[myszko]

@jennybagel always writing the thing you didn’t know you needed🍓on Bolaño, writing communities, humor in times of political darkness, in The Atlantic

[myszko]

@jennybagel always writing the words you didn’t know you needed, here, writing about Bolaño in The Atlantic

[myszko]

a 2016 obsession

[myszko]

"An Iranian Rat Prepares for Space Flight" by Robin LaMer Rahija for @guernicamag. Art by Ansellia Kulikku.

[myszko]

Immigrant Haibun. Ocean Vuong.

[myszko]

What are you longing for?

[myszko]

Ishiguro in 1989

[myszko]

Futurism from Russia and Japan. The poems of Gerasimov and Renkichi.

[myszko]

Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha, and Other Immortal Mortals. Carina del Valle. @literaryhub

[myszko]

Jerzy Ficowski on Schulz

[myszko]

The Polish Diaspora. Eastern European Monographs. Columbia University Press 1993.

[myszko]

Sontag. Film and Theatre.

[myszko]

My older sister Marta put "Combat Baby" on Happy 14, a sweet and eclectic birthday mix that I know so well I can feel what song comes next before it starts playing. I listened to the Metric song on repeat on my pink and white stereo, the volume up just enough to feel loud but not loud enough to earn a knock on the door. Back then, a song found at the right moment became a philosophy for living, at least temporarily, at least until the CD started to skip so bad you couldn't listen anymore. I'd lie on my bed or do the kind of frantic bedroom dance I'd seen older teens do in movies. I'd mouth "Combat baby come back" into the mirror like I was on camera. I was intoxicated by the mix of wistfulness and rebellion, by singer Emily Haines's deadpan contempt as she intoned, "Ever since you have been gone it's all caffeine-free / Faux-punk fatigues / Said it all before." As a teen, I was ruthless about finding out what was authentic and what was trite or fake. I thought the way you showed someone respect was by going toe to toe with them until one of you forfeited the argument, out of exhaustion or anger. What was a friendship, a relationship, if not a battle of wills? "I want to be wrong but / No one here wants to fight me like you do," Haines lamented. I lamented, too.

Read my Music Monday piece over at Lenny :)

[myszko]

Benjamin. 1936.

[myszko]

[tatoleee]

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from her introduction to THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS

[myszko]

Sometimes, I hate writing. It is hard and it is boring and it most of the time it does not work. It’s messy. I make my bed every day. You cannot do that, when you’re writing a novel (metaphorically, at least). It takes years to feel like the bed is made. This drives me insane. Sometimes I sit in frustrated silence, not writing, for that precious hour before I go to work at my full-time job.

Danya Kukafka