#moment by moment

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

For months — sometimes for four hours at a time — Jorie Graham speaks to me through her smartphone, a deceptively small object she casually calls “the outermost emissary of a gigantic network, the tentacular outreach of vast systems.” Behind the black screen, a billion voices come or do not come to agreement under the cover of what seems like silence. Lately, she has taken to asking people when they think the sun will set. “They give the wildest answers!” she says, her voice bright with astonishment. “Six-thirty, they say. No, it’s 4:34.”

A life tethered to a phone is a life tethered to a present tense, a stream of insistent notifications (ding!) beckoning the mind back to now. The technology is “fixing us into the absolute present,” she says. “It’s like herding creatures off a cliff or gathering humans into a kind of narrow enclosure where they are highly concentrated, terrified, lulled, narcotized or numbed, driven by scarcity, to survive in the wasteland of the absolute present.” The internet beckons into a flat now, a constant “attending to,” a well of insistent digital need. She notices in the people around her “a sense of shame without a clear source, a sense of scarcity,” a sense of “entrapment.” There is not space for the mind to build a picture of people who do not yet exist.

It is on her phone, against the advice of her oncologist, her husband, her daughter, that Jorie Graham reads the news: Ukraine, flooding, famine. “She can’t help it,” a friend said of the way Graham ushers modernity into a poem. Runaway involves encounters with Siri and the Nest app. The internet is ever present and real and beneath the threshold of visibility, and in this it resembles time, which is to say it’s the kind of thing Graham is capable of making felt.

[profile Apr. 28, 2023 :: Late Work]

[How the poet Jorie Graham — living with cancer, reeling from her mother’s death — wrote the best book of her long career.]

By Kerry Howley, a features writer for New York Magazine since 2021. 

[cottont33th]

12/22/24

Golem

Made of snow and cedar 

Tracing trails of spiraling fur 

I’m watching the rising of bone 

As I inhale the air that feels like sunlight

And if this is what it feels like 

This multiplied by eons of stars

Just around the corner 

Than with full sincerity 

I’ll clasp my hands in prayer 

And thank the gods 

For allowing me to become what this is 

For giving me this muddy canvas

To turn it into something I can be proud of

For allowing me to learn to love the hard way 

So that I may be grateful and wonderful each time 

For crafting my brain differently from the others 

So that I may look at things in solely my own way 

And appreciate the art in everything this chaotic world has to offer

I’ve become artwork 

Hands stained with the rich clay I used to craft my own body 

And when I lay myself down to rest 

I’ll wrap my arms around myself 

Appreciating how it’s no longer painful 

To acknowledge the fact I have a body 

And loving myself 

becomes that much easier each time

[frank-o-meter]

Lily Tomlin and John Travolta kissing in the 1978 film “Moment by Moment”. It was directed by Jane Wagner. Tomlin and Wagner married in 2013.

John Travolta kissing an unnamed man at an airport.

[thepurplepope]

saw this absolute king at the Paris Miku Expo

[EDIT] : THIS IS @funnyparadox PRESENTED TO YOU, OUR PATHS FINALLY MET

[daringdoombringer]

hi here’s a cool bird I betcha didn’t know existed, ✨the wallcreeper✨

it literally looks like a monarch butterfly it’s so cute

[mobgoblin]

Queued right up for it

[macdenlover]

it came to my realization that 99% of my fandom related headaches would be cured if everyone understood this

[narwhalsarefalling]

just had a convo with my friend. she mentioned she doesnt like sake cause its sparkling.

“wait, sake is sparkling? what have i been drinking?” i said. because i also dont like sparkling stuff.

i look at the sake bottle ive been drinking from for fun events for the past year. its vinegar.

i’ve been drinking strawberry flavored vinegar.

[mearchy]

my favorite genre of fictional character is like "i am terrifying to almost everyone, i'm very good at killing, i can endure anything, i've become exceptionally good at playing into my reputation, and if you try to give me positive social interaction i will react with confusion and cower in a corner like an abused animal. and i may try to shoot you. but there is also a chance i may imprint on you like a feral dog receiving its first loving touch! good luck."

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

when I was a little kid at some point I got upset with my parents because I didn't have a crucifix in my bedroom and they did- I was like why do YOU get to be safe from vampires??? you're okay with me getting my blood sucked???? so we took a little trip to the catholic store but the one closest to us was run by a group of nuns that had been moved here from romania. I got a little baby pink cross and this sweet old nun was like 'aww, is this a baptism gift?' and I was like no. I need to be protected from vampires. and she immediately got SO serious and was like 'this is the best one we've got, you'll definitely be safe' and since she was literally from vampire land I was convinced she was like, van helsing. like the whole time my parents had been laughing about how cute my fear was but she literally Knew dracula and was taking my concerns seriously I held this over my parents for so long lmfao

[her-soliloquies]

They really gave us everything though: old gay dads, cool straight (?) couple, badass lesbians, gay (temporary) rivals

+

bonus: jayvik together for eternity

I would be beaming from ear to ear if I wasn't so depressed about arcane being over for good

[sapphicscience]

idk thinking about how sometimes you have to show up for people you aren't that close to, because sometimes you're just the person who's there. sometimes you invite a new friend to a party and end up having to sit with them through a panic attack. sometimes you run into an acquaintance on their worst day and they need to talk about what happened. sometimes someone is crying in a stairwell and you're the only one around to ask if they're okay. and none of this is "trauma dumping" or whatever the fuck it's just being there for people because you're the one in the room with them.

[fangsandthangs]

When you’re in the middle of a fic and realise you’ve missed a very critical tag

[ivyblooms]

The funniest homophobia I ever experienced was a Mormon lady at my work telling me she would accept me being gay because we have to get along as coworkers but I really should consider not being gay because gay people have sex like animals (especially gay men) and she just couldn't stop thinking about it and how gross we are. She started really getting distressed, near tears, and saying 'I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop." over and over and miming some kind of sex acts with her hands and I was like ?????? What is happening???? One of the other Mormon ladies had to come over and pat her on the back and help her sit down to help her calm down and our boss gave her the afternoon off due to being too upset to work.

[inkskinned]

it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.