At night

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself
all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

At night the barracks sometimes lay in the moonlight
made out of silver and eternity: like a plaything
slipped from God’s preoccupied hand.

From Etty Hillesum’s diary, 23 September 1942.

the long night

it was raining a little bit all day
kinder drizzly and very damp
airplanes were buzzing overhead
most all the time jes like a lot of hornets
we seed quite a lot of our machinegun
battalion across the road from us
blowed up by the big shells

the woods were all mussed up
and looked as if a terrible cyclone
done swept through them
and all through the long night
those big guns flashed and growled
jes like the lightning and thunder
when it storms in the mountains at home

and oh, my! we had to pass the wounded
and some of them were on stretchers going
back to the dressing stations and some
were lying around moaning and twitching
and oh, my! the dead were all along the road
and their mouths were open and their eyes too
but they couldn’t see nothing no more nohow

i’m atelling you the little log cabin in wolf valley
in old tennessee seemed a long long way off

From Sergeant Alvin C. York’s diary, 7 October 1918.

Direcciones

It depends on where you give it from
you can give it from the Church of Escazú
from the tied-up donkey, 200 metres
from the María Auxiliadora school

The poem of my childhood would begin with Super Aguimar
or the one a Nicaraguan gave to Ștefan Baciu
from Las Delicias del Volga
the old fig tree of San Pedro
there’s also a dog lying outside

There is a Welsh word hiraeth
a deep nostalgia for the landscape we were raised in
in Portuguese they say saudade, in Galician morriña
in German sehnsucht, in Romanian dor

In the Colón promenade there used to be an obelisk
people still stay, from the obelisk’s scar…
the butterflies that embark on that expedition die along the way
and it’s their great-granddaughters who finish the journey

Subtitles from Navigating a City Without Street Addresses.

It takes

heaps of fibered glass and twisted steel
to send a DM to that cute French boy
from your year abroad.

And it takes
thousands of miles of laid cable,
traveling at impossible speeds
through the depths of our oceans,
for him to leave you on read.

From Any Technology Indistinguishable From Magic is Hiding Something, March 2024.

Supporting England

England is by many
objective measures
a terrible country
ruled by terrible people
with a terrible past
and a terrifying future,

and I support England.
None of my forebears
were born in England,

and I support England.
When I watch the news
or follow England games abroad
or read about politics
I often feel utterly
disconnected from this country,

and I support England.
It was an Englishman
who snarled at me
on the street last month
while I was taking
my daughter to nursery:
Fuck off Chinaman,
take your Covid patient with you.

Nevertheless, I support England.

The supermarket is selling
something called “meatless burgers”.
There are women on Match of the Day.
You hear vague noises about “defunding the police”.
You suspect, on some sinister level,
that something you love is being taken away
And so amid this landscape
of shifting plates and cultural norms,
you have a choice: you can get with the programme
or you can stand your ground and fight.

I am not one of you
and you are not one of us.
But for this month,
for these 90 minutes,
for these sunlit days in June and July,
let’s pretend we are.

Let’s build a house together
and watch it fall.
Let’s pick apart Southgate’s 3-4-3
and debate the merits of Jack Grealish.
Let’s elate and commiserate together.
The past is the past
and the future is the future.

From My cross to bear, June 2021.

A single word

Consume the show.
Gobble it up.
Glean whatever little meaning you can
and move on.

Clear the backlog.
The new season of Stranger Things.
Binge it in a day.
Forget it a week later.
The new Taylor Swift just dropped.
Listen to it until the new Beyoncé.
Listen to that until the new Kendrick.
Listen to that until the new…
Listen to this audiobook at 2x.
Watch this LinkedIn Learning video.
Queue up that thing on YouTube.
What’s happening on Twitter?

Scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll.

Look at this Reddit post.
Read what’s on Apple News.
Check your RSS feeds.
Watch that new show on Netflix.
Watch that new show on Hulu.
Watch that new show on Peacock.
Watch that new show on Max.
Watch that new show on Paramount+.
Watch that new show on Disney+.
Watch that new show on Apple TV+.
Wait what’s that actor’s name?
Yeah, they were in that thing.
No, no, the other thing.
We just watched it.
Yeah, we did.
Yes, I swear you and I watched that.
Yes, you have, you said you liked it, I remember.
Anyway, can you believe what they said
about Israel and Palestine?

You need this promotion.
You need more money.
You need to upskill.
You need a better manager.
You need to network.
You need to market yourself.
You need to monetize your hobbies.
You need to sell your art.
You need to hustle.
You need to count calories.
You need to check out this story on Insta.
You need to hook them in the first five seconds
before they scroll past.
No one wants to put in the time to listen
to someone who can’t capture their attention.
Trick them.
Make them mad.
Get them hooked.
Make them crave more.
Here’s another fucking Star Wars movie.
Here’s why it’s fucking terrible.
Here’s why it’s the best fucking thing
Disney has ever done since it invented Star Wars.
Here’s the first in an anthology series
you’ll watch over 20 fucking years.
Don’t miss it.
Oh, you didn’t watch Ms. Marvel?
You’ll never understand why Reed Richards
fucked this ox in the post-mid-credits sequence
of Quantumania.
Get ready for the multiverse.
Get ready for the metaverse.
Get ready for Spatial Computing!
Get ready for the new iPhone.
Write a review.
Make a video.
Smash that bell.
Like that subscribe button.
Kiss your dad square on the lips.
I wish my dad saw me as a person.
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Help, please, I am drowning
and there’s only so much time left
before I am completely forgotten,
and I haven’t been able to do anything
I thought I was supposed to do,
and all I want is for people to see me
and appreciate me,
and I just want to make things that say
something meaningful to someone, anyone.

Are you reading this?
I want to be done with this blog post,
but I am so worried that if I stop,
it won’t mean a single goddamned thing,
I won’t mean anything.
I am no one.
I am nothing.
I am so excited for the new Call of Duty.
I played 2,000 hours of Diablo IV,
and here’s why it’s total garbage.
The new Zelda is literally the best game ever created.
There is nothing more bae than swag, no cap.
You will never believe how many licks it takes
to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Breathe.

There is no point in time where we have had more access to information than we do now. You could cut out every single possible nanosecond of silence and never make it through. You will never be efficient enough to see it all before you’re gone.

Breathe.

And that’s okay. Maybe it’s better if you just sit and listen and enjoy the art. Someone worked hard to create it. It deserves your full attention.

Breathe.

When was the last time you truly, deeply, unabashedly connected with something and you didn’t say a single word about it?

Breathe.

What is the most important thing to you?

Breathe.

Why?

Breathe.

Why?

Breathe.

Why?