Salient as salient gets

This is the finest example of critical, cultural and linguistic wizardry I can identify. Reproduced here, in full, from the New Yorker website, and from its original home, Teju Cole's utter fucking genius.

WHAT IT IS 

Teju Cole

Is Ebola the isis of biological agents? Is Ebola the Boko Haram of aids? Is Ebola the al-Shabaab of dengue fever? Some say Ebola is the Milosevic of West Nile virus. Others say Ebola is the Ku Klux Klan of paper cuts. It’s obvious that Ebola is the MH370 of MH17. But at some point the question must be asked whether Ebola isn’t also the Narendra Modi of sleeping sickness. And I don’t mean to offend anyone’s sensitivities, but there’s more and more reason to believe that Ebola is the Sani Abacha of having some trouble peeing. At first there was, understandably, the suspicion that Ebola was the Hitler of apartheid, but now it has become abundantly clear that Ebola is actually the George W. Bush of being forced to listen to someone’s podcast. Folks, this thing is serious. The World Health Organization calls it the Putin of Stalin. In layperson’s terms, that’s like saying it’s the Stalin of U2. Now we are seeing the idea thrown around that it could be the Black Hand of the Black Death, not to mention the Red Peril of the Red Plague. If you don’t want to go that far, you have to at least admit that Ebola is the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb of Stage IV brain cancer. At this point, it’s very possible that Ebola could become airborne and turn into the Tea Party of extreme climate events. Throughout the country of Africa, Ebola is the Abu Ghraib of think pieces. Look, I’m not the politically correct type, so I’m just going to put this out there: Ebola is the neo-Nazism of niggling knee injuries. The kind of threat it poses to the American way of life essentially makes it the North Korea of peanut allergies. I’m not going to lie to you, and I don’t care what color you are, you could be red, green, blue, purple, whatever; you need to understand that Ebola (the Obama of Osama, but don’t quote me) is literally the “Some of my best friends are black” of #NotAllMen. But the burning question no one has raised yet is whether Ebola is the Newsweek of halitosis. We’ll go to the phones in a moment and get your take on this. But first let me open the discussion up to our panel and ask whether Ebola is merely the Fox News of explosive incontinence, or whether the situation is much worse than that and Ebola is, in fact, the CNN of CNN.

Imprescindible

No trates de vivir contra la vida.
No destruyas lo que el movimiento te ofrece para estar tranquilo.

Roberto Bolaño

Para que me entiendas, querido

“What I want to say, querido, is
hunger is not romantic to the hungry.
What I want to say is
fear is not thrilling if you’re the one afraid.
What I want to say is
poverty’s not quaint when it’s your house you can’t escape from.
Decay’s not beautiful to the decayed.”

- from Still Life with Potatoes, Pearls, Raw Meat, Rhinestones, Lard, and Horse Hooves by Sandra Cisneros

The Thing in Itself

"Today at work I was wiping shit down and I was just wistful as fuck. And I was like, damn, I really want to tell Devika about how fucking WISTFUL I am wiping off these goddamn counters. You know?" —Gwenmarie White

Photo: Ryan Primm. Art Direction: Gwenmarie White

With Mint Tea On a Sunday Night; Weightless

What She Knew

People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?

—Lydia Davis

Helium

I don't know how to explain what it is to walk around
silent, deserted Delhi streets after midnight
with four girls and four balloons.

Wantonness and Idolatry

“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he's never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don't wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier-mâché puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don't lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”

* I found this on Facebook around the time of this post. It seems this is not a Frida quote. But the combination of this photo and these words had a huge impact on me, so here they are as a I first encountered them: together.

Grace

Explain to me how we evolve past this:

With All This Fever in My Mind

Rollin' Mama Blues

What is it about America that obscures all other places
almost to the point of erasure? And how is it that it can
reach you anywhere you are? Irritating, but once you've
found roots in America, all your noble aspirations toward
globalness* become severely compromised.

Yet there is life outside America, folks. It doesn't quite
sound like Kate McTell, but it's there, and it's beautiful
and it's got its own kind of blues.

I, for one, am quite pleased at the prospect of life in
a reachable elsewhere.

Every elsewhere is here to somebody.


*If you are unable to comprehend in the author's tone a fair amount
of sarcasm and self-mockery, kindly step away from this blog.
I fear it will do you no favours.

Yearning

There are things that make you want to want. This is foremost among them.



Brought to you by this amazing girl I know who did this amazing thing for me.

Partners in Youth

"Oh baby baby. Stay young with me forever. We'll pass the time
sitting on porches, sipping whiskey lemonades and listening to
long-dead singers croon about broken hearts and lost loves. I'll
fix up your bike and you'll cook the banana pancakes on saturday
mornings. You'll grade papers and I'll make sure there's always a
cold one waiting in the fridge. We'll shop together at the farmer's
market and feel damn smug sipping stumptown in mugs you once
made and we always bring from home. But until then..."


A love letter, a promise, a fantasy from friend, fellow, alma gemela Robyn.

Marginal Reassurances

Tweets in Arabic are right-aligned.
Bombay Dost, a gay men's magazine, is 20 years old.
The two rupee coin has a picture of a hand signing "2" on one side.
Indian paper money is sized and texture-marked for recognition by the blind.
I am going to have a new name soon, and it won't need words to speak it, just hands.
His inept smoking might just save that teenager in the passenger seat.
Wild flowers now bloom where the rosebush died.
Street dogs are fat and thick-coated.

Important and Necessary

Eileen Myles, like some other women I know who grew up not understanding why everyone treated them like girls, has that thing men have where they pop out of the womb already feeling important and necessary.

...it’s okay to feel this way, content to be living and writing in that spot between sex and sadness. Being a writer. Being full of it. Being female.

(from this)

Like This

When someone mentions the gracefulness

of the nightsky, climb up on the roof

and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,

or what "God’s fragrance" means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image

about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,

slowly loosen knot by knot the strings

of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,

don’t try to explain the miracle.

Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

(Rumi)

Things I have done in the last five days:

Set up a bank account.
Hallucinated sufi music.
Tried on 347 sari blouses.
Eaten 4 types of paranthas.
Listened to an Israeli qawwal.
Spent 2+ hours at Jama Masjid.
Gone to a bar in a kurta-pajama.
Created an online photo portfolio.
Acquired a potential freelancing gig.
Been recognized because of my glasses.
Run into an old friend in a public place.
Pulled my first post-collegiate all-nighter.
Shared an autoriksha with 2 lovely strangers.
Eaten 10 bowls of homemade fruit chaat (approx.)
Been cellphone photographed by 3 teenagers (approx.)
Had an hour-long conversation about Indian aesthetics.
Seen the precise spot where my Mum first asked my Dad out.
Hesitantly/unwittingly photographed a famous photojournalist.
Discovered the existence of an Instituto Cervantes Center in Delhi.
Watched Egyptian whirling dervishes against a lit-up Purana Quila.
Listened to carnival-tango-flapper-jazz by a Mexican Argentinian band.
Had 6 day-dreams about a green-sari, white-rose-in-hair, literary romance.
Met the wonderful, seedha young man who's marrying one of my best friends.

Heave

(Lester Freamon gets it.)

Lit Wit

"Listen: I don't have anything against autobiographies, 

so long as the people writing them have penises that are at least a foot long when erect."

- Roberto Bolaño

For (and from) Robyn

"She had to make a supernatural effort not to die"

Dying can seem satisfactory as a response.
But let's all try to live instead.

Marquez, Bolaño and Bakshi: A Summer Conversation Series