our pasts, the present, a future to be realized, all brewing in bubbles that ebb and flow under the watchful eye of unseen servants. the past is not forgotten. it is processed. the future is not unknown for we are treating it today. we have the present. and it is all we we will ever have.

Had a genuinely good experience being a poll worker in NJ's primary election yesterday. Definitely recommend doing it at least once if you have the ability and inclination.

“…[at] the zine fest, I am perhaps looking for something that I think I may have recently lost track of, a couple decades into a peripatetic but also arguably successful career in publishing: the drive, freedom, and confidence to just make something. No promise of audience or sales… no regrets.”

I startle a little bit every time I walk past the pile of rubber snakes in our den. Even though I'm the one who put them there.

Days later, I'm still thinking about "bodymind." What a great word.

If your friends on Substack don't want to read any of the long essays and articles about The Substack Problem, send them this @anildash.com explainer video. (From his @pastduepodcast.com interview.) It's not just Nazis, it really isn't. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWdS...

I was having a grumpy morning, but then I got to watch a fox sunbathe in our back yard for a few minutes. It brought me out of myself just enough.

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Several years ago, on a whim, I started drawing a map of an eel's life travels as seen by the eel. I figured an eel thinks about its life as a linear journey, rather than a there-and-back again adventure. So I wanted to do a map to reflect this. This morning, on another whim, I finished the map!

Two good, sad songs today. Two skillful essays. Two contrasting sadnesses. Oof.

In the erratic manner of a New Jersey spring it is, briefly, 4pm bitters and soda weather.

"I won't find my stakes if I'm keeping secrets." 🖤

Also decided to start my month of joy and courage early. (Why wait?) Brought some essay drafts out to a microbrewery to enjoy a French pilsner while I read and make notes. The TV behind the bar is playing the eagle cam livestream from Duke Farms. Nest of weird little hatchings. This is perfect.

After taking a walk and conferring with myself, I've decided to make April a month of joy and courage. Those are the things I need right now.

I don't normally subscribe to the "German has a word for it" thing because all languages can invent and borrow new words! That said, I can't stop thinking about "hobbyless" as an insult since I saw it a few days ago, so here you go It promotes a growth mindset!! www.tumblr.com/abbiistabbii...

The past 14 months have been a string of one "there but for the grace" moment after another, with no end in sight. It's a particular kind of exhausting. And heartbreaking.

"The World I Know" vs "You Had Time": a wrenching decision, having to choose between these two sadnesses.

"Glycerine" vs "Brick": Two sad, pretty songs up against each other today. I've got to go with my gut on this one. And by "gut" I mean my autonomic nervous system.

Oof. Today the tournament asks us to make some fine distinctions between depression and sadness.

Starting to worry that I'm putting some kind of curse on the songs I vote for...

I read the NYT piece, and I am holding onto the words of a woman who fended off inappropriate advances from a 60-year-old Cesar Chavez at the age of 19. “It makes you rethink in history all those heroes,” Esmeralda Lopez said. “The movement — that’s the hero.”

Democratic consultants: To replicate Mamdani’s success with the young people we must appeal to their short attention spans with memes and TikTok Mamdani (actual quote): In the fifth century in what we now know as Ireland, a British warlord named Coroticus had laid waste to the countryside

Oh no! Totally forgot that National Poetry Month is coming up... just after March Sadness @marchxness.bsky.social wraps up. Not sure I have the stamina for this. I'm gonna be all reading-ed out.

Vignette 💕🧵

ROUND 2! Have Guns N' Roses and Neutral Milk Hotel ever gone head to head like this in any other context? Probably not! 🌧️🥕 Listen, read, VOTE! marchxness.com#/2ndround-gn...

Vote Mazzy!

Being middle aged is great actually. The deeper I get into dgaf territory, the more I don't mind being alive.

Oof. Three of my four picks lost. (This, too, is March Sadness?)

Cleaning up my office and I just found a draft of an essay tracing my poetry habit back to its roots in Sylvia Plath and Young MC. Digging through emails to try to put a date on it (July 2019), I see that I described it as "basically an unfinished ode to 1990." I forgot I even wrote this. Wow.

