Public services were gutted. Unions were crushed. The commons were sold off. What filled the gap was self-branding and side hustles. Without a safety net to catch us when things went wrong, we had little choice other than to sacrifice ourselves to the hustle.

Livvy Gibbs

 Neoliberalism told us public services were inefficient, that markets knew best, that freedom was about choice. But instead of freedom, we got insecurity, fragmentation, and a society in which you’re expected to be your own safety net.

Livvy Gibbs

there's no alternate version.

 

 keeping vigil. incense seeping in from another apartment. it's been raining all night. i'm reading all the water in the world. watching our neighbor's window. the shutters closed. the shutters open. no sun, a light bulb. i go upstairs to look at the project below. a semi-truck-full of trees. there's hope and then change. i keep adding again to the end of a sentence and then removing it. ongoing culmination. i take picture after picture of the off-loading of the hopeful trees and i think of taking picture after picture of the giant saws cutting the trees down, the trees laying down, the birds landing in the dead trees, the trees in pieces being hauled away, the trees coming back as logs, memorial, i think of a log cabin maybe in the land grab playground, and long story short, and continuing, i think of the rain, my neighbor, the people of gaza, death and displacement, and rain. i think of rain and my thoughts are like the rain.

 goodnight, world.

 this morning i read that the city is slowly sinking. well, it was built on swampland. it used to be by the equator. in the lake are fossilized coral reefs. i'm reading all the water in the world. a hypercane comes and sweeps away the city and the survivors talk about the world as it was that was the world as it is, and i'm only on page 19. at first they watched it on their laptops. it's all hypothetical at this point.

 lulu and fritz. last time i saw ken was before the grim election. i said genocide's the ultimate red line. there's more to the story they said. we're back to the dogs. they got fritz to quell the anxiety of the final trump, a pandemic puppy for the end of time.

 

 Astrid & Lulu.

 hey, are your ears ringing?

 masked paramilitary squads are terrorizing communities across the u.s. since 911 the terror state has expanded exponentially. the democrats and the republicans work together to dominate and subjugate the people of the u.s. and the rest of the world. 

 It’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against . . . everything.

Alice Notley

well, we are all going to die. 
-joni ernst

 

there's so much going on, right here. you don't have to go anywhere, anyway there's nowhere else, no exotic place like home. the flotilla, the voice of the king of the hill shot, alice notley, cerebral hemorrhage. many poems go unread. kes and olive woke at 5, so did i, and kes is silent. olive slept and i wrote stuff down. it's a mystery where kes goes because we don't know.

finishing gloria i remember fiction or non it's the same writing. it's transportation if you're in it. i was by a hundred pages or so, two thirds in. all that matters is that you are in. i remember a photo shoot in the transparent office of eerie consulting in manhattan after 911 walking around the big hole, feel of the ghost towers sucking, related to the feeling looking down at the obamachron, the towering abyss falling and rising, ephemeral eternal. 

 

many futures that didn't happen, or happened out of sight, without our knowing or involvement, yet we were meanwhile, we felt more and more full, befuddled, maybe they just haven't happened yet as we sense something happening in the periphery, maybe in the next life, imagining moondog in new york for instance in the '70's, unstuck in the proverbial midwest, unremembered, memorable, idiosyncrasies. the discomfiting natural sense of having been meant to write something else.

 what was i gonna say. i should have written it down. does it matter, no, it's of no consequence. i forgot it hours ago. i'm reading gloria but not so coherently. i keep thinking of other things. like one day i may not be able to focus enough to read, though now i forget what i read directly upon finishing, unless it becomes part of my unconscious, which is a theory. maybe i'm not that into fiction these days. i know it depends. i want to read somebody's thoughts, and i keep looking. i want to read about reality, but i don't know what it is until i find it. then i try to keep it in mind like a dream.

 i can't imagine what it feels like to lose your memory, and i can't imagine what it's like to live in fear of being bombed to pieces, or to live under a psychotic daily endless occupation. i've said i can only imagine many times. well i can imagine, but only what i imagine, not the reality. i can say i can't imagine, but i can empathize anyway, because we are connected by some kind of spirit of life or something, not knowing what life is, only that being alive somehow we want to continue living, though living i imagine because i've felt it can be almost unbearable. 

 she didn't sing lili marlene. she asked why is doug here. she asked why is this happening. why ask why. it could be worse, it just is. it's a mystery. i sit and read gloria. it's hot as heck with all the windows open. she pulls up the lavender comforter. not hot, just uncomfortable. she just wants comfort, and sleep. she doesn't want to get up anymore. 

 who's dreaming this dream.

 ug solutions is looking for mercenary snipers for the u.s. israeli humanitarian aid operation genocide.

color television

Viewed as natural as trees and grass
Given way of the middle class
A promise to outplay the mass
For all the wealth can be amassed

It's a single story (Story)
Violently imposed as the (Story)
Universal narrative
Of progress and development and of civilisation

The same ones lead, other ones lag
While majority numbers gag
Killing the possibilities
Of there being other stories
Conceptualisations (Other)
Of progress and development (Stories)
Open are the possibilities!

A deluding promise of a middle class for old times on

Stereolab
 

if you remember i forgot how to dream pt.2

Explore without fear

There is a big maze
The deepest wounds of humanity
We're embodied here, power to choose
Wisdom with courage are necessary

Explore without fear
There is a big maze
The deepest wounds of humanity
We’re embodied here, power to choose
Wisdom with courage are necessary

Without fear
The maze
Deepest
Thе wounds
Power to choose
Courage to feel

Stereolab

if you remember i forgot how to dream pt 1.

 

J'appartiens à la terre
Je dis non à la guerre

Subtle lenses
Supple senses

Soften, dissolve
Into longing

J'appartiens à la terre
N'en suis propriètaire

Permanent revolution of which implications
Are yet beyond our grasp, edge of the beginning
Untraveled universe, quantum untangling
Full of revelations supremely conceiving

In presence, embodied
Comprehend you are it

It is because I am you, it's because you are me
Eternally entwined, mirage of separateness
Meeting with a stranger, a lost part of myself
It's because I am you, it's because you are me

Two halves of one
Union, compound

Stereolab

 humanity calls for all zionists occupying palestine to be returned to their countries of birth. 

olive palestine in a paper tent with pinhole stars.

 

and now the empire privatizes genocide.

 

 the government of genocide is not us.

follow the freedom flotilla.

 

 what if other countries start deporting americans back to the u.s.?

 there's a sick haze over the lake.