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joeharlowe.bsky.social
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@joeharlowe.bsky.social
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joeharlowe.bsky.social
#wendellberry #questionnaire #poetry
Questionnaire By Wendell Berry 1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred. 3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy. 4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without. 5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.
October 1, 2026 at 11:00 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#reading #listening #arundhatiroy #mothermarycomestome #memoir #music
The cover image for an audiobook version of Mother Mary Comes To Me, by Arundhati Roy. An image of a woman smoking a cigarette, staring into the middle distance. Is it an image of the author? Her mother? Someone else? I am unsure. I suppose I could find out, but it also seems unimportant, somehow. The voice, though- that is important. The author reads it, and I am entranced. Her voice is not exactly warm, but it is rich and sonorous, and the music of it enraptures me. I read The God of Small Things a long time ago, and I remember loving it, but truth be told I can't remember any details of it. Even when I go back to it after listening to this memoir and start it over, I can't recall any of it. But, once again, I love it, and all the more so now that I hear it in the author's own voice, after listening to her. I read slowly now, at the pace of her speech, and it is far slower than my usual reading speed, but I hear the melodies and the rhythms of the sentences now; I hear them sing.
October 1, 2026 at 10:55 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#ireland #hiking #tramping #hillwalking
The view from the top of Carrauntoohil, Ireland's tallest mountain. The rocky top and edge of the mountain, lichen and moss-covered. All else is mist-obscured, a thick grey cloud encircling and surrounding us. The sky is the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel, to borrow a line from Gibson. The wind is fierce, gusting, nearly pushing us off our feet. The rain is icy, driven sideways at us, painful when it lands on bare skin. Alannah hunkers down in the lee of a bank of stones, taking what shelter she can. Eva is trying to roll a cigarette, managing somehow, lighting it. Rowan is staring at his phone, trying to work out an alternate route down for us. Brother O Shea's Gully is an option, I think, but not a good one in this weather, with such poor visibility. Our best bet is to go back the way we came, more or less, but to find and follow the zig zag track down instead of the devil's ladder.
October 1, 2026 at 10:27 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#melbourne #huntingdale #walking #spring #flaneur
A tree with bare branches. A steel wire fence. Wooden pallets stacked behind it. A large building sheathed and roofed with corrugated iron. A truck. The road empty, the sky mute and high. A September Spring in Huntingdale, 2026. Behind me, the raucous caw of a crow and then the rattle of a train.
September 19, 2026 at 9:25 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#gibson #scifi #reading #listening
The cover of All Tomorrow's Parties, by William Gibson, is wildly colourful and glithcy. Two faces merged, superimposed, blurred, melded. A man with a beard, possibly wearing glasses but possibly not. Can't quite see him straight. It's fitting, somehow, because I am not the same man I was when I first read this. It's twenty years or more, at least, I think. I could check the date of publication, but I remember waiting for this to be released, to buy a copy. I think I bought it in Hodges Figgis and read it in St Stephen's Green, devouring it in a single sitting. Absorbed, absolutely. This time around I listen to it in chunks, walking with Charlie along back streets and alleyways, down beside train tracks, in between factories and timber yards, steel fabricators and brothels, the bus depot, the army barracks, the scrap yards and car parts yards. I am older, heavier, slower, more distracted and distractable, but also more knowledgeable about the world. Descriptions of fight scenes no longer enthrall me as they once did; I know something about that now, albeit only a modicum, and there is no mystery in this. But the details of everyday objects- that I still love.
September 19, 2026 at 4:58 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#reading #sci-fi #nostalgia #gibson #palatecleanser #listening
We see the cover of virtual light by William Gibson. Theres an i.age of a woman w earing sunglasses with reflective lenses and we're assuming it's Chevette. She's staring into the distance and smiling slightly. She's wearing red lipstick and the bridge is reflected in one lens. In the other lens is...something. we're not sure what. What we are sure of is that this book served as a palate cleanser to regime change. Is it weird that this novel with its slightly dystopia edge, its crumbling US, its shadowy powers and corruption seems markedly LESS worrying than what we actually have now, in the US? I think it's the happy ending it has. Oh, that we shall be so lucky.
