Nobody Leaves (Ryszard Kapucinski)

I would never encourage piracy so I would never tell you that the book's on b-ok.

Plover was over a few weeks ago and read some of these stories, really beautiful. And they touch on a period in Polish agricultural history very much subject to Seeing Like A State dynamics—Plover'll know more about this than me, and maybe she can elaborate, but Soviet high-modernist tendencies totally ruined once-fertile Polish soil, and the country still hasn't dug itself out of the mess.

CY cited RK in his GM Substack today:

As Milosz’s fellow Pole, Ryszard Kapuscinski, wrote, in one of his usual fake quotes (all of which sound like Kapuscinski himself, which somehow is not bad but just a mood):

The dolphin, desiring to sleep, floats atop the water; having fallen asleep, he sinks slowly to the floor of the sea; awakened by striking the bottom, he rises again to the surface. Having thus risen, he falls asleep again, descends once more to the bottom, and revives himself anew in the same fashion. He thus enjoys his rest in motion.

Here, I think the idea (or what CY sees in the quote) is the way that we bounce between ideological dreams and the cold, vacuum reality of space. Our ideologies fail us, and, bruised, we bounce towards reality, only to realize how unhospitable it is, and retreat again into dreaming.

I really like this idea of fake quotes. CCRU apparently did it as well, they have entire websites for fake universities and academics, like Linda Trent of the (Lovecraft-inspired) Miskatonic Virtual University.

@plover Guessing you've read Czeslaw's Captive Mind? I've only come across scattered excerpts but always wondering if I should peruse it proper.

Here, I think the idea (or what CY sees in the quote) is the way that we bounce between ideological dreams and the cold, vacuum reality of space. Our ideologies fail us, and, bruised, we bounce towards reality, only to realize how unhospitable it is, and retreat again into dreaming.

It sorta connects to the CCRU idea of hyperstition, really—or what I think of by "suspended reason." Every time you crash out, you realize how important it is to stay airborne, realize that the force which keeps you in flight is narrative's gasoline + perpetual motion.