The opening poem in A Piece of Good News begins,
I had a lust for what was distant.
We were in love. We crossed the border
in broad daylight and the color
of the currency deepened
but didn’t change,
and ends,
I drank the water. I thought it was okay.
We talked about people we fucked
when we should have been
The Millions Will Live on, But the Indie Book Blog Is DeadForeign Correspondence: Books are now luxury lifestyle goodies
'Books can be seen as decorative and illustrative of their owner’s identity.'
[...] 'I refuse to believe in the future', declared Mishima in one of his many media interviews, 'I prefer to think that I carry all of tradition on my shoulders, and that literature will end with me'. Mishima's chief inspiration for this attitude was Hagakure, which instructs samurai to deepen their experience of the present by giving no thought for the future. 'Only the weak put their hopes in the future', says Mishima, 'only people who think of themselves as processes'. Refusing to believe in the future does not, he insists, mean living only in the present moment: 'We must think of ourselves as the result of many generations of culture and tradition, in order to perform our present work fully'.
But even as he says this, Mishima repeatedly portrays Japan as a culture in decline. His final statements are full of gloomy prophesies:
I no longer have any great hopes for Japan. each day deepens my feeling that Japan is ceasing to be Japan. Soon Japan will vanish altogether. In its place, all that will remain is an inorganic, empty, neutral, drab, wealthy, scheming, economic giant in a corner of the Far East. I will not listen any longer to people who are content with that prospect.
[...] we are the last humans, and there's nothing any of us can do about it.
Andrew Rankin, Mishima: Aesthetic Terrorist [At last - a book worthy of its subject.]
Tarantino buzz amplifies as Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood debuts
The film Quentin Tarantino was born to make, according to critics who rushed to tweet as the lights came up, was the film all of Cannes was dying to see.
“Little Prince” Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on Love, Mortality, and Night as an Existential Clarifying Force for the Deepest Truths of the Heart
“Day belongs to family quarrels, but with the night he who has quarreled finds love again. For love is greater than any wind of words… Love is not thinking, but being.”
The Problem With Eternity (And What To Do About It)
“The problem with eternity is not that it doesn’t exist but that it is undesirable and incoherent; it kills meaning and collapses value. This is a difficult truth to learn, because we are naturally fearful of loss, and therefore attached to the idea of eternal restoration.: – The New Yorker
Could New “Indie” Social Media Sites Solve What’s Bad About Social Media?
Could the IndieWeb movement—or a streamlined, user-friendly version of it to come—succeed in redeeming the promise of social media? If we itemize the woes currently afflicting the major platforms, there’s a strong case to be made that the IndieWeb avoids them. – The New Yorker