September 14, 2026 at 12:19 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#noname #Emilyberry #poetry
No Name By Emily Berry What can I tell you? It was a summer that seemed to be making history — their personal history — almost before it began, and they stood back slightly, still in it, but observing it, saying “the summer this,” “the summer that,” all the while it was going on. They became obsessed with a fountain, for example, one they walked past each day, how abundantly it would reach upwards and yet be pouring back down itself the whole time — all winter this fountain had been dry, not saying a word. What more can I tell you? Oh, everything — like how they would walk home in the evenings when the light was soft, anything bad sliding off them, and they would feel owned, completely owned, in a good way, by the air, which would touch them constantly, sometimes urgently, sometimes lightly, just to let them know it was there, and they would think maybe this is what being alive is, when they saw how complicated a tree was and how it wanted them looking at it and saying this, how the color of a particular flower at this particular moment was redder even than the life force, whatever that is, if you could open it up and get right down inside it, if you could put your mouth to it and become as red as that rose even, it was still redder than that, and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves so they wouldn’t do anything except listen to the songs in their heads which were sad ones like nearly all good songs and watch this feeling rolling in, sunshine or rain, we don’t know yet, it’s a good one, it’s the best one, though it has no name
September 13, 2026 at 7:49 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#oakleigh #huntingdale #spring #industrialisation #urban #evening #letusgothenyouandi
Out early enough with Charlie to catch the sunset framed in the train lines. A steel frame for a vortex of yellow light at the centre of the pink and purple clouds. The green grass of the embankment by the shared use bike path and walkway. Cool air. Magpies doing their thing, warbling like a casio keyboard with the battery running down. Alannah's on camp and Jess is visiting her mum. I'm thinking about an interview I have tomorrow, wondering whether it's a good idea to change schools. There's one more week left in Term 3 and then Alannah and I are going to Ireland. Petals are falling from the magnolia trees and the Japanese Maple is just beginning to leaf.
September 13, 2026 at 8:58 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
The antithesis of ai slop lareviewofbooks.org/article/coun...
How Does a Country Sound? | Los Angeles Review of Books
Reading Robert Frost in a newly independent South Sudan.
lareviewofbooks.org
September 4, 2026 at 12:07 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#hex #mma #aarontoy #bjj #muaythai #boxing #wrestling
I'm in this picture, somewhere. At Aaron Toy's fight, which he's just won. At a Hex event, in Australia. That's him, the shaven-heafed fella in the front, bending over, making sure people in the back can be seen. Humouring folks in the gym with a group photo, even though it's the last thing he wants to do, cause he knows folks get a kick out of borrowed glory. He's a good fella, good with the kids in the gym. Gentle with them, and explains things. Encourages them. He's annoyed with himself in this photo, cause he thinks he should have won this fight more cleanly. He didn't expect to get clipped, to get rocked, to slip. But that happens, and he dealt with it.
September 1, 2026 at 12:25 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#howtobeapoet #wendellberry #toremindmyself
How to Be a Poet By Wendell Berry i Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. ii Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. iii Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.
September 1, 2026 at 8:45 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#reading #regimechange #maggiehaberman #Jonathanswan
On the cover of "Regime Change", by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, there is an image of Donald Trump. His eyes are dark reptilian slits and his downturned mouth is contemptuous and cold. I can't say I was surprised by much in the book, unfortunately. Unless, perhaps, the pettiness. And his vulgarity. Perhaps it's naive to be shocked by these things. But the sheer scale of the corruption didn't shock me, the ineptitude, the brazen disregard for not just laws but conventions, decorum, decency, morality. It horrified me- it horrifies me. But what a small, mean, petty, vindictive creature he is- that surprised me more. I guess it shouldn't have. I fear for our future.
