.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Medieval villages were surrounded by woods, the word “desert” once could refer to forests. People travelled a lot, in spite of poor roads, because no one really owned anything or had a reason to stay anywhere.

I remember it now, on the side of the road: it looked like a big black snake coiled up in the curb and in fact it was a big black snake. That was weird.

The hope I suppose is that, by wandering back and forth over the same stuff, it will all cohere into a sensible whole, but that is familiarity not renewal. You need to seek out the new, my friend!

Coming out of the woods I’m beginning to suspect my problems are mainly of a personal kind.

A house fly I have sequestered in a bathroom I describe as being “the size of a fist” but it is really only my imagination that makes it seem so large, only my imagination that makes me run and duck from this “flying fist.” (It really is big but closer to the size of a large bean.)

Usually when I feel like stopping for no reason in particular, it indicates that there is a particular reason for my stopping that has not yet emerged; and so it proved today when, not 30 minutes into my run, my legs really started to hurt.

Somedays, though, you don’t feel very good and think you’ll cut it short, yet it never feels bad enough to justify stopping, and so there you are, hours later, still running, without it ever having felt pleasant.

“What am I now? Zéro. What can I be tomorrow? Tomorrow I may rise from the dead and begin a new life! I may find the man in me, before he’s done for!” (The Gambler, Dostoyevsky.)

Chaque artiste semble ainsi comme le citoyen d’une patrie inconnue, oubliée de lui-même, différente de celle d’où viendra, appareillant pour la terre, un autre grand artiste. ***

He cleared off the coffee table and did the dishes, then opened up his notebook, which was filled with outlines of the paper. The coffee table was clear. The clock said it was ten-thirty –about fifty minutes before needing to leave– he wrote:

I want to say something about the City of Pigs. Every one talks about In usual discussions about Plato’s Republic, the discussions Normally discussions of Plato’s Republic focus on the discussions construction of the massive institution hypothesized by Socrates and his itnolocuters over the (great bulk of the book) and revolve around question whether or not this is reasonable blueprint for the governance of human society, however, these discussions overlook to important facts: the first is that the given reason for creating this “imaginary repblic” is for the express reason of se is expressly for determining what justice is in the soul of an individual [ie not expressly for creating U.S. viable state constitution); the second is that there are actually two cities posited in the Republic […] if one includes the lesser known, and frequently overlooked “city of pigs.” (or, as another translator has it, “city of sows.”) This is much simpler community of people organization of society living which manages to exist without elagorate regulations and dec divisions, because –unlike the denizens citizens of the republic– they have no need for luxuries or other excesses its citizens live more simply.

He played with the cats, cleaned out the bathroom sink, spoke with the bank, and left a few minutes early for work.

Tweet thread: “a judicial finger in the dike.”

Good idea, law enforcement needs to be held accountable: “In addition to a prohibition on federal officers wearing masks, they also demanded that the agents wear body cameras and carry identification. Their proposal would put an end to roving patrols and require warrants issued by a judge for arrests and searches.” (NYT)

Here’s a good one: “you raise your voice, I erase your voice.”

It is as if the J6ers are ICE. “They had the professional demeanor of criminals.”

Would actually make the World Cup, and soccer, more fun, if they banned the cup in ’26 and had a shadow tournament.

Forgot how good this was: Ives Concord sonata.

I don’t know what to think of the threat of birth rate decline Noah Smith dwells on today.

My first instinct is, it’s a kind of recondite concern. The sort of thing very smart people will obsess over but turn out to be not a very big deal.

My next thought is, if it is for real, it is such a big deal, such a global concern, that we are not really capable of dealing with it: look at our response to climate change, for example.

(And yet, I find myself counter-arguing, while our response to climate change has not been ideal, we have made a lot of progress — not through the way expected, legislation and restraint, to be sure, but through technological advances.)

Finally, a question: is this an affluence problem or a poverty problem? Is it “life is so pleasant I don’t need to have kids, a spouse, that kind of risk, responsibility and attachment” or is it “how can I afford to have kids when I don’t think I can afford to grow old?”

My fatalist strain tells me this is an affluence problem that will only be solved by growing poor, like trees pollinating more when they are under stress of drought, but I of course support Noah’s idea of studying this more seriously.

Big picture idea: technology, while making life better, is also often the source of our next major communal concern. Fossile fuel was great until it wasn’t — climate change. Social media (as Noah might have it) was great until it wasn’t — population decline… (Makes me think that the decline in fertility rates, too, is not an affluence or poverty problem, as I just suggested, but, as with climate change, mainly a technology problem.)

I don’t know if this is good politics or not, I suspect not, but it makes me mad.

NYT. “The nine Democrats who voted to hold Mr. Clinton in contempt were, in addition to Summer Lee: Representatives Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, Emily Randall of Washington State, Lateefah Simon of California, Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois.”

ngrams: “leaned into”

A book, tucked imperfectly in a bookcase, that falls painfully cracking its spine; and shoes that point at each other from opposite ends of the room.

The chatter of the table clutter, talk talk talk — who can keep this quiet for long? (Clean is quiet.)

I know, from the standpoint of this cushion, why I might consider myself a giant, I will seem so tiny an entity within my own form.

There lays where he lays and will soon lay — the cot: there, perhaps, the giant enters me, I am so much larger, but not so that I will know it.

Noah Smith: America is a nation of offline moderates ruled by a fringe of online lunatics.

“It really creeps me out that those are my neighbors — that that’s the kind of people I live next to. It’s really upsetting,” she says, adding, “I just assumed all the ICE agents were like, from Texas and Arizona and Florida.” (source)

Jerome Powel: “Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats.”

objurgation: a strong rebuke or scolding.

Very idly wondering if Times reporter Valerie Hopkins was thinking of Pynchon when she wrote the opening sentence to this article: “The message came screaming through the skies at 8,000 miles per hour.”

Gravity’s Rainbow’s opening is: “A screaming comes across the sky.”

tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein is a farm in the North West province of South Africa that is noted for its unusually long place name of 44 characters—the longest in South Africa and possibly fourth-longest in the world […] the name in Afrikaans means “the spring where two buffaloes were shot stone-dead with one shot.”

Laundry that is warm in a basket that is broken.
Everted socks, a null undergarment, a sleeve.
I will again stand deciphering, with warming hands,
These simple, largely unfashionable puzzles,
Making of the warm clean mound a clear tall stack,
Which is the end of what will seem a cycle of soil:
a tale of a toil  — that soiled — and was undone.