During my @marchxness.bsky.social Wikipedia trawl I learned that Gill is married to Amy Grant (!) who recently reemerged from the mists to channel righteous Boomer contempt for the current administration. See below! Also sad! & catchy! Giving "End of the Innocence," "Stones in the Road," etc.!

I'm using Google Translate a lot to work out how to say certain things in French and sometimes when a sentence involves the second person it chooses the wrong form for what I need (tu vs vous) but it turns out I can get it to use the desired form by ending the sentence with either "buddy" or "sir" 🙃

Oof. PMS and day 11 of a sad songs competition and the very start of what's supposed to be a 50-degree drop in temperature has me feeling some kind of way.

Was delighted that this song and essay held up so well on my second reading 🖤

I'm pulling for REM here. Great essay from @jvbennett.bsky.social weaves the lyrics into his narrative and projects the song's sadness onto his own strained relationship with his father—and ends with one of the song lyrics unitalicized, not set apart, incorporated directly into his own language 🖤

I am my household's designated spotter. We save the ice cream for after we're done with the ladder 🪜🍨

+1 to all of this: reading, writing, community (!!!), and this godforsaken internet (Except I only managed to read 62 of these essays. I didn't get to Bonnie Raitt v Portishead in time.)

But then here's @lateration.bsky.social with a curveball of an essay that might just get me past my personal deep annoyance with all things Nick Cave. Like some kind of enzyme slowly breaking down a stain. Oh no.

Oh, this essay from @emryal91.bsky.social: "If I’m too messy to die, then I have to clean, and if I’ve got it in me to clean, I don’t want to die anymore. If I think about it for too long I start to feel like a Roomba who sometimes sits at the charging deck for an inappropriate amount of time."

Patty Loveless’s country ballad “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” is one of the saddest songs in human history & today, it needs your vote in the @marchxness.bsky.social tournament to determine the saddest song of the 90s. Please read my essay, then vote for Patty & me! marchxness.com/1stround-sou...

I've always loved "Runaway Train," but for me it was more comforting than sad. It was a song that took the edge off. Then there's this Patty Loveless song, which @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social rightly argues is "just sad sad sad, a rock-bottom bummer that ends with no redemption, none whatsoever."

I sometimes worry that too many people think being a good critic means being a self-righteous dick about every little thing and I think far too many miss the point that you can't critique anything if you don't know how to love something.

I didn't even know this Grandpaboy song a half hour ago, but now all I want to do is listen to "Lush and Green" on repeat for the rest of the morning. Spare. Restrained. Half-numb. Incredible.

This one was really well done. What gentle, balanced work, weaving all these strands together 🖤

Surely we can get more than 29 votes for Skid Row & “Wasted Time feels like an emotional rarity: a song about friendship & a song in which a straight man sings intimately & passionately about his feelings for another straight man…just anguish and worry distilled down into questions without answers”

“NOW you can pivot from Disney kid to sexpot, from harmless reality TV himbo to fascist political monster, from porn star to first lady. You can pivot and pivot until Words no longer mean Things.” I am so into @meganc.bsky.social ’s @marchxness.bsky.social on Skid Row. marchxness.com

"There are sad songs for every nuance of romantic heartbreak, but there aren’t so many about the ways friendship can break your heart" @meganc.bsky.social bringing it hard in her @marchxness.bsky.social on Skid Row. Give her great essay a read (& a vote?): marchxness.com#/1stround-fo...

Holy shit, this @kjmoulton.bsky.social essay. I don't have the words to say anything more than that yet. I've dried my eyes, but I'm still blowing my nose and catching my breath. Just, holy shit. The way that sadness blossomed.

Turns out this matchup is No Doubt vs yes, doubt 😮

"... the shy 'straight-edge because I don't have an older sibling to buy me Bud Light' kids..." I got to this line and I screamed inside my heart like I was I riding a Japanese roller coaster during a SARS outbreak. I was that kind of college freshman, too.

I was able to successfully explain this to a couple relatives last month, and help them actually watch the show with their own eyes rather than shutting down.