September 1, 2026 at 8:31 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#Heaney #pangurbán #poetry #caturday
Pangur Bán By Anonymous Translated By Seamus Heaney Share From the ninth-century Irish poem Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk: His whole instinct is to hunt, Mine to free the meaning pent. More than loud acclaim, I love Books, silence, thought, my alcove. Happy for me, Pangur Bán Child-plays round some mouse’s den. Truth to tell, just being here, Housed alone, housed together, Adds up to its own reward: Concentration, stealthy art. Next thing an unwary mouse Bares his flank: Pangur pounces. Next thing lines that held and held Meaning back begin to yield. All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I Focus my less piercing gaze On the challenge of the page. With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills. When the longed-for, difficult Answers come, I too exult. So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation. Taking pleasure, taking pains, Kindred spirits, veterans. Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade. Day and night, my own hard work Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.
August 16, 2026 at 1:51 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#wsmerwin #whysomepeopledonotreadpoetry #poetry
Why Some People Do Not Read Poetry W.S. Merwin Because they already know that it means stopping and without stopping they know that beyond stopping it will mean listening listening without hearing and maybe then hearing without hearing and what would they hear then what good would it be to them like some small animal crossing the road suddenly there but not seeming to move at night and they are late and may be on the wrong road over the mountain with all the others asleep and not hitting it that time as though forgetting it again
August 10, 2026 at 8:43 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
Sunset over Melbourne, July 2026. There's a crescent moon in the sky, and Venus is visible. The sky is greyish blue in general, but that fades into a pale yellow w with pinkish clouds down near the horizon in front of me. I'm out early with Charlie, strolling slow, listening to a book. Just passing Minoland, and turning to head homewards in a moment. It's cool bordering on cold but there's no wind, and as the light fades my thoughts turn to Ireland in October, which this feels like, and I consider the fact that this year marks the turning point where I've lived outside that country for as long as I lived in it.
July 18, 2026 at 7:53 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#aaranovitch #riversoflondon #reading #fiction
A copy of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch on a wooden table. The table is in the Boundary Hotel, and I'm waiting for Alannah to finish her flute lesson. I've got a pint of Guinness and I'm tired- we were up early for swimming, which has started again with Term 3 beginning today, and I made it to a session of MMA before I had to pick Alannah up from Japanese tutoring. So, yeah, we're busy again, and I'm tired, and my leg hurts where Harrison got a decent knee in on my leg during wall-work.so I'm going to enjoy this pint, and this book, and then we're going to go home and i'll put a wash on and cook dinner and eat and walk Charlie and hang the clothes out before I sleep.
July 14, 2026 at 9:22 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#poetry #michaelsimms #thesummeryoulearnedtoswim
The Summer You Learned to Swim By Michael Simms For Lea The summer you learned to swim was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself. In May you were afraid to put your face in the water but by August, I was standing in the pool once more when you dove in, then retreated to the wall saying You forgot to say Sugar! So I said Come on Sugar, you can do it and you pushed off and swam to me and held on laughing, your hair stuck to your cheeks— you hiccupped with joy and swam off again. And I dove in too, trying new things. I tried not giving advice. I tried waking early to pray. I tried not rising in anger. Watching you I grew stronger— your courage washed away my fear. All day I worked hard thinking of you. In the evening I walked the long hill home. You were at the top, waving your small arms, pittering down the slope to me and I lifted you high so high to the moon. That summer all the world was soul and water, light glancing off peaks. You learned the turtle, the cannonball, the froggy, and the flutter and I learned to stand and wait for you to swim to me.
