vanya
@vanyastar
vanya
The bridge has two lanes of car traffic flanked by wide footpaths. In the time it took our group to cross, we saw at least five buses, three excavators with their shovels tucked downward like the heads of sleeping giraffes, one concrete mixer, five vehicles loaded with some kind of heavy equipment, and too many cars to count. Maybe half of them
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We learn that there is an orientation hike (‘a training and networking event for new hires’ p9) taking place at the factory which is drawing to a close as it is now the evening. The group is standing on a large bridge near the southern face of the factory. We learn that the bridge is extremely busy with cars and many industrial vehicles. We wonder what the factory could need such equipment for, and what products they are making there, considering the only job that we know of so far involves only shredding documents all day.
The narrator compares the excavators - a tool essentially for destroying the earth - to the gentle image of a sleeping giraffe - mostly friendly, non-territorial creatures. The harsh industrial image is juxtaposed against the tender natural. It is a lifeless and mechanical scene with a little sense of human emotional presence.
At first, I thought the black birds were crows, but I was mistaken. They had to be closer to cormorants, maybe shags. … I could see some of them, clumped together, staring at the factory. They looked slick as oil, like if you wrung one by the neck you’d get black ink all over your hands. They were floating in brackish water, where the river spills
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Chapter Two begins with our narrator standing on a bridge watching a clump of black birds near the factory. They struggle to identify the birds or if such a bird should be living in the area. They are compared to ‘oil’, which can be potentially lethal to water birds (https://www.birdrescue.org/our-work/research-and-innovation/how-oil-affects-birds/), all leading us again to feel a sense of unease with the factory’s relationship to the nature, hinting that it is an unnatural and potentially harmful environment.
The opposite of communion is also useful to me. When I am with others, when I read books, when I look at Twitter—I feel like a dam filling with water, with potential energy. But it is usually not until I spend a long time alone in my head that it turns into kinetic energy.
Henrik Karlsson • On Having More Interesting Ideas
everybody wants to do ayahuasca but nobody wants to do the dishes
erinnystrom.substack.com
all my friends and i talk about is getting rid of our phones
quirine brouwerquirinebrouwer.substack.com
friendship and
We don’t give other people credit for the same interior complexity we take for granted in ourselves, the same capacity for holding contradictory feelings in balance, for complexly alloyed affections, for bottomless generosity of heart and petty, capricious malice. We can’t believe that anyone could be unkind to us and still be genuinely fond of us,... See more
