You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
the relative safety of brutal work […] difficult always
Only the tea roses remained sturdy with promises you could count on to be kept.
after she spoke, the smile that followed made the sun look like a fool
–TM
“This is the place. […] Don’t see; feel,” she said. “You can feel your way, but hurry, hurry.” (TM)
“Good as always,” he said over his shoulder. “Always,” I repeated
“Look past the fence—there—those purple flowers. […] These will be perfect on our windowsill.” […] It was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for.
“What’s good?” […] a precious spark we sought and harvested of and for one another.
“maybe all names are illusions. How often do we name something after its briefest form?”
–Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
“a genre [a place] for ‘managing the distance and proximity of what touches us'” Joe Jukes on Berlant (‘THE PLACE WHERE…’, Encountering Berlant part 1: Concepts otherwise)
“We dreamed the ancient world as a place of freedom, a picture to imagine what we desired and what was possible.”
“… looked backward to look forward, finding the cosmos by way of ancient Egypt.” (Robin D.G. Kelley)
seeing illuminates the world
“the Marvelous was free”
“The work of these movements taken as a whole interrogates what is “normal”; […] encourages us to construct a politics rooted in desire.” (Robin D.G. Kelley)
For Fred
I could pick anything and think of you—
This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue
My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.
I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow—
There you’ll be, with furrowed brow
And chain mail glinting, to set me free:
One eye smiling, the other firm upon the enemy.
This post-postmodern age is all business: compact disks
And faxes, a do-it-now-and-take-no-risks
Event. Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast,
Oddly male: Big Bad Floyd, who brings a host
Of daydreams: awkward reminiscences
Of teenage crushes on worthless boys
Whose only talent was to kiss you senseless.
They all had sissy names—Marcel, Percy, Dewey;
Were thin as licorice and as chewy,
Sweet with a dark and hollow center. Floyd’s
Cussing up a storm. You’re bunkered in your
Aerie, I’m perched in mine
(Twin desks, computers, hardwood floors):
We’re content, but fall short of the Divine.
Still, it’s embarrassing, this happiness—
Who’s satisfied simply with what’s good for us,
When has the ordinary ever been news?
And yet, because nothing else will do
To keep me from melancholy (call it blues),
I fill this stolen time with you.
“a myth is not something false, rather a myth is something with so much truth that it needs a fantastical container” Pádraig Ó. Tuama, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World.