Practices – serie

In Fly-Fishing, Christopher Schaberg ponders his lifetime pursuit of the widely mythologized art of fly-fishing. From the Michigan lakeshore where he learned to fish to casting flies in a New Orleans bayou, Schaberg sketches landscapes and fish habitats and shows how fly-fishing allows him to think about coexisting with other species. It offers Schaberg a much-needed source of humility, social isolation, connection with nature, and a reminder of environmental degradation. Rather than centering fishing on trophies, conquest, and travel, he advocates for a “small-fishing” that values catching the diminutive fish near one’s home. Introspective and personal, Fly-Fishing demonstrates how Schaberg’s obsession indelibly shapes how he understands and lives in the wider world.

What is an art of life for what feels like the end of a world? In Raving McKenzie Wark takes readers into the undisclosed locations of New York’s thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave’s sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.

In Juggling, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair explores the four-thousand-year history and practice of juggling as seen through his life as a juggler. Sinclair-who learned to juggle as a child and paid his way through college by busking-shares his experiences of taking up juggling after an episode of suicidal ideation, his time juggling on the streets, and ultimately finding comfort in juggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, this is a book about loss and recovery. From his own juggling story to clowns braving military checkpoints in Bosnia and Rwanda to perform in refugee camps to contemporary avant-garde performances, Sinclair shows how the universal language of juggling provides joy as well as a respite from difficulties during hard times.

In Running, former NCAA Division I track athlete Lindsey A. Freeman presents the feminist and queer handbook of running that she always wanted but could never find. For Freeman, running is full of joy, desire, and indulgence in the pleasure and weirdness of having a body. It allows for a space of freedom-to move and be moved. Through tender storytelling of a lifetime wearing running shoes, Freeman considers injury and recovery, what it means to run as a visibly queer person, and how the release found in running comes from a desire to touch something that cannot be accessed when still. Running invites us to run through life, legging it out the best we can with heart and style.

In Fly-Fishing, Christopher Schaberg ponders his lifetime pursuit of the widely mythologized art of fly-fishing. From the Michigan lakeshore where he learned to fish to casting flies in a New Orleans bayou, Schaberg sketches landscapes and fish habitats and shows how fly-fishing allows him to think about coexisting with other species. It offers Schaberg a much-needed source of humility, social isolation, connection with nature, and a reminder of environmental degradation. Rather than centering fishing on trophies, conquest, and travel, he advocates for a “small-fishing” that values catching the diminutive fish near one’s home. Introspective and personal, Fly-Fishing demonstrates how Schaberg’s obsession indelibly shapes how he understands and lives in the wider world.

What is an art of life for what feels like the end of a world? In Raving McKenzie Wark takes readers into the undisclosed locations of New York’s thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave’s sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.

In Juggling, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair explores the four-thousand-year history and practice of juggling as seen through his life as a juggler. Sinclair-who learned to juggle as a child and paid his way through college by busking-shares his experiences of taking up juggling after an episode of suicidal ideation, his time juggling on the streets, and ultimately finding comfort in juggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, this is a book about loss and recovery. From his own juggling story to clowns braving military checkpoints in Bosnia and Rwanda to perform in refugee camps to contemporary avant-garde performances, Sinclair shows how the universal language of juggling provides joy as well as a respite from difficulties during hard times.

In Running, former NCAA Division I track athlete Lindsey A. Freeman presents the feminist and queer handbook of running that she always wanted but could never find. For Freeman, running is full of joy, desire, and indulgence in the pleasure and weirdness of having a body. It allows for a space of freedom-to move and be moved. Through tender storytelling of a lifetime wearing running shoes, Freeman considers injury and recovery, what it means to run as a visibly queer person, and how the release found in running comes from a desire to touch something that cannot be accessed when still. Running invites us to run through life, legging it out the best we can with heart and style.

