16 Here is the part about gatekeepers.
Herodotus wrote about an ancient tribe, the Atarantes, who lived in the African desert and had no personal names or dreams. How did they know one other? What does it mean to know another human? We are always imagining each other and relating on the basis of these imaginings. Sometimes, I feel as if I could know them. This wanting to know is a way of being known—an opening.
When I say being known, I mean writing illuminates small patches of being and existing. In the era of planned obsolescence, writing reveals what we treasure, and “treasure” is a word loaded by its antimony. What we treasure is what we fear losing.
Late capitalist markets create a hunger for orange corn puffs, and we, as human poets, are tempted to respond with our personal descriptive engagement of consumer appetite. We imagine in relation to what is sold to us. We desire the thing that others rave about in the market of images where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the commercial and the communal. We find a way to belong by wanting to consume the same things as our friends and neighbors. Unlike hunger, consumption becomes an occupational hazard precisely because it can be sated.