is this real?
your bibliomancy forecast for the week of april 14
the knight of wands and a sentence from Jon Fosse’s Septology
“I've always just drawn with a pencil and I've never used a ball of putty, for whatever reason, so I just keep the mistakes and let them be wrong, because it's often the mistakes that eventually lead to something right, he says …”
the aleatory
The worst mistakes are invisible and frictionless. The worst mistakes happen over and over again. The worst mistakes you can make are: eating out of a bag, wearing only stretchy clothes, making endless excuses, slipping into the comfort of numbness, scrolling until your breathing is shallow and you’ve seen the video of the corgi rolling down a long set of stone stairs on a skateboard twice.
These mistakes are offensive because they pretend to be comfort. Or because comfort pretends to be good.
Letting a mistake be a mistake means feeling it. And it also means letting it recede into a series of other mistakes, and you know what a series of mistakes is: a story.
The knight of wands has a facility with ease and chance. And you know what chance is: a series of possible mistakes.
Of course it’s fine to make mistakes. Everyone must. But if you want a mistake to eventually lead to something right, you have to first let it be wrong.
forecast
Put on some tight underwear and do your fucking taxes. No more eating out of bags (don’t be offended, I’m saying this to myself).
writing prompt
Write something bad, wrong, and stupid. As bad, wrong, and stupid as possible. (There is usually a lot of energy in this, especially if you’ve been torturing yourself with some image of perfection.)
a chune
“Mystery” by Wipers
Greg Sage, guitarist and founder of Wipers, says that he got the idea for the band and its name while cleaning the windows at the movie theater where he worked. A swipe of the wiper blade would reveal the city outside. He wanted to make music that contained a similar clarity. (This punk band is a cleaning implement.) I love the line “I always try to wonder how it must feel to be real” because while it seems at first a little bit noncommittal, there’s something to it. It’s not easy to wonder how realness feels, because part of its sensibility is a kind of hypnotic containedness. It is a mystery.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Septology I-VII by Jon Fosse
Is This Real? by Wipers
dear diary, just now I got an earthquake warning. It said: Take cover. Cover your head. I was like, holy shit. Because never in my time in California have I gotten an earthquake warning before I felt it. If fact, more than a few times, I have actually been an early reporter of an earthquake on earthquake.usgs.gov. I ran into the bathroom. I stood in the doorway. I braced myself in the doorframe and wondered, is this right? Are you supposed to get in the bathtub for … some reason? And then nothing happened. Nothing kept happening. I searched “earthquake now” and “earthquake near me.” It was a 6.7 in San Diego. Apparently lots of people in LA felt it, but not me, for some reason. Is this real? XSarah
I did not feel it but my friend (also in Pasadena) did. Rude way to wake up from my weekly Monday lie-in 😅