“Let the emptiness our war heroes carry be the metaphor for a while.” – Ross Gay, “The High-Five From Strangers, Etc.”
Trying to keep the Friday Links columns shorter. That’s a New Years Resolution.
So here’s a bonus epigraph: “This is something to learn from: civilization without capitalism and how it can work.” – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Trying to keep things shorter, and adding a second epigraph smh. Better get to it.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
If I’m trying to make the Friday Links columns shorter, crisper, brisker—the links text sort of does so, and the books text does not. I already spoiled the books on Wednesday—here’s a reminder that the theme this week (year) is to See The World As It Is (while also trying to make life a taco party). This week, we’re reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay and Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations on Land and Freedom, edited by Francis Dupuis-Déri and Benjamin Pillet.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay: it’d be both accurate and hacky to say this book delighted me, but I suspect “accurate” isn’t something Ross was super going for here, and “hacky” is something he’s incapable of. There I go, imitating his clause-heavy sentence structure, without, it must be noted, doing it on purpose, although, once this sentence reaches its seventh and eighth commas, here, you’ll probably guess I’m leaning into it. Two things prevented me from enjoying this book as much as Be Holding (a book I’ll never shut up about loving): 1) my general anti-establishment grumpiness (“of course a ‘book of delights’ was a National Book Award Finalist in the midst of *gestures wildly*,” I grumble) and 2) another personal problem, which often rears its head when I read collections of flash fiction—so many great essayettes one after another can start to feel like we tried to make dinner out of only the richest tapas and dessert of the most decadent chocolate. Why this book succeeds, however, is because just like the ending of Get Out, the delights are hard-earned.
Ross is clear-eyed about the world we live in, and as he says near the end, a delight does not directly corrolate with a good. Despite the blurbs, this book is emphatically not Chicken Soup For The Soul With An MFA. This is a book about being a Black man in the United States, one who thinks deeply and writes and gardens and travels and is a father figure to his partner’s daughter and asks for vegetarian substitutions at salad bars. If you know anything about being a Black man in the United States—maybe you are one, maybe you’ve seen Get Out—you know all those things are not always made easy for you. In fact, they’re often made harder, for no good reason. In other words, like José Olivarez said about Anilucia Sotelo’s poem “Family Portrait With Enchiladas and A Movie” in his The Line Break podcast appearance (Apple/Spotty/Soundcloud), Ross treats his subject matter with rigor. Delights are often surprising, unexpected, out of the ordinary. But that doesn’t mean a delight is “oooh I saw a butterfly today and then the ice cream cart was across the street and I had $5.” These are meditations, ones that will have you agreeing with Elizabeth Alexander, who blurbs: “Ross Gay is a truly free Black man. His liberated words open our minds and hearts to speak.” I kept that blurb with me as I was reading, a reminder to tamp down my cynicism and dour side, a reminder to let Ross—who is still influencing my sentence structure—to open my heart and mind.
Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations on Land and Freedom, edited by Francis Dupuis-Déri and Benjamin Pillet: some throat-clearing, because I suspect “anarchism,” as it was to me until pretty recently, will be a loaded term for many of y’all. I am, as regular readers know, not an anarchist. I am a socialist. That said, I think there’s a lot to be learned from reading different theories on the left. There’s a lot to be learned from Indigenous people and society—not just in North America, either. So I picked up this book hoping to gain some perspectives I hadn’t thought about or really seen presented. Anarchism, contrary to popular misconception, is not about lawless chaos. That, it seems to me, is more in line with right-wing libertarianism, “sovereign citizens” and the like. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (this book is a series of interviews, J.’s is great) alleges that “American individualist libertarian tradition draws on a white nativist cadre of thinkers who appropriated indignity for themselves—whether we are talking about the ‘Founding Fathers’ or the transcendentalists.” Anarchism is more concerned with how we take care of one another, how we build a just society while subjected to an unjust state.
A thing I believe about contemporary USian society, for example, is that our relationship with nature is fundamentally broken. That feels like a statement that needs no more evidence than the existence of leaf blowers and LLMs. Now, that doesn’t mean I (or anarcho-indigenists, or indigenists, or anarchists) are necessarily advocating for total rejection of modernity and a return to nomadic living. But the way we are going right now is unsustainable. As in, we have moved past the “sustainable” part and are firmly staring down the barrel of “un.” So what can we do? Plenty of things. J. Kēhaulani says a great starting point is “…learning more about the specific area(s) where [Indigenous movements] live and work—and to understand the history of the indigenous peoples whose territory or homeland they are on.” Learning more is something I’m always trying to do—in 2025, I’m going to see how I can actively get involved.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? I really enjoy Adam Neely’s YouTube stuff, I think he’s a super smart thinker about music. Plus, he’s a jazz guy who’s around my age, lol. His band, Sungazer, ranges (to me) from “oh sick” to “interesting, but not really for me.” Adam himself pushes the bass in exciting directions, and the band does some rad rhythmic stuff (what a drummer!), and I enjoyed “Cool 7:”
Here’s a physician—Claudia Fegan, M.D.—in Common Dreams talking about how she’s seen insurance profiteering only get more damaging to patients in recent years.
A Cybertruck blew up in front of the Trump Hotel in Vegas. Seems like the perpetrator was a US Army Special Forces. Interesting addition to what we were talking about Wednesday? Maybe. All I’m going to point out right now is that Teslas explode, all the time, for no reason. Tesla self-drivers hit pedestrians. They are dangerous cars. They should be regulated out of existence. Here’s Atlanta News First talking about a Cybertruck catching fire in a Dekalb County Dealership.
Here’s Nemonte Nenquimo at Democracy Now! defending Ecuador’s ban on future Amazon oil extraction.
“Why We Need More Queer Sex in Climate Fiction” should be enough of a pull to get you to read this from Gabrielle Korn in Lit Hub. Here’s a pull quote, if not: “…pleasure, desire, and love are essential to envisioning a future worth fighting for. Queer sex, lacking a reproductive imperative serves the radical purpose of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. It’s a beacon of hope…A doomed society doesn’t have room for such endeavors.”
When am I ever not going to like nature writing centered in Florida? Of all the links that could be companion pieces to both books from this week, check out “The Land Says A Lot More” from Cameron McNabb in Contingent Magazine. This is how I want us settlers to be looking at land—trying to see how Indigenous people would see it.
What’re you still doing here? Something I’m trying to do more this winter/spring is take walks, even though it’s cold. I haven’t been successful, with the busyness of November/December. Maybe if I encourage you, beloved reader, then I too will get out to the West Ridge Nature Preserve.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. It, uh, seems wild out there right now. Keep your heads up, take care of yourselves and each other.
Here’s a bonus epigraph (benediction?): “…I now know if I don’t want to get hurt I better lead with my heart.” – Ross Gay, from “Heart To Heart.”
Sorry you got an email,
Chris