For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events---four per month---each set in a totally different imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI president to the first dog on Mars to the funeral of Earth’s last glacier, these stories are speculative SF at its most (and least) serious. Collected as a series for the first time, Tomorrowing will amuse, alarm, intrigue, entertain, and like all good science fiction, make readers think. Bisson’s short stories have won every major award in science fiction, including the Hugo and the Nebula, but never, ever anything for this series.

In Riding, Pardis Mahdavi meditates on the lessons learned over a lifetime of horseback riding and the falling, failing, and joy it brings. At once a history of Caspian horses, an exploration of Mahdavi’s Iranian-American identity and family history, and a consideration of the capacity for self-reflection and self-compassion through human-animal relationships, Riding offers a roadmap for learning to live in harmony with the self and the environment around us. Mahdavi shows how her relationship with horses gives her insights into intergenerational strength and tools for healing intergenerational trauma. Riding from the mountains of Iran to the beaches of California, Mahdavi shares her love affair with horses, rediscovers a homeland she longs for, and ultimately finds her strength.

Deborah Kapchan’s Taking Leave is a lyrical memoir that encompasses journeys both inner and outer, physical and spiritual. Taking readers from New York, Paris, and Casablanca to Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi while exploring her Christian childhood, Jewish lineage, and the release she found in Islam, Kapchan examines the extent to which we can take leave of who we are to live between categories. She meditates on absence, presence, and the sublime to weave an existential tale that honors the three traditions that made her, ultimately desiring to take leave of them all. Taking Leave is an urgent plea for anti-tribalism and a timely treatise for compassionate coexistence in the spaces in-between.

Doing Nothing is a book about doing nothing in a system where there is always something pressing that ought to be done. Not the productive unstructured time of self-help books, but the aimless and ineffective doing nothing of procrastination, resignation, and melancholia. James Currie pursues these themes across a wide terrain of experiences, materials, and examples from the personal, local, and anecdotal, through to the existential, cosmological, and apocalyptic—reflecting, among other things, on the COVID pandemic, the lives of teenagers, Lars Van Trier’s 2011 film Melancholia, work, play, and politics. Doing Nothing offers a lived-in embrace of queer states of being that stand against liveliness and the mournful feelings of entrapment and shame that exist alongside the unexpected opportunities such situations afford.

Astrology is the language in which all of existence speaks, says astrologer and tarotist Bess Matassa. In Star Charting, she leads readers on a vivid journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac as a poetic practice and transformative framework for befriending both the familiar and the strange. Matassa blends personal narrative, sensory immersion, inquiry exercises, and communal calls to action to reframe this ancient art as a modern manifesto for healing division by exalting the astounding complexity within this wild world. In contrast to more technical manuals on birth chart interpretation, this is magic-making as an exploratory treasure hunt, forging radical pathways to personal and collective evolution. Twelve modes of bearing witness to life and moving with its currents. Twelve styles of championing creative change. And twelve ways of never, ever losing heart.

For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events---four per month---each set in a totally different imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI president to the first dog on Mars to the funeral of Earth’s last glacier, these stories are speculative SF at its most (and least) serious. Collected as a series for the first time, Tomorrowing will amuse, alarm, intrigue, entertain, and like all good science fiction, make readers think. Bisson’s short stories have won every major award in science fiction, including the Hugo and the Nebula, but never, ever anything for this series.

In Riding, Pardis Mahdavi meditates on the lessons learned over a lifetime of horseback riding and the falling, failing, and joy it brings. At once a history of Caspian horses, an exploration of Mahdavi’s Iranian-American identity and family history, and a consideration of the capacity for self-reflection and self-compassion through human-animal relationships, Riding offers a roadmap for learning to live in harmony with the self and the environment around us. Mahdavi shows how her relationship with horses gives her insights into intergenerational strength and tools for healing intergenerational trauma. Riding from the mountains of Iran to the beaches of California, Mahdavi shares her love affair with horses, rediscovers a homeland she longs for, and ultimately finds her strength.

