Kaveh Akbar

am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter

It’s serious business, this living.

As long as the earth continues

its stony breathing, I will breathe.

Sometimes, life was just what happened. What accumulated.

Some solace in history, perhaps, knowing other civilizations had also destroyed themselves. In fact, the record seemed to suggest such destruction was inevitable, the endpoint of every people.

Every tiny decision becomes mired with importance, and we’re immobilized.”

“Nobody thinks of now as the future past.”

we fly through our days. We move from one decision to the next, only we’re not even aware they’re decisions. We treat our minds like crowns, these magnificent crowns on our magnificent autonomies. But our minds aren’t crowns. They’re clocks. It’s why we invest everything in our stories. Stories are the excrement of time. Someone said that.”

“Adélia Prado,

because there’s no reason for anyone powerful enough to do anything about it to do anything about it.”

“How do we move through all this beauty without destroying it?”

He’d felt tempted to ask for his coffee with just a splash of misanthropy, please. Or at least sullen ambivalence.