Roadside shrine near Medora, IN
Drawn to our grandparents
A friend recently said that he identifies more with his grandparents than his parents. I agreed, and with some more thought I think I know why. A brief overview of the four turnings model of Anglo-American history, if you’re not already familiar. Quotes are taken from the book, focusing on the last two cycles. I suspect historians would hate the four turnings idea, but it’s been a very useful mental model for me.
The peasant home
Patrick Joyce, Remembering Peasants: The dwelling is also a constitutive part of the relationship between past and present generations, between the living and the dead. Something handed on, or hoped to be handed on, something to be received. When the dead have a foundational role in human life, as is the case with peasants, then the house takes on a cosmological significance. But the house remains eminently material at the same time.
Me and Dad
Me and Darcy
The Magic Mountain
Still trawling the archives. I used to have a Buttondown newsletter. The following—a themed issue rather than the usual “what I read this week” format—is the only thing I’ve found worth saving from that era. Reading The Magic Mountain every morning over that winter of 2018-2019 remains as a happy memory. Welcome, friends. You can only come across so many references to a novel before you decide you need to read it for yourself.
Rare earth
I continue to come across some old drafts as I clean out my Dropbox. Here is a poem that I can’t date exactly–maybe a couple of years ago? I listened to a podcast today about rare earth minerals. It didn’t help my mood. As the rage built inside me, I imagined writing a poetic diatribe. But I’m tired. And my tooth hurts. And I’m just so sad about everything. What good would it do,
“A company man for USA, Inc.” I had an old draft that ended with that line but apparently I deleted it a couple of nights ago. Oh well! Feel free to use it for a folk protest song.
A land full of people
Patrick Joyce, Remembering Peasants: The means of survival is land. Peasants do not see land like we do. We see land in terms of ‘nature’ , something separated from the artificiality of humankind’s creations, or, if these creations are included, then the natural, the supernatural and the unnatural are distinguished one from another. ‘Nature' does not convey peasant reality, though we like to think it does. It is for peasants a semantically empty category, and there is little iconic or verbal representation of it in what records peasants have left (although educated peasants writing for an audience of non-peasants do embrace the idea sometimes).
I’m moving stuff out of Dropbox so I can stop paying for it. I found this in a drafts folder but I have no memory of it. So I post it here, contextless.
Time is a stalking beast,
Watching, waiting to bring you down.
But we are distracted,
Unconscious of the danger.
Still listening to the new David Benjamin Blower while cranking through month-end closing today.
Where there are feet upon the earth there is a village hall
Where there is prayer there is a temple and a gathering
This is an event
This is a happening
God dwells in tents where the beasts sing
God dwells, God dwells here with everything