Unwinnable

The word “I” was never meant to be capitalized. There’s no grammatical reason for it and if culture teaches us anything, it’s to not be so damn self-absorbed. But there it is: the word “I,” standing arrogantly above all of the English language’s other personal pronouns. Its now-compulsory capitalization stems from corruption of the written word. At first it was only capitalized when it appeared as the first word of a sentence, just like any other word, but due to the frequency with which it was used to start sentences, we became used to seeing it always capitalized – so much so that it became habit to always capitalize the word, even when it was placed in the middle of sentences. It remained capitalized out of convention, and there it remains to this day, making us feel a little ever-so-slightly conceited each time it escapes our lips. (more…)

We landed here not many years ago
And it was not a pretty song that we composed.

It’s fucking freezing, but I have the window rolled down anyway and I’m looking at the water through little puffs of my own breath, lit up by the moon, lit up by the numbers on my dashboard. This car’s traveled 40,000 kilometers and now we’ve ended up here, the engine stilled at a lookout point in the darkness. I’m looking out over my dashboard, peering through trees bone-dry, stripped bare by winter. I’m looking at Maroondah Reservoir and I’m listening to “Maroondah Reservoir,” the second track on Augie March’s quietly destructive album Sunset Studies, and I’m wondering if I haven’t just become the big fucking sentimental joke I envisioned myself becoming 10 years ago. (more…)