pharmakon blues
life rx 22 jul 24
the page of pentacles, and a passage from Larry Levis’ Black Freckles:
“You can see the castle clearly twice a day, at dawn and again at twilight. But it isn't there. Each time I've hiked toward it, I've watched it gradually and inexplicably disappear the nearer I came. There's nothing up there, once you reach the summit, but goat trails leading nowhere, stunted pines, mist. I used to tell them: if it is up there, then I don't exist! But they would only smile that wall-building smile they hold, always, in reserve.
No, those thousands of finished, fitted stones composing the castle live on, idly, in their minds. They have no need of further representation.
This fact should be of some concern to the premier.
So far, it is not.
Let me explain: a castle in the mind is one thing; a castle living in ten thousand minds today, and in two million minds at the end of next week, is quite another.”
the aleatory
I love your drugs. I love your “way you make me feel.” I love the dead lobby of the kind of movie theater where the movie follows you home, where it does not rub off on the carpet as you walk out, where you find yourself unable to stop yourself from walking into a woman carrying a tray of General Tso’s in the food court afterwards, as if your life had been on an unmissable trajectory with hers, because the movie is still stuck to your shoe like chewing gum, and it is still radiating out from the lamp behind your eyes.
My teenage bedroom looks out on a roof of corrugated tin and corrugated plastic nailed together, with patches of lichen growing on it, sheltered by the branches of an oak tree. Every time we look out the window, it is November, and raining. It looks out on grass, and a rise of woods behind it.
Writers make drugs. Musicians make drugs. And drugs make money, as long as they work.
Money is the point of sublimation. It is probably the nearest god. But you can only see it clearly twice a day—in the morning, when everyone goes to work, and at night, when everyone goes to the bar.
the assignment
Figure out who built the castle you’ve been living in. Ask yourself, honestly, if you want to stay.
writing prompt
Hide your most painful secret in the comment section of the YouTube video for “We Found Love”
a chune
“U Should Not Be Doing That” by Amyl & the Sniffers
Just when you think the trope of a lil punk blondie pissing in the dirt at the state fair has lost all its magic ….
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Black Freckles by Larry Levis
“U Should Not Be Doing That” by Amyl & the Sniffers
Dear diary, I am considering the possibility that nothing at all is wrong with me. I think it might upset some people. (I think I might even be one of those people.) And yet, its logic is unyielding. XS