“Inertia is a strange property of matter. When you leave, for example, the air retains the warmth of your body for a while, the same way the sand keeps the tepid sadness of the sun overnight. When you leave, to continue along the same line, my hands persist in the caress, despite there no longer being skin to caress, only the carcass of memory decomposing in the stairwell. When you leave, you leave behind an invisible you adhering to the smallest things: it might be a hair on the pillow, a look that has gotten entangled with the shoulder straps of desire, a trace of saliva in the corners of the couch, a molecule of tenderness on the shower drain. It is not difficult to find you: love makes me a magnifying glass.”
— Gemma Gorga, poem “39,” Book of Minutes, transl. Sharon Dolin (Oberlin College Press, 2019
one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this
