My librarian and I are taking a break from our daily book posts for Our Library of the Future: A Ghost’s Story. We’ll be back on January 2nd, 2022 and from then on we will continue selecting books from the library I haunt in preparation for the exhibition Whisper into a Hole at Hopkins Hall Gallery in April 4-8th, 2022 (curated with Indigo Gonzales, Anna Freeman and Rebecca Copper). At the same time, we will also focus our attention on one, burning question (although burning should probably be kept clear of all libraries, living and dead):
Will Minus Plato continue to live past its 10 year anniversary in May 2022? And if so, how?
For now thank you for reading and here is something to take with you into the new year: a passage from Chantal Maillard’s Killing Plato (with original subtitles) (translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert, New Directions Poetry Pamphlet #25, 2019), p. 36.
I am not innocent. Are you?
Reality is here on display.
What is real is happening out
in the open. Infinite. Incomparable.
But the longing to repeat ourselves
lays down certain truthes.
Every truth repeats the ineffable;
every idea denies the thing-that-occurs.
But we construct each one out of
the fear of having to face the enormous plot
of all that is happening at any moment:
everything that happens will overflow
and none of us are guaranteed shelter.
When you think about it, maybe Plato is
not responsible for this history:
out of fear or laziness, we happily delegate
the very things that matter most to us.
I am going to retrace my steps. It was just around the corner.