it's a razor love
life rx 1 jul 24
this week! the two of swords, and a poem from Olena Kalytiak Davis’ And Her Soul Out of Nothing:
MOORER DENIES HOLYFIELD IN TWELVE
Caesar's Palace.
The way life keeps splitting itself in two.
Twenty four hours later Florida
had pushed itself under
the wheels of our white Olds.
My father getting out
of the car. I'm squinting, his
shirt is that bright.
I was stunned for a minute
but was able to clear my head.
I'm on the phone now, trying to keep this front
from moving over his white cloud of a head,
because my father used to be two men, but now he's old.
One minute you're talking weather. Then,
a nasty left-right in the second round.
I didn't mean to start talking obstacles, hooks,
comebacks.
But, suddenly, I'm going down, saying:
I've been holding on with my teeth.
I've developed this strange social stutter.
I had to let my cutman go.
the aleatory
Intelligence is made of edges.
Don’t believe me? Look at those fucked-up AI images of slack-jawed howling crowds: None of the people have hands. Hands have too many edges, and AI is not intelligent enough to render them.
If you want to produce intelligence, you have to begin by making edges. And you make edges by exercising discernment—sifting apart.
Once you have collected enough edges, you can begin to assemble them into an intelligence. Idiots love to make intelligences out of senseless bits of edge. They are unstoppable. It doesn’t matter to them that their machines are made of garbage.
I was lucky enough to have a good college education at a time when good educations were possible. It consisted almost entirely of discernment, although at the time, my studies seemed far too various and complex to be described by a single activity. In my creative writing classes, I discerned the way that some poems had an ugly, lively spark, even if they were written about ordinary things. I also discerned the attempted voluptuousness of poems written by people who are afraid of actual beauty. I discerned my friends from people who were friend-shaped and fun to talk to at parties, but who would not drive across town in a snow storm to drink red wine out of coffee cups with you.
I discerned that there was something important about the fact that the classics professor who taught my first-semester Plato seminar knew my mother from a commune of some kind (when I told her, she said, Oh, Robert, as if he were a charmingly hapless cartoon dog) and I discerned that the room in Baker Hall where the class met smelled alternatingly of honey and urine, and that the professor brought a dish of dates on the first day of class, and that I was alone, the only freshman in an impossible world.
I got an A in the Plato seminar, even though I felt that I could hardly hold the words in place next to each other to write them down. Ethics. Ethics. What does it mean? Some of those Greek words are so old that the definitions are tautological. (Another discernment: Robert the Plato professor wore a silver ourobouros bracelet.)
(An echo is also all edges.)
Discernment is not a value judgement. In fact, the presence of attempted value judgments will only make it more difficult to sift the finer particles, and tell apart the way one thing or another glitters as it falls through the light.
the assignment
Make an edge. Make it one that you have, for whatever reason, been unwilling to discern.
writing prompt
Write an echo poem. Make sure that something surprising pops out of thin air where the sounds cross over each other.
a chune
“Razor Love” by Neil Young
A fun thing to know about me is that I love Neil Young so much that when I try to describe my reasons, I burst into tears. If I had to go on Jeopardy! tomorrow, I think I would offer that as my contestant fact. They could say, Sarah, I understand you love Neil Young? and I would burst into tears, unable to say more. I really like that there’s an electric version of this song. Neil Young is brave in his willingness to speak plainly about love. There are many other elements of his songs (distortion, my favorite, sixth suspensions, another) but I feel like they ultimately have the effect of making him seem like a real cool guy, and if a real cool guy is telling you that love is the only thing, godddamn you better shut the fuck up and hear him.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis
“Razor Love” by Neil Young
Dear diary, I finally figured out why all those people sit in their cars in the Erewhon parking lot! It’s because going to Erewhon, or having just been to Erewhon, is the happiest that anybody gets in Los Angeles unless they’re at a party in the hills where the bottom of the swimming pool is painted black (and idk, probably even then)! And yet, driving to or leaving from Erewhon is the saddest that anybody gets in Los Angeles. It is a difficult activity. Me, I only go there because it’s a closer place to get an onigiri than Mitsuwa market in the far San Gabriel Valley. Although I confess, I still believe that there’s something that would save my life (from what??? I know!) in the vitamins and supplements section. I’m just too scared to look. XS