TiltMN

01/13/2021

"The first time I died, Ima tells me, the sun flared its great, fiery disc and swallowed the whole world in a moment. And everything that had been was then no more.

The second time I died, it was at the hands of a grand, dark army, their bayonets through my stomach and heart. And when I fell their boots marched over my co**se as though a body that falls was never standing to begin with..."

The Mountain. It was night, late. Sometime around midnight, or. Maybe later than that. The clouds, plum-dark and florid, were. Billowing gently across the sky. With myotis bats flying along the ridge. Swooping as they do. Back-and-forth-and-up-and-down-and-around-and-around-and. Hunting. With nighth...

01/09/2021

A relevant article from the TiltMN archives

Antifa has been a much talked about group after clashing with white supremacists, N***s, and Confederate sympathizers in Charlottesville.

10/13/2020

It is a warm and humid night in summer. There is the sound of dogs barking on the street, the sound of crickets from the brush and cicadas in trees...

The neighborhood radicals arrive with clubs and bats and chains and tell us how they abhor authority; how committed they are to revolution.

09/07/2020

What is clear is that, if we aren’t careful, true Fascism will grow and take hold in this country – not N**i thugs on the streets in their brown shirts perhaps, but our own, Americanized version of it, bloated and overwrought, with stars and eagles instead of a sw****ka bound by a thick circle that would keep anyone who isn’t anglicized, God-fearing, white and heterosexual at the bottom of an ever-deepening barrel...

Fascism - its policy and rhetoric - has found a home in the United States. How is it so many "good" people fall victim to its sway?

04/10/2018

There is a thought that, if our officials weren't elected based on public reaction - their looks, personality, right or left-leaning rhetoric that often is dropped post-election, whether or not they look like they'd be fun to "have a beer with" - our government would be better off.

Voter turnout is low. A growing number of people feel that the current form of American democracy is failing them. So, what about technocracy?

03/07/2018

If we finally want to tackle the strange relationship we have with food in this country – the extremes of both obesity/diabetes and eating disorders, the inequalities and the food deserts, we need to start here:
We need to remember, and honor, each and every one of us, our own stories filled with apples sweet, and coffee dark and bitter.

We all need to eat - food will always be an important part of our lives. We all have our own stories and memories. Our own apples so sweet, and coffee made dark and bitter.

02/22/2018

When she gets into the car and asks if I’m coming with her, asks if I’ll leave everything behind and start fresh somewhere new, just us two, well, that’s when she’ll know if my words were true or if I was only trying to get in her pants.

A woman said that love is freedom. That love is falling and flying and falling and catching and getting back up together. That love is not what was before, but what will be tomorrow.

02/19/2018

British psychoanalyst and author Christopher Bollas' theory was that cruelty is a way of filling an internal void - an emptiness inside. And, he said, it is better to feel cruelly than to feel not at all.

There are those who say that cruelty is learned, and not inherent - the result of trauma and abuse. Freud's view was that it occurs naturally, based in biology and psychology and a deep-rooted part of human nature.

02/18/2018

Love is complicated. Especially when the world is ending.

Water is not something you can hold onto. It's not something you can grasp, or something you can stand or build a house on. But you can float, swim, boat, ride waves like California and Florida and Hawaii and even frigid Lake Superior just outside of Duluth, Minnesota.

01/31/2018

Well, this is *one* explanation for the current state of the union...

There is a focus on borders and walls in these current times, and consequently, a rise in scared xenophobia. Or is it because of xenophobia that there is a focus on borders and walls?

01/28/2018

Gogo always said that she could dissolve into a glass of water when he yelled for peace and quiet.

Her uncle put their house on the river up for sale the moment she turned 18 and left for college at Cambridge. He went I don't know where after that. I never saw her again after she left for school, and I never saw him again either. Though I didn't want to see him again.

01/25/2018

A friend told me once that he was very hungry for Chinese food. We rattled off for him a long list of Chinese restaurants in the Twin Cities. Does he want takeout? No. Something fried or something fresh? To sit down for dim sum? Does he want noodles or does he want rice?

No.

He wanted something he had never had before. We looked at each other and shrugged. He wanted a trip to China, deep into the heart of the country’s largest cities to find foods that hadn’t yet made it across the ocean and probably never would. He wanted to go deep into grain fields and pastoral settings where a full meal is something to be cherished and respected.

Read on: We're all searching, our culinary tongues, for something new to taste.