Go touch grass (no. 23)
'Have you noticed that, since we moved back, we don’t walk anywhere?’ 'No, we don’t - as you keep saying. But I don’t see you planning hikes, either.’
Bob your hair; become enlightened (no.22)
In these stories, enlightenment, or kenshō, is consistently associated with the mundane; the teacher guiding the sessions on my app, Henry Shukman, continually promises me that everything needed for awakening etc is all already here.
Issue 21: on series and looking intensely
Lolita is a comparison I want to reach for because Knausgaard does a tremendous job of getting us close to Kristian, of encouraging us to share his mind-space despite the fact that he is an almost irredeemable ass.
Issue 20: Knausgaard, arguments, Substack
As far as I can see, digital writing platforms have still failed to answer the simple and essential question of phone-app reading, and they won’t be the ‘disruptors’ they think are, until they do.
Issue 19: The Coin, Zaza in China, inauthenticity.
...most questions we encounter are either too big or too small to say anything interesting about.
Issue 18: Lincoln in the Bardo, Joyce’s notebooks, tragedy
‘Desire is the feeling which urges us to go to something and loathing is the feeling which urges us to go from something.'