INSTANT DOGMA
Opinions, essays, blog posts, articles, op-eds, ruminations, soapbox rants, and much more
The Man in the High Casino
This is an alternate reality, Phillippe reminded himself, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. He had to keep affirming this in his mind, or he could easily step on one of two related but opposite landmines: he could fail to take the dangers here seriously and thus perish at their hand, or he
Low Songs
Streaming on a Loop I saw the worst minds of your generation Well, fucking everywhere Madmen in plastic pouches Clutching petroleum purses On pleather couches Counting fortunes fueled On broken backs And acrid stacks Pushing brinks in the night Where forty winks nod To the fall of all As pens run out of ink
A Fine Dust
We were never here not really even When it seemed so real so touching Feeling like we were in charge living Extra textured double shot large late Capitalist latte lives driving through Wanton lines with ordered appetites Upon on-demand sides of fetid flesh Jazzed up with freshly stewed dark Matters in skewered sleeves so
Adieu Anthropocene
Well, it was “fun” while it lasted! Sure, we tried to impose our will on the world and render the biosphere uninhabitable… But everyone makes mistakes now and then. Still, despite the judgment by Blue-Ribbon titans that we fell short of the mark (mainly because we had made so many marks that it was
Do It Yourself Together
The politics of not giving a whit In defense of a strategic apathy Resist the weaponization of reality Refuse to participate in dependency Unsettle the induced hegemonies Decapitalize the inherent fallacies Reclaim autonomy through absence Fail to show up for the compulsory Stop pretending to even care Abolish obvious dissonance There’s nothing actually there
Space Cowboys
Wrangling with the Final Frontier There was a time in my adult life that I wanted to be an astronomer, following the usual boyhood dalliances with aspiring to be an astronaut. From my earliest memories I was fascinated with the stars—but more so the concept of them than the studying thereof, which made the
Saving Sacred Spaces
{NB: Reposting this piece from 2011 in memory of my friend Klee Benally, who walked on from this world right before the calendar turned. Klee was an ardent defender of the people and the land, tirelessly dedicating himself to critical causes expressed through an incredible range of living arts and media. Some of the
The Year Hope Died
It came on suddenly although apparently they had been failing for some time without us fully realizing it. We had always counted on them to pull us through the difficult moments, the worst of times, those days when we felt like we couldn’t go on any longer. But we neglected to focus enough on
Not Buying It
“Thanks for Nothing” — QED You ask me what this life is for but All you mean is what’s in store when Things unfold in ways untold within Those lessons of blessings and sins Too messy to untangle by any moral Math that won’t last in the quest for Cash on the nail and the
Roll Credits
Much as anything else in this fiction Of ourselves being the limit of living While giving up on believing or even Receiving messages from beyond a Din of our iniquities broadcast out to An infinity we scarcely comprehend To which some of us are trying to get Back again following the crumbs on The
On the Origin of Speciousness
A few months ago I was having a conversation with an old friend on the sidewalk outside of a bar that was just closing (a setting where, historically speaking, many important philosophical discussions surely have been held). The topic was one that is on the mind of many these days, namely whether Artificial Intelligence
Ontological Enchantment
{NB: This essay originally appeared in the Peace Chronicle among a collection of other writings on the theme of “re-enchantment” earlier this year — you should definitely check out the great array of material in the whole issue (PDF posted by the Peace & Justice Studies Association, which you should join!)} Rekindling Rootedness in
The Day the Earth Stood Up
{NB: I wrote this article way back in 2009 for the now-defunct HuffPost contributor platform, following one of the early major climate demonstrations; with another round planned for next week, I realized that I keep trying to get this essential message across but can’t really do so any more clearly than I did in
New Storeyes
The Matrix ploy is an old and powerful story — you know, the one that manifests in a version of “reality” that seems uncontestable, dominates each waking moment, and is reinforced by everything around us from schools to media and beyond. A new story would be to remember an even older one, reminding us
Too Much Life
The postmortem note said something like Failure to thrive which in this sort of world Is part of being alive as we cope with it all Trying to make a joke of the fall from grace When we crashed on this place from parts Unknown having flown the ether to locate Some