customs, by solmaz sharif

They say willingness is what one needs to succeed. They say one needs to succeed.

homage to catalonia, by george orwell

Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head, by warsan shire

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.

thresh & hold, by marlanda dekine

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.

time is a mother, by ocean vuong

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.

happy birthday to this blog

I have been blogging for twenty years. How about that.

monkey grip, by helen garner

I wished to trust, and so I trusted. When events did not please me, my dreams reworked them.

ongoingness, by sarah manguso

I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn’t a character flaw.

best barbarian, by roger reeves

E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break
Breach.

dreaming of you, a novel in verse, by melissa lozada-oliva

I crave a ferry to San Francisco and a dead phone full of messages.

the grief of stones, by katherine addison

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…

another win for the mammalian diving reflex

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

unmasking autism, by devon price

…the blueprint for building a worthwhile, authentic life already exists within you.

another day in the colony, by chelsea watego

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.

nettle & bone, by t kingfisher

Wait. Wait and see. The world is not always cruel.

one day i’ll remember this, by helen garner

Mind filled, emptied, filled again with brilliant things I’d write if only I were brilliant.

farewell to spring

My niece and her excellent husband safely married, we flew home (via shenanigans) to find our little home and our pride of housecats lovingly tended by yarnivore.

Driving to the barn last Friday I had to brake from 65 to a dead stop in the fast lane. The physical shock of deceleration meant I didn’t panic when the BMW that had been tailgating me had to drive up onto the soft shoulder to avoid hitting me. The traffic crawled for twenty minutes around the golf course near Crystal Springs. No one got impatient because as fire trucks and ambulances pushed through us it became evident that whatever had happened was very bad.

The highway patrol was letting one lane through. As I drove past I saw a tarp covering something instantly recognizable in the middle of the empty lanes. I saw a red hatchback crumpled up against the middle divider, and I think I saw the driver’s face, a woman, bereft.

i found a news story afterward that said her passenger had tried to cross the four lanes of 280 to get help, and that he had not survived.

He has haunted me all week. I rode Lenny that afternoon. His coat is like satin over hard muscle. He looks like a war horse. I’d be scared of his vigor if I didn’t already know how to dance with him. My garden is putting on a last glorious show before the heat. My Matilija poppy and hummingbird sage are flowering for the first time. Last night I cut two Frog Hollow peaches into rough cubes and put them in Hendricks and tonics to drink out on the deck while my friends the crows serenaded us.

The world is changing and I have never loved my life more. I feel them all around me, all the dead, and I try to make sure their deaths mattered. I feel him too, trying to get across the freeway to Crystal Springs. What they whisper is that this coffee, this little garden, this breath of wind, life, is a gift.

ten steps to nanette, by hannah gadsby

The further away I am from Australia, the more work I have to do to explain the geographical situation of the place I grew up in.

panic! at the bookshop

Back in Sydney after more than three years, the longest I have ever been gone. There’s trams now. We’re staying in a beautiful Victorian terrace house in Surry Hills. Magpies and lorikeets sing in the trees. The rain is bucketing down and despite few hopes for the election, on Saturday the godawful Federal government washed away.

I still can’t seem to travel without getting untidy emotions everywhere. I timed my meltdown for Gleebooks, which feels more like home than anywhere else I have visited on this trip, filling my arms with history books as if they’d stop up my leaky heart.

admissions, by henry marsh

There is a great underworld of suffering away from which most of us turn our faces.