flames, flames, flames!
June 16, 2021
Welcome to Reality Farm.
Lost? Confused? Excellent, me too. Here’s a map.
SUGAR CUBES 📷
Zhiyong Jing — Partner (2021)
Zhiyong Jing — Eyewitness (2020)
Zhiyong Jing — Long way down (2020)
WEATHER REPORT 🖼
Alright, alright, a quick break from the gardening discourse. I’m visiting my brother in Nashville, Tennessee, and left my garden in the capable hands of my roommate, Orc. Orc — if you’re reading this — water my poor cucumbers.
Happily, I’m still writing and looking for jobs, so I have plenty of time to explore Nashville. Here’s what I’ve learned thus far:
Dear God, it is hotter than the surface of the sun.
The trees look like they want to kill me. Imagine the scary trees from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, everywhere:
What I mean is that the general vegetation is so violently overgrown and luridly green that it’s as if the trees are animated by the ghost of an insane Confederate general, very different in vibes than your average photosynthesis-enjoying Douglas fir in the north. Tomato bushes can sometimes also achieve this haunted effect: you have to fight them as much as harvest them.
In my high school U.S. history class I sat next to a poster of Civil War generals and there was this one Confederate general whose blank, lifeless stare scared the shit out of me. His name was John Bell Hood. He suffered his worst defeat of the war at the Battle of Nashville and he lives in the trees.
The first thing my brother and I did in Nashville was swing by a grocery store to buy some seedlings and establish a Reality Farm outpost in the South consisting of: one eggplant (Philip), two peppers (Pepe and Pica), and a tomato (Bob). I hope all four plants grow with reckless abandon and I speed them on their way.
You’ve heard of COVID-19 but have you heard of the epidemic of white farmhouses with black trim and paned windows because they are taking over Nashville at an alarming pace.
Nashville’s nickname is Music City. I thought, sure, they play live music at bars, big whoop, you’ve heard one bluegrass band you’ve heard ‘em all. But last night we went to a brewery and as we sat out on the front patio, I watched someone with a guitar case walk in the front door, and I thought, sweet, it’s happening, bring on the banjo. Then I saw another person with a guitar case walk in a minute later and I thought, . . . guitar duel? Then another person with a guitar case followed, and another, and another, and another, and let me tell you I was trying to imagine the kind of guitar orchestra they were assembling in there and I thought, man, this Music City shit is no joke, I’ve never seen anything like this, but in the end it was just open mic night, which was delightful in itself, if less interesting than a 20-person guitar band.
Speaking of heat and trees and infernal things, let us now turn our attention to fire season in the western United States. Last year was the worst fire season on record in California. By all indications, the current drought in the southwest is orders of magnitude worse than it was at this point last year and California will soon spontaneously combust.
I cannot state strongly enough my opposition to forest fires. I grew up in the Midwest where the only natural disasters were tornadoes and Chicago — you can dodge those easily enough, but you cannot dodge a fire the size of Swaziland. Last summer, I planned a trip north of San Francisco but Route 1 was on fire, literally aflame, which seemed to me self-evidently bad despite the serene, if perplexed, disposition of my family and friends in the Bay Area. I cancelled the trip.
Now, as I apply and interview for jobs throughout the United States, I weigh the pros and cons of certain regions, and I hate to admit that the fires in California do cross my mind — it feels odd, to choose to live in a place where out-of-control blazes appear with the consistency of lilies and lavender and perennials in the gardens of other states, states where the hills do not burn.
POSTCARDS FROM OUTER SPACE 🎴
I forgot to scan a postcard before I left for Nashville, so no postcard this week. Instead, enjoy this photo from The Public Domain Review:
WALKING THE FENCELINE 🕸
The U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials is happening this week in Omaha, Nebraska. Growing up, I swam competitively through high school and college, and while the sport gave me many friends, it is, on the whole, a grueling and tedious activity. Nobody particularly likes going to loud, humid swim meets. Nobody particularly wants to watch the long, boring mile. Nobody particularly understands the necessity of grown men wearing speedos or shaving their legs or how precisely those swimmers manage to keep water from going up their noses while doing a flip turn.
But every four years, that magically changes. For the span of a month, swimming is finally interesting and fun to watch. All the swimmers come out of our hidey holes and point to our large upside-down-triangle-shaped-friends on the TV and provide commentary on a sporting event for the first and only time in their lives and for those few glorious weeks, I almost miss it. I almost miss it.
In 2012, I went to watch my brother swim at Olympic Trials. He didn’t make the team, but something better happened: during the 400 IM finals, as Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps dueled, the flames at the side of the pool accidentally went off and ever since it has been abundantly clear to me that flames should feature in all races.
UFOs IN THE COW FIELD 🛸
CNN reports that a nuclear power plant in southeast China is leaking radioactive gas. A French company that helps operate the plant raised the alarm last week, telling the United States that one of the reactors is experiencing a buildup of fission gasses potentially caused by a "degradation of the housing of the fuel rods." The French company also accused the Chinese operator of raising the tolerance thresholds for leaking radioactivity to avoid having to shut down the plant.
There are supposedly established procedures for dealing with this exact kind of gas buildup, but after the past year and a half my general principle is that anything leaking out of China should be a major cause for concern.
The US government has spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at a Chinese nuclear power plant, after a French company that part owns and helps operate it warned of an "imminent radiological threat," according to US officials and documents reviewed by CNN.
. . .
While US officials have deemed the situation does not currently pose a severe safety threat to workers at the plant or Chinese public . . . concern was significant enough that the National Security Council held multiple meetings last week as they monitored the situation, including two at the deputy level and another gathering at the assistant secretary level on Friday, which was led by NSC Senior Director for China Laura Rosenberger and Senior Director for Arms Control Mallory Stewart, according to US officials.
China, drawing upon deep reserves of international credibility, responds:
"There is no abnormality in the radiation environment around the nuclear power plant. Its safety is guaranteed," foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a news briefing in Beijing.
As you can see from the map above, the Taishan nuclear plant is just west of Hong Kong and several other major cities so any kind of radiological mishap would be a fucking disaster. I’ll keep an eye on the situation, but I do hope it gets solved quickly because nuclear accidents anywhere damage the viability of nuclear power everywhere.
THE BOOK BARN 📖
Fable by Janos Pilinszky
Detail from the KZ-Oratorio, Dark Heaven
From the Hungarian (trans. Ted Hughes)
Once upon a time
there was a lonely wolf
lonelier than the angels.
.
He happened to come to a village.
He fell in love with the first house he saw.
.
Already he loved its walls
the caresses of its bricklayers.
But the windows stopped him.
.
In the room sat people.
Apart from God nobody ever
found them so beautiful
as this child-like beast.
.
So at night he went into the house.
He stopped in the middle of the room
and never moved from there any more.
.
He stood all through the night, with wide eyes
and on into the morning when he was beaten to death.
THE RIGHT’S WING 🦇
Houellebecq in UnHerd on the narcissistic fall of France:
The United States of America seems, on the other hand, to have erected optimism into a principle of existence. One can doubt the soundness of this attitude. When Joe Biden claims that “America is once again ready to lead the world” (here again, I am too lazy to find the exact quotation; Biden is even more tedious than Voltaire), I immediately interpret this as:
America will not be long in embarking on a new war;
As always, she will wind up conducting herself like a piece of shit;
She will waste a lot of money, while reinforcing up the near-universal loathing of which she is the target; this will allow China to strengthen its position.
lol brutal