fire is not evil
juan rulfo, jim wilson, and your bibliomancy forecast for the week of jun 22
the king of wands, and an excerpt from Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo:
—Whatever you say, don Pedro, but the woman who came by yesterday sobbing, claiming that son of yours killed her husband, was beyond hysterical. I know how to size up a person’s grief, don Pedro. And that woman was bursting at the seams with it. I offered her fifty hectoliters of corn if she’d forget the whole thing, but she wouldn’t take it. So I promised her we’d settle the matter some other way. She still wasn’t satisfied.
—Who were those people?
—People I don’t know.
—Then don’t worry about it, Fulgor. Those people don’t exist.
the aleatory
I am rather vain about the decisiveness with which J and I moved on after our house burned down in the Eaton Fire. I am proud that we don’t stand back and sob about it, that we basically got on with living, that we do not drag it along into the present, and future, and whatever, to make an identity out of it. And I guess I have reason to be proud of this, because I can often feel the pull to do otherwise. Whenever I want someone to cut me a break, expect a little less of me, give me some grace, get off my back, etc., I can hear myself wanting to throw down the shitty trump card of my suffering. But I don’t do it. I don’t trust the part of myself that wants to throw that card. I don’t want fifty hectoliters of corn in exchange for the sorrow. I want it to remain vast and sublime and beautiful, more powerful than human personality. The night that we evacuated, curled up in the dark, J said—I don’t believe that fire is evil. It just exists, and it balances potentials. And I agreed. As much as there are difficult aspects to going through something like that, it is really much sadder to play it like a spade and turn it into pity. But there is a risk in that, too: It makes you illegible to people who think of pain as a problem and fire as an evil.
the forecast
Notice when you reach for your sorrow.
writing prompt
Go to a large public library and find the most tattered, touched, falling-apart book you can. Read it until you understand what it has done to deserve such love and (obviously) set out in the other direction.
a chune
“friend’s music” from Jim Wilson’s “Center Core Never More”
I don’t know who made the music for this early animation by Jim Wilson; he doesn’t credit a specific person. So maybe it is more like the Long Hidden Friend from John George Hohman’s miscellany of Pennsylvania hoodoo (much of which utilizes early-morning urine as a vessel of intention). But I truly can’t get it, or anything about this animation, out of my head. It’s like if Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid had actually been made on an Amiga 500 a few decades before it grew into a novel. Which seems entirely likely now that you’ve seen it.
credits: small spells tarot deck by rachel howe
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
“Center Core Never More” by Jim Wilson
dear diary, I’m calling fives on the Long-Hidden Friend as the name of a solo music project that pretends to be a band. And fives on Spy vs. Spy for the same. I really need to start writing songs. The thing that stops me is that they come too easy, though. I can’t trust them not to be Burt Bacharach numbers that slithered out of their candy suits and have been living in a hidden node of my brain along with Teddy Ruxpin and She-Ra’s see-thru pink crystal horse. XS