July 13, 2026 at 9:45 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#larapinta #tjoritja #northernterritory #nt #centralaustralia #bushwalking #hiking #tramping #camping
There's something about going from a valley to a peak or a peak to a valley that clears the mind. Or maybe it's just the pace we move at- the slow, steady, incremental progress, under a sky that changes, clouds drifting by, the sun edging slowly across the sky as we crawl through the landscape, picking our way along dried-up creek beds, skirting occasional pools, looking for signs of a track and evidence that we are still on course. Kate rolled her ankle, earlier, and fell heavily, hitting her head on the rocks. Her blood speckled the stones in the riverbed, and although the moment was fraught with potential for disaster, she is ok now. I remind myself that the sun doesn't actually move through the sky- that it's an illusion produced by the movement of the earth circling in its orbit.
July 13, 2026 at 9:35 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#uluru #Australia #tramping #hiking #bushwalking #father #daughter #time
Uluru stands in the distance. The sky above is grey, and the formation is shrouded in mist. In the foreground, the orange/red sandy dirt of central Australia is apparent, and spinifex clumps abound. Stefan, Kate, Sean, Lachie and Brenda have all gone back to Melbourne, but alannah and i have come to see this. We're part of a group tour, and afterwards, both of us will swear to never join such a tour again- but still, I am glad to be here. Alannah's just fumbled some social interaction badly, and both of us have cracked up laughing at her ineptitude, and mine, and how it doesn't really matter. I've been thinking about time all day, and the depth of time. About the 550 million years since this rock was formed, and the 70 thousand odd years that first nations people have lived here. About how brief any one human's life is, and what it means to seize joy in a moment of incarnation.
July 11, 2026 at 8:16 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#brennatwohy #poetry #acoworkerasksmeifiamsad,still
A Coworker Asks Me if I Am Sad, Still & I tell her, grief is not a feeling but a neighborhood. this is where I come from. everyone I love still lives there. someday I hope to raise a family in a place you could not mistake for any home I’ve ever been in. Brenna, she says, there’s no such thing as an unhaunted house.
July 11, 2026 at 3:52 AM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#reading #rohintonmistry #afinebalance
July 4, 2026 at 10:38 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
Dawn on top of Brinkley Bluff, on the Larapinta Trail, in the West McDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. Brenda stands with her back to the camera, gazing out at the mountains and sky in front of her. There are clouds in the sky, but light is just peeping theough. The ground underfoot is shale-like and red-tinged. You can't see it, but Brenda is drinking a cup of hot chocolate given to her by Stefan and Kate, who pulled out of the hike yesterday after Kate had a fall. Alannah is somewhere on top of the Bluff too- we slept well last night, despite the wind. I don't know whether it was exhaustion from the climb from Fringe-Lilli Creek or the fact that we are now used to the hard ground after 6 days of hiking- probably both. Sean and Lachie are here somewhere too, maybe making tea, and soon we'll be packing up and walking out to Standley Chasm. My feet are blistered and my hands are cold, but the sky is beautiful in the awakening light and the land stretches out before us, not lone, not level, and I love being here with my daughter. Wouldn't miss this time for the world.
July 4, 2026 at 10:32 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#catullus #poetry
Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam, fortasse requīris. nesciŏ, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.
June 22, 2026 at 9:29 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#poetry #roberthayden #thosewintersundays
Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?
June 21, 2026 at 1:05 PM
joeharlowe.bsky.social
#1801 #sineadseadhnamorrissey #dorothywordsworth #wordsworth #poetry
1801 By Sinead Seadhna Morrissey A beautiful cloudless morning. My toothache better. William at work on The Peddler. Miss Gell left a basket of excellent lettuce; I shelled our scarlet beans. Walked out after dinner for letters- met a man who had once been a Captain begging for alms. The afternoon airy & warm. No letters. Came home via the lake, which was near-turquoise and startled by summer geese. The soles on this year's boots are getting worn. Heard a tiny, wounded yellow bird, sounding its alarm. William as pale as a basin, exhausted with altering. I boiled up pears with cloves. Such visited evenings are sharp with love I almost said, "dear, look." Either moonlight on Grasmere - like herrings! - Or the new moon holding the old moon in its arms.
June 16, 2026 at 5:02 AM