"CC and Given have spent years inhabiting the question most of us postpone: how little certainty can a life withstand and still remain a life freely chosen?"
My wife and I are grateful to be profiled with Peter Bach's (@lyst.bsky.social) poetry and empathy.
www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/09/n...
![“Panorama of the City of Interzone. Opening bars of East St. Louis Toodleoo... at times loud and clear then faint and intermittent like music down a windy street.... The room seems to shake and vibrate with motion. The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian -- races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized pass through your body. Migrations, incredible journeys through deserts and jungles and mountains (stasis and death in closed mountain valleys where plants grow out of genitals, vast crustaceans hatch inside and break the shell of body) across the Pacific in an outrigger canoe to Easter Island. The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market. Minarets, palms, mountains, jungle... A sluggish river jumping with vicious fish, vast weed-grown parks where boys lie in the grass, play cryptic games, Not a locked door in the City. Anyone comes into your room at any time. The Chief of Police is a Chinese who picks his teeth and listens to denunciations presented by a lunatic. Every now and then the Chinese takes the toothpick out of his mouth and looks at[…]”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:c2hs2rw56x7peuy3xok2hnaq/bafkreiezpb5rpohx6m2drlpll7bllzxqiolxkd2zx4o3ac3ja6tuxbmodq)
