Body a Hyphen

12 things I found in June.

Slopes and fumeroles of Wy’East (Mount Hood). Photo by Robert Macfarlane.

Every last Wednesday of the month, I’ve been sharing a dozen of the best things I found out there. Writing. Music. Podcasts. Films. Gear. Recipes. The intent is to maintain a punchy counter to the algorithms and amplify the beautiful work of others on my own terms. Here’s a link to previous lists so far.

1. ANIMAL. I met the author Amy Irvine two years ago when she was the Kittredge Visiting writer at the University of Montana, and instantly hit it off. We’ve since shared several meals and long chats about our respective manuscripts, and I consider her both a mentor and friend. Irvine was one of the first to blurb The Way Around, while offering some really important feedback late in the game. That’s why I can’t be more excited to read her forthcoming book, Almost Animal, to be published November 10, by Spiegel & Grau. Pre-order yours. (You’re welcome.)

2. THELONIOUS. I keep on staring at the biography of the jazz pianist titan Thelonious Monk on my shelf, but haven’t yet committed to it. I have, though, been listening to Brilliant Corners (1957) a lot recently. It’s considered by many to be his best, but not without trouble. Apparently its production was a nightmare, with Thelonious being difficult to work with, and the saxophonist nearly experiencing a mental breakdown in the process of recording.

3. BADLANDS. Kevin Morby’s latest, Little Wide Open, is a gem of a record. Morby is someone I’ve enjoyed for years but somehow lost track of. (Apparently he’s also an avid runner.) Anyway, the first track on this new album, “Badlands,” is an absolute banger.
   

4. KLARA. When I worked at Orion Magazine (2017-2022), I had been texting with the editor-in-chief at the time, Sumanth Prabhaker, about books, and asked where I should start with reading Kazuo Ishiguro. He didn’t reply for some time, unlike him. But then, 20 minutes later, I got a knock on my door. Sumanth had driven to my house with several copies of Ishiguro and said: “We need to talk.” He was a Ishiguro completist and proceeded to describe every novel in detail. I’m now several deep, and really enjoyed his latest, Klara and the Sun (2021), which I just learned has been adapted into a film (to arrive in October), and the trailer was just released. Also, it looks like Ishiguro’s working on a “spy caper” of a novel set on a train, and to be published next year. Verified genius.

5. ORION. I just returned from a week as teaching faculty at the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop at the Omega Institute, two hours north of New York City. I’m biased, as I’ve had a longstanding relationship with this magazine for 15 years, but I can say that this was such a powerful and important in-person offering for the world, a congregation of around 70 brilliant participants, several teachers, and supportive staff. Morning workshops, afternoon craft panels, and evening readings, all set in a wonderfully forested campus. Every faculty member floored me with their words, their books and readings and genius. Find their books and read them all: Isle McElroy, Roger Reeves, Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Erica Berry, Michael Kleber-Diggs, and Maria Pinto.) Put the workshop on your radar for next year.

   
   

6. HYPERLIGHT. On previous desert rambles, friend and multidisciplinary artist Forest Woodward would pull out from his Hyperlight pack a series of packing pods, and I thought them a fine idea for organizing gear. I’ve used versions of these before while traveling or backpacking and thought them sort of unnecessary, but Hyperlight’s packing pods are just so wonderful, essentially weightless, made with 100% waterproof Dyneema. They bring me disproportionate amounts of joy (I have both a 9L and 12L), and I also use them for front-country traveling. I also own the roll-top food bag, which also performs precisely how you need it.

7. SILKO. At the beginning of this month, I joined the great Robert Macfarlane for some mountain time around Mount Hood, during his recent visit to the U.S. (We shared an event with Milkweed exactly one year ago, to celebrate his book, Is a River Alive? and the incoming publication of my own.) We ran, climbed, wandered through old growth, ate Salsa Verde Doritos, talked shop: a million books, writing projects, etc. It was a dream of mine to spend time with such a big influence on my work. One reference thrown around that stuck to my ribs was the poem, “Long Time Ago,” by Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), one of the great Indigenous voices of our time. I’d never read this poem, only Ceremony and The Delicacy of Strength and Lace, and it flattened me. Must-read. (I also was forwarded a PDF of her critique of Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island, “An Old-Fashioned Indian Attack in Two Parts,” which was . . . sobering.)

