Ravi Mangla's Blog, page 3
March 3, 2017
Murakami / Rugen
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”
(Quote from Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. Photograph by William Rugen.)
February 6, 2017
January 16, 2017
“Memento Mori” at Wigleaf
I have a short short story in Wigleaf. (Also, it’s their 9th birthday tomorrow!)
“That our son had taken to crafting ceremonial death masks was a source of mild consternation. He was eight and still slept on vinyl sheets.“
- “Memento Mori” at Wigleaf
January 5, 2017
James Richardson
“All but the most durable books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”
- James Richardson, Vectors
December 29, 2016
2016 Link Roundup
Nonfiction:
The Nation - “How Do You Stop Trump? Boycott Debt”
Cincinnati Review - “Serious Inquiries Only”
The Baffler - “The Death of the Autodidact”
The Kenyon Review - “The Great Unknown”
Pacific Standard - “The Burdens of Burial”
Puerto del Sol - “Onwards”
Midnight Breakfast - “Little Boxes”
The Atlantic - “The Wire Hanger’s Flexible Symbolism”
Fiction & Humor:
New South - “Elixir of Life”
Queen Mob’s Teahouse - “The True Story Behind My Incredible Fortune”
Queen Mob’s Teahouse - “An Introduction to Public Statues”
December 10, 2016
Acker / Eggleston
“Eurydice sits alone on a red bed. She has flaming red hair, so flaming that you can’t see anything else of her, much less anything else around her. She takes up too much space. Also she’s mad. Which has nothing to do with anything. She lives in her own world because she makes the whole world hers.”
- Kathy Acker (Eurydice in the Underworld)
November 29, 2016
“How Do You Stop Trump? Boycott Debt” at The Nation
“Resistance is designed as a response. It only works if there is a counterforce to withstand. He acts, we resist. He acts again, we resist again. And so on and so forth. It’s more than a semantic problem; it’s a tactical one. Resistance is a reactive measure, not a proactive one. It grants your adversary the first move.
So here is a bold idea: Don’t resist Trump. Distract Trump. Run wild circles around him in a hall of mirrors. Set fires and leave him to put them out. Each time he thinks he’s cleaned up the mess, make a new one.”
- “How Do You Stop Trump? Boycott Debt” at The Nation
November 26, 2016
Steven Church
“I think that the essay—with its emphasis on replicating thought on the page and its engagement with the wider outside world, asks of its writers and readers something deeper, something beyond escape or distraction. It asks them to think deeply, to confront themselves on the page.”
November 11, 2016
Milan Kundera
“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
- Milan Kundera
October 27, 2016
“The True Story Behind My Incredible Fortune” in Queen Mob’s Teahouse
A new humor piece is up at Queen Mob’s Teahouse:
“There are a lot of rumors circulating lately about how I amassed my incredible fortune. Some people say I developed a weight loss app. Others claim it was an app for gaining weight. A few of them insist that I invented bifocals, but I remind them that this was Benjamin Franklin. The truth is more prosaic than that, as is so often the case.”
- “The True Story Behind My Incredible Fortune” in Queen Mob’s Teahouse
