This is my last one before the baby arrives!
This is my last one before the baby arrives!
One cool thing about being a teacher is that when the school holidays arrive you can hang out in your house eating a tuna melt and listening to the record "Caveman Wakes Up" by Friendship
Ok, I keep thinking about this opening from the "Will AI revolutionize reading?!" New Yorker piece from the other day. Feel free to ignore what will be an inevitably rambling thread on the topic of reading bsky.app/profile/phdh... 1/š§µ
Copped this ancient, decaying copy of Enid Starkie's Rimbaud biography from a seller in New Zealand:
There is zero chance that I'll have the time or cognitive resources to read this during the next fifteen years, but I want to buy it anyway.
After painting a newly plastered ceiling with a roller I can barely close a fist. I'll take the 5am essay marking seshes thanks
A lot of school teachers talk a big game about how they're going to quit and learn a trade because the hours would be better and they reckon they'd get paid more. These guys need to spend a weekend painting their laundry and then get back to me
does he kill an anonymous stranger for killing his dog in that one
thanks mate!
yeah itās really good, not sure if youāve heard this before
I hope you enjoyed it. Long and difficult movie in a lot of ways, but it has stayed with me for years.
āThe future is a monstrous, powerful colossus that will soon fall on me and crush me. My tattered childhood flaps around me, and no sooner have I patched one hole than another breaks through somewhere else.ā (Ditlevsen, āThe Copenhagen Trilogyā)
did not expect this post to end up in a Substack essay! very cool!
Thank you! Iāve never heard of her before. This looks great!
One of the best movies of the 2000s in my opinion! Incredibly harrowing opening five minutes though
I always think of Mathew Broderickās character in Margaret!
intro to close reading with the year elevens tomorrow, meaning I gotta smash that Hopkins button:
exactly. if itās not afternoon on the back porch music I am currently not interested
respect to all of those in the northern hemisphere enjoying the new Mount Eerie album but itās summer down here and I donāt have capacity for that right now
the face of a perfect angel who just looked me dead in the eye and vomited all over the Good Couch right before I left for work
I am a simple man. If I read āfirst two parts of wildly acclaimed Danish speculative septology from New Directions incomingā then I immediately pre-order
Thank you! Iām still in the middle of having someone explain the preface to me, but maybe in a yearās time Iāll be far enough to understand this
is it easy trying to parse the Phenomenology while the person you love most calls you a nerd? no. is it a noble pursuit? also no
my wife is making fun of me for taking notes while watching a YouTube lecture on Hegel, and sheās right to do it
Next up, thanks to a recent @yoonkim.bsky.social post:
This is the first unsolicited advice/scolding post Iāve seen on hereā¦ it was nice while it lasted
I can accept this. But it stings
Out of The Collected Poems of Marguerite Young, edited by Phil Bevis, Joshua Rothes, and Jacob Siefring (@jsief.bsky.social) (Chatwin Books, Sublunary Editions, 2022). Young, in a short Introduction, talks of the poetry/prose continuum and the practice of ādragā in prose:
Streamed it on archive here: archive.org/details/noro...
Finally got around to watching āNoroi: The Curse,ā and am still living with its crushingly grim vibes. A movie almost exclusively made up of cursed images and droning doom sounds. Extremely sick.
Is the general consensus that Knausgaardās āMorning Starā series has eclipsed āMy Struggleā? Three books in and everything is clicking so satisfyingly into place. Feels like a refinement of everything he did previously.
Clarice Lispector, āNear To The Wild Heartā
Iām on the home stretch of this incredible novel. Itās as good as everyone says, and vastly superior to BLINDING, which was also outstanding. An insane maelstrom of the banal and the grotesque, structured like consciousness repeatedly dilating and contracting.
I keep having to break the bad news to students in my writing class: "having trouble finding the words" is not a problem that's going to go away! And you can't wait for that miracle before starting to write. All you can do is learn how to power through until you *have* some words you can work on.
October 2022 - July 2023. Defining experience of my reading life
Up to Vol 6 of Proust and making sure everybody knows it
William Blake, āSongs of Innocence and of Experienceā: āSpringā, 1794
Driving down the to Geelong to watch football with the boys, and you better believe Iām packing the hard stuff for later tonight
I think people that donāt actually know any teenagers tend to assume that theyāre all radicalised insurgents and know everything because of TikTok, but brother let me tell you. they are not and do not
been teaching Maxine Beneba Clarkeās āForeign Soilā to my year eleven mainstream English class for the past few weeks and none of them really seemed to vibe with it until today when we looked at the history of refugee policy and offshore detention in Australia
Waited five volumes for this moment.
āNah it actually looks slay, sir.ā
Iām truly roadtesting the new haircut this morning (aka walking into a classroom of teenagers on the first day of school after the holiday break). The most terrifying part of this profession
Same, love Paperback!
Itās relatively new! Only open Thursday and Friday afternoons. Lots of cool art, theory, and poetry books.
Stopped into World Food Books, one of Melbourneās only remaining specialist bookshops. Incredible finds. Had to stop myself dropping $90 on a hardcover set of The Man Without Qualities, or $70 on Cixousās Joyce book:
itās fine to roast the guy who wrote the terrible Paris poem. but letās not forget to also roast the magazineāone that once frequently published John Ashberyāwho decided to run it
I was today years old when I discovered joy scrolling š„°
are these Instagram accounts who have just transitioned over? if so, itās going to be a nightmare
Iāll like this one. But for the rest, just know that Iām scrolling past out of envy
Blanchot is both rough on and kind to the failson artist:
Next on deckāa theory detour before starting The Captive & The Fugitive:
