the world is charged with this one weird trick

it will flame out, like shining from shook foil

(Hello. This post is “too long for email”, so you may need to click through and read it in your browser. It’s actually a very short post by word-count. If you’re looking for longer things to read this morning, may I suggest this, about the purpose of arts education; or this, about the US and the culture of remembering some deaths and forgetting others; or this, about how much you can do with a pencil and paper; or this, about looking at weeds?)

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There is no possibility of boredom in this world.

Not when its things and its beings collaborate to make puns like this.

Not when at a construction site you may find the entrance to a temple.

Not when it explains simile so beautifully.

Not when it looks right back at your curious eyes with its own.

Not when it speaks itself so perfectly and particularly.

Not when it offers lessons in form around every corner.

Not when it teaches color theory with a gentle insistence.

Not to mention the lessons it offers in comedy, and in sheer pleasure.

Not when it articulates its understanding of time in neon pink, in January.

Not when it is always reminding us how our letters are made.

No, no boredom possible in a world that is always showing me how to make poems (how to think relation, how to notice similarity and difference, how to attend to texture, surface, movement, shape, tone).

Not in this world, which has given me the instructions for artmaking so plainly.

No boredom, it says. Open, open.

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A few things in the world recently: The Bar Harbor Webcam lets you see the tides (and, recently, the terrible storms) at Bar Harbor (Maine, US) from anywhere with an internet connection. Our Grief is Not a Cry for War, Jim Costanzo, 2001. “A War Without End”, Ursula Le Guin. This is how you do courage and care. Organizing Power, a zine that costs $5 and explains how to organize in the workplace. The subtitle on this week’s post is from this poem.

I saw someone articulate online that a ceasefire is called for as an end to an armed conflict, not an end to a genocide, which requires different demands. That makes sense. As the International Court of Justice has concluded that genocide is plausible, the demand must be an end to genocidal activities. Let’s make those demands. In the US. In Ireland. Easy enough to find a way wherever you are. Also if your country has defunded UNRWA as mine has, you can put some lunch money here.

Thanks for reading. Go look at the world and please report back. See you next week.