i thought of matchsticks

>Anyway. I got the books in the post yesterday. I felt nothing looking at the book. Nothing. The books look beautiful. But I felt empty. Like these books were a refuse of my past, and them being printed and packaged and made into commodity objects is totally separate from why I created the work. I am looking forward to having new readers, that dialogue. But I looked at the books and I thought of matchsticks, yes that’s what I thought of, matchsticks. Maybe because the books are paper. And I thought of burning them, like Artaud writing about poems, meant to be read once and then burned.

"Frances Farmer Is My Sister," Kate Zambreno

[Chicago Avenue east of Rush Street]

flags

I would like to salute
the ashes of American flags
And all the fallen leaves
filling up shopping bags

"Ashes of American Flags," Wilco

[State Street below Randolph Street]

kindness and unkindness

Look to your life.
Rest your kindness
and your unkindness
now, and listen: I know
what makes your heart
clench coldly
in all weathers,
I know how it feels
that it always will.
Bear that. Look to your life,
to your one given garden.

"Garden," Sam Willetts

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

ignorant of death

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

capable of moments unlike

"There's a thing about being capable of a great moment. This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you'll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph's Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he's the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It's a glorious instant of human endeavor. It's duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it's gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don't mean that to sound flippant, and I don't mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they're artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you're not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it."

~ David Simon

[Michigan Avenue above Madison Street]