This Week's Laughter #22
An archive of chucklebuffoonery
There are a lot of fantastic, spiritual, and mythological tropes of one whose feet can step on the wind β lightness and swiftness married under the umbrella of stoicism, passion, or levelheadedness. This past weekend I played soccer for the first time in about five years wearing actual soccer cleats (previously Iβd been wearing American Football cleats) and I felt lissom. I do not care much about the American myth of fitness excellence, nor do I care much about gladiatorial displays of strength and brutalesque muscle lineatures, but when each day I wake up being able to hear some dozen creakings and crackings in my joints and bones during the first fifty or so steps, feeling truly nimble and lithe reverts the ailments of stern responsibility and lifeβs constraints. Affection-become-blood.
This past time has been marked for me by this sanguine transformation as though empyrean movement yields jeweled fruits. Or: I can feel it in my blood how viscerally moving lightly affects my perception of happiness.
Seattle has fully sunken into its Winter pasttime of minimal sunlight β last week we had our first sunny day in maybe three weeks β I feel as though I discuss Seattle weather often β environmental stages are such that people perceive the gray first and then take action (recession) on the gray second. Now we are in this period of inwardness where fewer and fewer come out, fewer and fewer make plans. It feels a bit like that 2021-2022 era of socializing where one might plan several months in advance for a masked trip to a park with a loved one where you both bring a thermos of coffee. Perhaps thatβs why covid-era socializing never felt particularly damning to me β Seattle had already been practicing some of those habits seasonally. I appreciate this period more so for the authenticity that it pulls from folks around here β every effort outside of oneself feels like such a pull that we tend to be more real, more doting and grateful to each other for these efforts. For instance, in a cafe where otherwise popularity and business keeps individuals from too much lollygagging (god I love this word even if it makes me feel like a boomer), recently I watched the staff have enough spare energy and time to play a game of catch with bags of coffee beans over the counter β there were simply so few people around that they had nothing to do. Lovely. Charming. Gray. Warmth is a type of laughter.
The phrase, βI have The Know,β said in seriousness.
Boldly confessing to my dream of making Seattle a poetry scene β not to say manufacture, but to say speak of, to make public knowledge. Wishing to find international recognition of this scene. To be able to go elsewhere and have others scraping in English or adoringly in their native languages throwing the jaunt of language at me of, βThe Seattle Poetry scene seems so wonderful,β βI canβt wait to visit.β I spoke of this in a bookstore recently and a man came up insisting that it would be lovely to make Seattle known for something artistic instead of simply Starbucks, Boeing, and Amazon. The ambition is there though and that drives forward my conquering laugh β woe to ye soulless corporate tech workers, I shall attempt to deliver unto thine doorsteps something of a celebration, that you may hear and watch and think long and deep about things you may not understand, and that this can infect your mind and soulβs work for the next few days until the next instance of engagement comes around, such that you have something to occupy you instead of orders toward emails and conference rooms. The secret, of course, being that as serious and endearing I am to this effort, is that I do not wish to put down in the case of uplifting. I donβt think art can survive holding hands with snobbishness anymore. This isnβt to be anti-intellectual, but rather that anti-intellectualism has already inflicted on us a society of people who do not gain the tools for critical thought in an everyday-lifeβs progression. The trick with thought is not to tell someone of how rewarding a good complexity is, but rather to convince them that the discomfort of the unknown is actually a friend. Laughing a conquerorβs laugh; to conquer this undivine mundanity.
Bad Bunny. I mean, his new album is great. I am a sucker for his work. And for some reason it makes me laugh to no end that he released this album on the first possible weekend of a new year. Harken back some three-hundred words to my discussion of Seattle grayness and juxtapose this with the promise of sunlight and dancing that Bad Bunnyβs sound invokes. It is criminally ironic to be shaking ass to this when existing in a 40-degree grayscape. Of course Iβm not so PNW-centric as to think he released it for us and of course I understand that there is much of the world that is still well-lit, warm, and inviting. Still. Every time I start my step to the music, I giggle a little at how ridiculous it feels to have this rush for life in the middle of everyoneβs slowdown.
And on the music train-of-thought, I am a sucker for video games that have open-worlds where you collect resources and can construct structures, buildings, bases, cities, etc. Valheim has been my go-to for this genre for some time but recently a friend has delighted in me the game Enshrouded, which is effectively the same as Valheim just with slightly less varied dungeon/monsters/bosses and slightly more intricate building engines. One evening while I mined my ores and chopped my woods in this game, I found myself auditorily lost. I was listening to a fairly ambient jazz playlist when upon my ears came the artist Coulouβs Cafe β someone who published some three albums of trumpet meditations in 2024 totaling around 12 hours of listening β where each song is a fairly simple backing string accompaniment followed by simply meditating with the trumpet. Before I knew it, I was almost eighty minutes into a two-hundred minutes-long album (and far beyond the time Iβd meant to go to sleep). Heather was still awake and I shared the transcendental experience of it, and since Iβve been trying to plug away the serendipitous joy of really sitting with these meditations to anyone who yearns for some calm. Oh itβs a laughter that pervades as warm brick for your soul to stand on.
Three poems of mine are being published over the next few months. I have such gratitude for this and hope to continue writing things that matter and resonate. But mostly I long to write weird things. Defiant things. Things without purpose but illuminate. Publication success, even as minor or as major as you wish to call this, is something I yearn for very, very much. I donβt think this should come as a surprise for writers, though I do know there are many oppositional views on publication. Mostly, I wish to spend my life writing, and every success along the way makes it feel slightly more possible. This is a laughter for me. I will publish some notes on the poems as they come out β the writing process, inspiration, etc. I hope you find this interesting; Iβve never really been in a position to talk about the act of generation before.
Finally, in Capital Hill, there is a person who for months (maybe even a year) has been printing flyers and stapling them to poles around the neighborhoods with pseudo squirrel facts. Waging a fantastic war against squirrels. Claiming one is doing research on squirrels late at night and is looking for assistants. Most recently I saw a sign that simply said, βFOR THOSE WHO EMAIL ME TELLING ME TO STOP AND TELLING ME THAT IT IS NOT FUNNY ANYMORE I MUST REMIND YOU I AM UNEMPLOYED AND HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD TO CONTINUE.β So.
Thank you for reading, always.
Here are some things Iβve enjoyed lately: