For the first time since I lived in Brooklyn decades ago, I saw a man on the street in Miluo, Hunan, a 4-5th tier city in China and said “nice hat.” People, his hat was nice.
David Harrison Horton
@unionherald.bsky.social
1.9K followers 2.5K following 648 posts
Artist, curator, editor, and writer based in Beijing. Author of Necessary (Downingfield, 2025), Model Answers (CCCP Chapbooks, 2024) and Maze Poems (Arteidolia, 2022). Edits poetry zine SAGINAW.
![Dante Alighieri
— […] it is impossible to arrive at the other senses, especially the allegorical, without first arriving at the literal.
You can go up the mountain
a million times
and not once see
a burning bush.
That’s how it is
when you go looking for things.
I was 700 pages
into Infinite Jest
before I realized
I liked it as a project,
but hated it as a book.
So the next time
you’re out there on high,
maybe give a listen
to the blackthroat’s song,
as she tells you
everything is just fine.
"Dante’s quote is telling us we need to understand the literal meaning of something before we can understand it in other ways, so I open with something that, of course, isn’t meant to be taken literally. Infinite Jest is a red herring or an example depending on how you choose to read it. The blackthroat is an extremely rare songbird that lives in high altitudes: if you hear one singing, you should drop what you’re doing and appreciate that moment."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:namnzhjoebjrydedytidabhl/bafkreigox55yx4pjoyuwlydx7bfc23ktr2dmtvceaof3wyd6gdp46zcdja)
