You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
It’s rust you need to remember: the smell
of summer rain on the sidewalk
and the patina on wrought-iron railings on your front porch
with rust patches on them, and the smell
of fresh mowed grass and gasoline and sweat
of your childhood …
Que Sera Sera, A. Van Jordan
limited utopias uphold the practice of artmaking as a performance of non-fulfillment
… deputize for political thought the collection of formal, rhetorical, and tropological maneuvers
Paulò majora canamus—let us sing, of slightly greater things.
-AN
ICE’s War on Home, (LRB). “… at once an autonomous phenomenon and a continuation of the George Floyd rebellion of 2020 and the student-led campaign against the war on Gaza.”
I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.
Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.
To-day the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.
Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.
Gitanjali 5, Rabindranath Tagore
going over small things like these.
Let us go back together to the hills.
Weary am I of palaces and courts,
Weary of words disloyal to my thoughts,—
Come, my belovèd, let us to the hills.
Let us go back together to the land,
And wander hand in hand upon the heights;
Kings have we seen, and manifold delights,—
Oh, my beloved, let us to the land!
Lone and unshackled, let us to the road
Which holds enchantment round each hiddenbend,
Our course uncompassed and our whim its end,
Our feet once more, belovèd, to the road!
Song: Let Us Go Back, Vita Sackville-West
by way of entry you sit with an object, hold it in your hands, rub your fingers across its grooves. you close your eyes, not so much an act of faith as it is an attempt to focus the senses, to see what knowing might be made available through a haptic relationship. it is only a wallet. it is empty. Reginald Jerry Clark would leave this for Regina, she in turn would leave this for you. she teaches you not to speak ill of the dead, to not speak of them at all, so there is no ceremony around the absence.
a black rail worker was born in 1913, served as a porter for The Great Northern Railroad for 25 years and retired without pension. he died some time later. in 1913 there was a rail worker, a porter he served on The Great Northern Railroad and died some time after retirement. a black rail worker died and came back a porter, he retired without pension he died. a black worker was born a porter for the railroad he died and came back as a quarter mile of track. a black rail worker worked and railed and died and retirement was always later, later.
you work with words, which unlike the wallet, is not a material you touch, but you wonder if in reordering them you might disrupt what is presupposed, if you might work something other than emptiness from their grooves. you’ve only failed at this. you are not yet a skilled enough practitioner of failure, and so you keep reordering them, to see what casts a shadow.
[by way of entry you sit with an object], Chaun Webster
![Africans bringing wood (LOC)
[between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920]
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/4431/36772967196_98d31667b3_b.jpg?w=739&ssl=1)
[The President of the US] on Wednesday signed a travel ban on 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, resurrecting an effort from his first term to prevent large numbers of immigrants and visitors from entering the United States.
The ban, which goes into effect on Monday, bars travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
via NYTimes (June 4, 2025, 8:52 p.m. ET).
There’s also a list of exceptions, including green card holders, dual citizens, athletes traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup or the Olympics, and others. See who’s exempted.