Deborah Kapchan’s Taking Leave is a lyrical memoir that encompasses journeys both inner and outer, physical and spiritual. Taking readers from New York, Paris, and Casablanca to Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi while exploring her Christian childhood, Jewish lineage, and the release she found in Islam, Kapchan examines the extent to which we can take leave of who we are to live between categories. She meditates on absence, presence, and the sublime to weave an existential tale that honors the three traditions that made her, ultimately desiring to take leave of them all. Taking Leave is an urgent plea for anti-tribalism and a timely treatise for compassionate coexistence in the spaces in-between.

Doing Nothing is a book about doing nothing in a system where there is always something pressing that ought to be done. Not the productive unstructured time of self-help books, but the aimless and ineffective doing nothing of procrastination, resignation, and melancholia. James Currie pursues these themes across a wide terrain of experiences, materials, and examples from the personal, local, and anecdotal, through to the existential, cosmological, and apocalyptic—reflecting, among other things, on the COVID pandemic, the lives of teenagers, Lars Van Trier’s 2011 film Melancholia, work, play, and politics. Doing Nothing offers a lived-in embrace of queer states of being that stand against liveliness and the mournful feelings of entrapment and shame that exist alongside the unexpected opportunities such situations afford.

Astrology is the language in which all of existence speaks, says astrologer and tarotist Bess Matassa. In Star Charting, she leads readers on a vivid journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac as a poetic practice and transformative framework for befriending both the familiar and the strange. Matassa blends personal narrative, sensory immersion, inquiry exercises, and communal calls to action to reframe this ancient art as a modern manifesto for healing division by exalting the astounding complexity within this wild world. In contrast to more technical manuals on birth chart interpretation, this is magic-making as an exploratory treasure hunt, forging radical pathways to personal and collective evolution. Twelve modes of bearing witness to life and moving with its currents. Twelve styles of championing creative change. And twelve ways of never, ever losing heart.

In 2022, poet Sally Ashton learned that one of her poems would be included in a time capsule to be sent to the Moon via Astrobotic’s 2024 Griffin/VIPER as part of the Lunar Codex project. For her, this event seemed like the high point in a life spent chasing the Moon, from a childhood inspired by the space race of the 1960s to an adulthood spent in contemplation and conversation with the sky. In Going to the Moon, Ashton marvels at the Moon’s powerful influence since the dawn of humanity—how we have, in our own ways, gone to the Moon, and what we have found. Contemplating lunar settlement in the light of history, culture, the rise of the space industry, and geopolitical conflict, Ashton shares her sense of wonder at the simple beauty of our unchanged Moon and reveals what is at stake in our contemporary attempts to colonize it.

As a poet, public-facing scholar of sports politics, and former professional soccer player, having represented the United States on the men’s U23 national soccer team, Jules Boykoff draws on his lifetime of athletic experience to reflect on the practice of kicking. With short vignettes blending the personal, the reflective, the historical, and the analytical, Kicking is uniquely positioned to reflect on the most popular sport in the world. From the act of kicking a soccer ball, Boykoff looks outward to his own family history, including his mother’s struggle with polio, which fed her insistence on his athleticism; to broader trends like greenwashing and sportwashing; and to reflections on sport’s toxic masculinity, the poetics of on-field revenge, and the power-politics of both the men’s and women’s World Cups. Kicking is a must-read for all those who love the beautiful game.

Written by longtime climber Hil Malatino, Climbing explores the why of the sport, asking what pushes him and so many others to drag themselves to the gym and the crag time and again; to restructure their intimate lives around the pursuit of a new goal; and to devote thousands of hours forging their nerves to perform physical and mental feats while dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of feet off the ground. In chapters that explore gender, class, and sizeism in climbing culture, as well as grief, addiction, queer and trans-worldmaking, and the tensions between conservation and recreation, Climbing teases out how the art of navigating across rock can help us learn how to revel in being weird, vulnerable, and radically interdependent animals temporarily gifted the complicated tragicomedy of a body. It is a story of collective obsession and transformation that tracks how holding yourself on the wall helps you learn how to hold onto the ambiguities of life on earth.

