You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
“It’s your daughter, Mom! Want to say
hello to Rita?” My surprise each time
that he still asks, believes in asking.“Hello, Rita.” A good day, then;
Eurydice, Turning by Rita Dove (Playlist for the Apocalypse); via On Being 041122.
the voice as fresh as I remember.
I close my eyes to savor it
“We tend to be reckless or forgetful of plants, but they ground the potential for multicellular animals like us. Without them, we’re lost”
“all life as we understand it persists by drawing on its environment”
“There’s at least as much suffering as pleasure and as much distress as tenderness in the evolution of life” (MC)
Something I Can Never Have – The String Quartet Tribute to Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine via Westworld.
“… everything there would address our souls, privately, in their sweet native tongue.
There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.”
“We are a species that ponders its own condition. The underlying difficulties of being an animal remain, no matter what culture or era a person is born within. We all face real worries and dilemmas as a consequence of being alive among a multitude of lives.
This book is a defence of what it means to be an animal. It doesn’t involve belittling us or losing sight of the obvious differences that mark us out. Nor does it result in a confused preference for what might be thought of as natural. Rather, this is an argument for a deeper understanding of how we think about life. Our animal origin is the story of our place in the world. It’s the basis of how we give meaning to our existence. This is an impossible task without first accepting that humans are animals. This should be straightforward, yet it isn’t. In truth, we live inside a paradox: it’s blindingly obvious that we’re animals and yet some part of us doesn’t believe it. It’s important to try to make some sense of this. And then, once we accept that we’re animals, to think about what flows from that.”
How to Be Animal A New History of What it Means to Be Human, Melanie Challenger
“… I had a daydream
The Birds Outside My Window Sing During a Pandemic, Lee Herrick
and got lost inside of it. There were dozens
of birds for some reason, who sounded like
they were singing in different accents:
[…]
You’re made of stars and grace.
Stars and grace. Stars—and grace.”
“Ours is a revolution against oppression”
“The hard work of changing our values and reorganizing social life requires political engagement, community involvement, education, debate and discussion, and dreaming.” (RK)
“mostly it drifts past nothingness”
“Stay in the moment, see what it can get you. There was always a way out.”
“The world owes me nothing, he thought, certainly not a perfect ending.” (ML)
“A life lived under a dome, in an artificially generated atmosphere, is still a life” (or a still life)
“I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately […] about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.” (ESJM)
“the time of evening when the women sit around telling stories with one eye on the sky, looking out for that strange white bird that perches on the tallest trees and watches them with a look that seems to want to tell them something.” (FM)