic meaning
Pass by dessert trays at
Conference coffee-breaks
Spit out the chocolate bits from a
Rest-stop bag of trail mix
Buy a baguette
Basque cheesecake
Slab of Laderach
For my wife
Nothing for me
Thanks
Enough has become
Enough
For now, it is enough
That I don't go to bed
Stuffed and angry
But the transitive property or
The Law of Conservation of
Compulsion and Neuroses
Means I take it out in other ways
Vanity instead of snacking
I think too much about it
When it becomes art
It will be second nature
*
[I don’t know much about the topic, but if you suffer from an eating disorder, please talk to your doctor or therapist, and reach out to an organization that can help. This looks reputable.]
*
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Jess Ruliffson • Joe Coleman • Anita Kunz • Shalom Auslander • Maurice Vellekoop • Laura Beers • Robert Pranzatelli • Bob Fingerman
RIP Joyce Brabner (I apologize for not including it a few weeks ago, but this way you get the long-form TCJ obit) . . . RIP Phil Donahue . . . RIP Rep. Bill Pascrell (when we were on the same Amtrak to DC, I noticed he would have not one but two flip-phones out on his tray) . . . RIP Al Attles . . . RIP Hettie Jones . . . RIP Leonard Hayflick . . .
Here’s a beautiful NYer interview with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings about art, music, the road, surviving the 2020 tornado that almost destroyed their studio, and why my fave album of theirs, Time (The Revelator), isn’t on vinyl yet.
Also, the new album by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings just came out! And the new album from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds comes out next week!
Go read Christopher Brown’s FIELD NOTES newsletter from last week, The Great God Thoth is alive and well and living in Margaritaville, and go pre-order his new book! (This week’s newsletter is good, too.)
I should go listen to my 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2023 conversations with Chris, as prep for our upcoming one.
“If I think back to the prayer in the old missals, ‘Prayer to Ask of God the Proper Use of Sickness,’ by Blaise Pascal, it seems to me I have made the best possible use of cancer.” First piece I’ve read by Annie Ernaux, & it’s a doozy.
It wouldn’t be the first time Louis Menand writes about bookstores (okay, bookshops). Michael Dirda writes about bookstores, too.
And Samanth Subramanian writes about sleeping in libraries.
Warren Ellis posted a link to this neat interview with Chelsea Manning about the failed promise of the internet, which I saw via his RSS feed, which probably says something about the failed promise of the internet.
Now THIS was a perfect link to receive from a pal while sitting-in-a-hotel-room-on-my-own-bookended-by-long-drives, because you get so alone at times that it just makes sense.
Current/Recent Reading
“A Hunger Artist” - Franz Kafka (tr. Willa & Edwin Muir)
Dreyer’s English - Benjamin Dreyer
Mysticism - Simon Critchley
“The face is the other, and in its light we become. Without that face we are no one, and if we are no one we are dead, and if we are dead we can do as we please.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett, Martin Aitken), My Struggle: Book 6
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
My workout routine got messed up by this week’s biz-travel, so no Wed. weights or Thu. yoga, but I did manage to get in a 5k treadmill run in the hotel fitness center Wednesday night. And 8+ hours of driving on Thursday — Boston to Wellfleet to record a show w/Nicholas Delbanco, then Wellfleet back home — should count for something, right? Anyway, did my weights on Friday afternoon, yoga on Saturday after getting back from my podcast session in NYC, and I hope to get another round of weights in today (no run, as it’s already too humid, so only 2 of those this week). No post-workout pic for you, as those are still too . . . much . . . for public sharing, but here’s me in the hotel mirror Thursday morning, heading out to Wellfleet.
Re the intro poem, I don’t want you thinking I’m suffering from an eating disorder, or engaging in otherwise unhealthy behavior, but I was pinned at a weight that I’m not comfortable with for several months, and was concerned that I was heading in the wrong direction, so I decided I’d make a real effort to cut back on excessive (and compulsive) snacking (not junk food, but trail mix, dried fruit, & the like), while also getting back into running (where the excess lbs. may not be so good for my knees & ankles). As a result, within 2 weeks I’ve dropped 10 lbs., and feel pretty good about my body. For the record I was ~10 lbs. lighter than this when I was really running (30 mi./week), but I like the muscle I’ve added through weights the last few years, so I’m trying to find a balance. I’m glad that my body’s still got the metabolism to respond like this.
Seriously, I’m not starving myself; this was lunch on Thursday (Wellfleet) and Saturday (NYC/Little Spain):
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode + art & a bunch of Instax pix, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
Lost my shape, trying to act casual / Can’t stop, I might end up in the hospital / Changing my shape, I feel like an accident / They’re back to explain their experience,