how to get to heaven
your bibliomancy forecast for the week of january 6
LIFE RX 06 JAN 25
temperance, and a stanza from Nicanor Parra’s “Litany of the Little Bourgeois”
“As we have seen, if you want to reach
The heaven of the little bourgeois,
You must be an accomplished acrobat:
To be able to get to heaven,
You must be a wonderful acrobat.”
the aleatory
In the heaven of the little bourgeois, everyone is very sorry. Everyone has enough jam to last a lifetime. It’s sunny, perpetual dizzy morning, first day of vacation, last day of the week. Sunday that never ends. Holy tones that never stop droning, like those tunnels in the Alps that are so long people pass out from lack of oxygen. It is beautiful, and loving, and everyone is very clear on what is wrong with everyone else. You go blind by the time you’re 13, and they make you find your way by smell. But everything smells like croissants. If you want to reach it, you must be nice to everybody who has ever wanted to be your friend, and everybody who hates you, and you have to be sorry. Very sorry. Sorry about everything.
In heaven, they let spiders make the cathedrals, and the cathedrals are everywhere. Sometimes it rains so softly the drops feel like pinpricks. There are oceans called oceans, oceans called highways, oceans called pop music, oceans called wheat. Anything which is equally light and dark shines, like the pale undersides of leaves blown by a storm approaching. Everyone is a maniac trying to beat the odds of a roulette wheel by betting on the same number day after day. Sometimes a dream roams from head to head like a big cat in jungle trees. Sometimes fireworks. It’s all happening at once, unless you begin to tell a story. To be able to get there, you must be able to stop looking for it.
the forecast
Let light in. Don’t scold scolds—just walk away. Let your tea cool down. Eat more fat.
writing prompt
Tell me how to get to a heaven you know.
a chune
“Kakashi” by Yasuaki Shimizu
Please just trust me. If you seldom listen to the chunes, I hope you’ll listen to this one. I would say that it reminds me of that one Destroyer song “Chinatown,” except this record came first by a long shot (1982) and the latter wouldn’t exist without it. Everything I try to say about it sounds silly to me. Just press play.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Poems and Antipoems by Nicanor Parra
“Kakashi” by Yasuaki Shimizu
dear diary, it’s nice to be back with you! I always forget that traveling takes up more of my mind than I think I should, and I just started a new job a few weeks ago, so my capacity to look into the scrying mirror was temporarily less. I hope you had a good holiday. I hope you ate a lot of lasagna. I hope you put your favorite ornaments on the tree, and I hope by now you’ve taken them back down again because it’s time to get back to normal life!!!! I used to like this part of the year because I actively disliked Christmas. J has somewhat reformed my grinchlike ways, so now I like this time of year just because I like it. Everything is a fresh notebook. Nobody can _prove_ yet that we’re going to let any vegetables rot in the back of the fridge in 2025. XS