In 2022, poet Sally Ashton learned that one of her poems would be included in a time capsule to be sent to the Moon via Astrobotic’s 2024 Griffin/VIPER as part of the Lunar Codex project. For her, this event seemed like the high point in a life spent chasing the Moon, from a childhood inspired by the space race of the 1960s to an adulthood spent in contemplation and conversation with the sky. In Going to the Moon, Ashton marvels at the Moon’s powerful influence since the dawn of humanity—how we have, in our own ways, gone to the Moon, and what we have found. Contemplating lunar settlement in the light of history, culture, the rise of the space industry, and geopolitical conflict, Ashton shares her sense of wonder at the simple beauty of our unchanged Moon and reveals what is at stake in our contemporary attempts to colonize it.

In Winnowing, Suzanne Matson examines our personal, cultural, and environmental relationship with material objects. Matson alternates between reflective essays on the nature of ownership and her own “Winnowing Log,” a day-by-day account of her attempts to reduce the items in her home. Sorting through the emotional value of mementos, the gendered dimensions of housekeeping, and the environmental cost of both mass production and disposal, she physically, mentally, and spiritually lightens her life while reflecting on the tethers that make winnowing so hard. She compares ideas of material impermanence in Stoicism, Buddhism, and Christianity, acknowledging that total renunciation of things is beyond most people’s goals or abilities, but also that reducing what we own, carry, and tend can clear space for spiritual lightness, aesthetic pleasure, and freedom. Rather than a celebration or condemnation of material goods, Winnowing is a meditation on the personal and universal struggles and rewards of separating the chaff from the grain.

Written by longtime climber Hil Malatino, Climbing explores the why of the sport, asking what pushes him and so many others to drag themselves to the gym and the crag time and again; to restructure their intimate lives around the pursuit of a new goal; and to devote thousands of hours forging their nerves to perform physical and mental feats while dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of feet off the ground. In chapters that explore gender, class, and sizeism in climbing culture, as well as grief, addiction, queer and trans-worldmaking, and the tensions between conservation and recreation, Climbing teases out how the art of navigating across rock can help us learn how to revel in being weird, vulnerable, and radically interdependent animals temporarily gifted the complicated tragicomedy of a body. It is a story of collective obsession and transformation that tracks how holding yourself on the wall helps you learn how to hold onto the ambiguities of life on earth.

As a poet, public-facing scholar of sports politics, and former professional soccer player, having represented the United States on the men’s U23 national soccer team, Jules Boykoff draws on his lifetime of athletic experience to reflect on the practice of kicking. With short vignettes blending the personal, the reflective, the historical, and the analytical, Kicking is uniquely positioned to reflect on the most popular sport in the world. From the act of kicking a soccer ball, Boykoff looks outward to his own family history, including his mother’s struggle with polio, which fed her insistence on his athleticism; to broader trends like greenwashing and sportwashing; and to reflections on sport’s toxic masculinity, the poetics of on-field revenge, and the power-politics of both the men’s and women’s World Cups. Kicking is a must-read for all those who love the beautiful game.

In Winnowing, Suzanne Matson examines our personal, cultural, and environmental relationship with material objects. Matson alternates between reflective essays on the nature of ownership and her own “Winnowing Log,” a day-by-day account of her attempts to reduce the items in her home. Sorting through the emotional value of mementos, the gendered dimensions of housekeeping, and the environmental cost of both mass production and disposal, she physically, mentally, and spiritually lightens her life while reflecting on the tethers that make winnowing so hard. She compares ideas of material impermanence in Stoicism, Buddhism, and Christianity, acknowledging that total renunciation of things is beyond most people’s goals or abilities, but also that reducing what we own, carry, and tend can clear space for spiritual lightness, aesthetic pleasure, and freedom. Rather than a celebration or condemnation of material goods, Winnowing is a meditation on the personal and universal struggles and rewards of separating the chaff from the grain.