Author Archives: Lex Gill

FIVE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN

Excerpt from Sanctuary by Donika Kelly. The ocean, I mean, not a woman, filledwith plastic lace, and closer to the vanishingpoint, something brown breaks  the surface—human, maybe, a hand or foot or an islandof trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp.A wild life. This is a prayer like the seaurchin is a prayer, likeContinue reading “FIVE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN”

FIVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

From Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting. GRANDMA HYDE VERSUS FOUCAULT. “The analysis of descent permits the dissociation of the self,” rather than its unification, writes Michel Foucault. The truth about who you are lies not at the root of the tree but rather out at the tips of the branches, the thousand tips. ….Continue reading “FIVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE”

FIVE HUNDRED AND SIX

“Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale,” by Dan Albergotti (via Matthew Ogle’s incredible newsletter, Pome). Somehow exactly right for this particular moment. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fireswith theContinue reading “FIVE HUNDRED AND SIX”

FIVE HUNDRED AND FIVE

From Folding Beijing, by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu. The folding city was divided into three spaces. One side of the earth was First Space, population five million. Their allotted time lasted from six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock the next morning. Then the space went to sleep, and the earth flipped.Continue reading “FIVE HUNDRED AND FIVE”

FIVE HUNDRED AND THREE

From Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, which I read this week and loved. “For my friend Fong,” he says, and begins singing John Denver. If you didn’t know it already, now you do: old dudes from rural Taiwan are comfortable with their karaoke and when they do karaoke for some reason they love no one likeContinue reading “FIVE HUNDRED AND THREE”