8. MACH. The other day, I realized I hadn’t purchased a new road running shoe in over a year, as I’d been blessed with all sorts of review pairs showing up on my doorstep, thanks to my previous job as senior editor at Trail Runner/Outside Run. I’d only run in HOKA road shoes for my Boston marathon experience, but wanted their lightest, non-carbon-plated option to try, and that’s the new Mach 7. My feet have been loving this daily trainer: 8 ounces, nothing overbuilt, smooth and snappy with moderate bounce. I wouldn’t race in these, but they’re the weekday workhorse that’ll see several hundred miles. The trail version for Hoka would be the Zinal, which might be my favorite in the HOKA lineup, though minimal.

9. AWARD. I found out earlier this month that The Way Around won the Reading the West Book Award! I can’t be more humbled, excited, and proud. Hundreds of books were in the running, and the shortlist was filled with authors I adore and have read for years, so, for anyone who voted, supported, shared the book, thank you. This will help so many other readers find the book, and continue to support me in making future work. I’ve also been officially selected as the Humanities Montana/Library of Congress’ Great Books from Great Places selection, and One Book Montana, which means this fall I’ll be traveling around the state to libraries and representing literary culture for the region. This will be corresponding with my paperback launch in October, and several tour stops in Montana, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and California. More soon, but thank you, endlessly.
   

   

   NYC catching the light.

10. WHITNEY. New York City is one of my favorite cities on Earth, full stop. Though admittedly not much of a city person, I do love getting good concentrated macro-doses of these large cultural hubs when I can. So much stimulation, so much input, so many expressions zinging left and right. My recent travels to Italy included a few 10-15-mile days walking Rome and absorbing all of it unfolding, and after teaching for Orion upstate, I gave myself one night alone in NYC to eat unbelievable food, run 10 miles on the Hudson, and spend time at the Whitney Museum. The Biennial is open now, with highlights that included a textiled rendering of a coastal redwood tree by artist and endurance runner Malcolm Peacock, who combines running with braiding and acts of Black communion. Also, a Basquiat took my breath away, a pencil sketch by Lee Bontecou, and “She Must Be a Matriarch” by Navajo artist Anna Tsouhlarakis, whose installation was a reclaimed twist on the colonizer image of the Native American man slumped over on a horse.

11. THOREAU. I don’t get overly excited about Ken Burns, like most, but was thrilled when someone recommended I watch his latest on the life and work of Henry David Thoreau, available on PBS. It’s been a way to transition softly into the evening, firing up an episode. With guest appearances by Solnit (who wrote about the laundry controversy for Orion), Michael Pollan (who I’m listening to right now, his latest, A World Appears), and other literary scholars, it’s quite stunning, the production, with all sorts of small nuggets I’d either forgotten about or didn’t know.
    

12. SELAH. Here’s my 142nd book on the Mandorla 200, Selah by the great Nigerian-born writer and philosopher Bayo Akomolafe. This book is a mind-bending collection of short micro-essays that can be summoned at any time, for the language, for the entrancing reminders of our porosity, our rejection of anything certain or final. To really get a sense of Bayo’s mind, I’d suggest his Between the Covers interview with David Naimon. OK, here are my 200 words…
    

    

    
    Certainty is a known toxin, convenience a charade of ever having arrived, ever having fashioned an answer that’s final, sturdy, shelf-stable. Our location might indeed be far stranger and more interesting than that, more spilling-in-from-the-periphery than we could ever imagine. Divest from arrivals and insist on intertidal becomings, bodies less object and more subject, fugitive expressions all comings and goings and bleeding into themselves, contaminate-inoculate-pierce-and-be-pierced from every angle. Transformation is plural, an inside job, to be approached from a posture of honorable complicity, not rejection from without but from within this imperfect world, within the predatory, metabolic mess and joy of it all. These times call for a politics of multispecies, multidimensional, multitemporal collision, flows of bewilderment and unsure footing but welcome and buoyant. This is corporeal poetry: earth a verb, bodies as verbs, hypertrophy and decay at once, shadow-boxing definitions of self that defy simple boxes. Nothing is ever finished, so let creativity and faith invite us into new greyscaled loyalties, new blurring ecologies, new surrender. Beware of rejecting filth as non-self, the profane, the crude, the monster. We are also monsters. But we’re love, too, and transformation is love and love is a hyphen and never a period. Live as hyphen.