by Helen Stuhr-Rommereim

I don’t actually know where my faculties are

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Platforms like Facebook require consistency between one’s online and offline selves. But maybe there’s something unnatural about trying to force this consistency.

Midnight in the Century – Victor Serge

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Whether or not the arc of the universe bends towards justice, it might be better if we could hold onto the idea that it might. If we try to bend it that way, maybe it could.

The End of Days – Jenny Erpenbeck

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Sentences repeat as situations repeat. The sense of relief at yet another opportunity to imagine the future of a life that was lost is cut by the knowledge that loss will win out in the end.

Pure Motion, Pure Emotion

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Andrey Platonov’s tales of human tragedy contain moments of connection that provide a hint of a different kind of future, of the stuff of living that keeps hearts beating.

Joyful Losers and the Game of Life

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The Game of Life reaches its conclusion at the apex of property ownership and capital accumulation and family structure solidification. It doesn’t take you to the part where you get old and your children grow up and don’t want to talk to you anymore.

A Toe in the Water off the Tahiti in Your Heart

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The horrors on the unknown side of the half-known life have a way of lurking in the corners, not satisfied remaining hidden.

Last Words from Montmartre – Qiu Miaojin

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While Last Words from Montmartre can at times read as an outpouring of undirected and incoherent desire, it would be wrong to take it as the document of an emotional breakdown.

Q&A: Institute for New Feeling

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Have you ever felt that exact combination of intimacy and awkwardness while walking on a treadmill with a stranger before?

Women Who Make A Fuss – Isabelle Stengers & Vinciane Despret

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What is the value of walking soberly and honorably to the guillotine? Why not cry and scream all the way there?

Europe in Sepia – Dubravka Ugresic

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Ugresic is not interested in declaring the present to be exceptionally hopeful or hopeless. She’s interested, rather, in talking about the particularity of now as it scrambles out of the past and lurches towards the future.

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