Author Archive
Thursday, September 1st, 2022
From Barcelona through Chris’s community in Vidalia and over the Pyrenees to Villerouge-la-Cremade, and back again. Cathar castles and Montserrat and the Med.
Even more beautiful: from San Francisco to Redding and up and over the Cascade Range and along the Rogue River Valley to Reed College in Portland. The State of Jefferson, the high desert where my wild horse Lenny was born.
Posted in adventure time, france, happiness, horses are pretty, i love the whole world, mindfulness, san francisco, spain | Comments Off on roads trip
Thursday, September 1st, 2022
I’m more interested in solidarity, even if I don’t quite yet know myself what I mean by it, just the feeling I get from it—the startling, quenching relief of it; the force of its surprise, like being loved.
Posted in bookmaggot, hope | Comments Off on how to read now, by elaine castillo
Sunday, August 14th, 2022
who’d have thought that explosion of joy would end five years later in the most absurd butchery . . .
Posted in bookmaggot, history | Comments Off on uncertain glory, by joan sales
Saturday, August 13th, 2022
At my high school there was a sign that said: “The world belongs to those who read.” That’s a lie, I thought, a lie, a lie, a lie.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on brother in ice, by alicia kopf
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022
she copies down sentences that tell one how to live, which have the undeniable weight of truth because they come from books
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on the years, by annie ernaux
Sunday, August 7th, 2022
They say willingness is what one needs to succeed. They say one needs to succeed.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on customs, by solmaz sharif
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022
Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.
Posted in bookmaggot, history | Comments Off on homage to catalonia, by george orwell
Monday, August 1st, 2022
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life, that’s how we bring Dad back.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief | Comments Off on bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head, by warsan shire
Monday, August 1st, 2022
I care for Henrietta Lacks and all the names whispered in my ear by the live oak trees. I don’t care about the father of modern gynecology, honored on South Carolina’s golf course capitol.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief, history | Comments Off on thresh & hold, by marlanda dekine
Monday, August 1st, 2022
Because this mess I made I made with love. Because they came into my life, these ghosts, like something poured. Because crying, believe it or not, did wonders.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief | Comments Off on time is a mother, by ocean vuong
Monday, July 25th, 2022
I have been blogging for twenty years. How about that.
Posted in meta, mindfulness, words | Comments Off on happy birthday to this blog
Monday, July 25th, 2022
I wished to trust, and so I trusted. When events did not please me, my dreams reworked them.
Posted in australia, bookmaggot | Comments Off on monkey grip, by helen garner
Monday, July 25th, 2022
I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn’t a character flaw.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on ongoingness, by sarah manguso
Monday, July 25th, 2022
E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break
Breach.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on best barbarian, by roger reeves
Friday, July 22nd, 2022
I crave a ferry to San Francisco and a dead phone full of messages.
Posted in bookmaggot, san francisco | Comments Off on dreaming of you, a novel in verse, by melissa lozada-oliva
Thursday, July 21st, 2022
I could not lay down the grief I carried, but I could name it for what it was, and by naming it ease the burden…
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on the grief of stones, by katherine addison
Thursday, July 21st, 2022
Me: Well, that was an intellectually productive bath.
Jeremy: Oh yes?
Me: I figured out existentialism.
Jo: Well done!
Me: You know how I was puzzling over Camus’ “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”? It’s not a thought experiment, it’s an imperative.
Jeremy: Right.
Me: Oh so you knew this all along?
Jeremy: Yep.
Jo: It means that Sisyphus has a simple job to do and knows how to do it and even though it will never be finished, that’s all you need to be happy.
Jeremy: No, it means you have to give people agency, even if what they are doing seems pointless to you.
Me: No! It means life is pointlessly hard work that will never be finished, but you have to invent ways to be happy anyway.
In this family we interpret Camus in ways that reflect our highly individual temperaments and perspectives TILL DEATH COMES FOR US
Posted in fulishness, grief, happiness, they crack me up | Comments Off on another win for the mammalian diving reflex
Sunday, July 17th, 2022
…the blueprint for building a worthwhile, authentic life already exists within you.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on unmasking autism, by devon price
Sunday, July 17th, 2022
To enact an existence that is always love and resistance demands of us a deliberate and conscious decision to find joy – not away from the fight, but in the fucking fight.
Posted in australia, bookmaggot | Comments Off on another day in the colony, by chelsea watego
Wednesday, July 6th, 2022
Wait. Wait and see. The world is not always cruel.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief | Comments Off on nettle & bone, by t kingfisher
// LEFT SIDEBAR ?>
// END LEFT SIDEBAR ?>
// RIGHT SIDEBAR ?>
// END RIGHT SIDEBAR ?>