Issue Nine
SEPTEMBER 2025
Blue, this time with a layer of aquamarine. Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear plant, rails that still run through Ukraine’s war, and a Ukrainian great-grandmother turned icon of pro-Russian cosplay. Plants in Bulgaria repackaged for Western wellness and Bolívar’s tongue stretched across continents. Untranslatable names, Joséphine Baker on Palestine’s seafront, and wicked fables for a liquid Europe.
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The plant whisperers
If you know what you are looking for, you find edible and healing plants everywhere.
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Glory to the rails
Millions of Ukrainians left the country during the first weeks of the invasion; four million were evacuated by train, including a million children. Thousands of dogs, cats and other pets, too.
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Of trotting horses & angelic words
I was reminded of Muybridge’s moving pictures while looking at the serial attempts of Ambrogio Lorenzetti (d. 1348/49) at rendering the invisible visible.
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Queen of the night
Maria Theresa, Habsburg empress, created the modern European state. To ponder her reign is to ask what the Enlightenment was — and is. Be careful with your nostalgias.
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My untranslatable name
When my parents went to register my name after I was born, they carried out an especially elaborate plan. They acquired a chocolate bar
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My tongue is Simón Bolívar’s wet dream
My boyfriend had colombianized my Mexican. But my friends had also argentinized it, chileanized it, venezuelized it, ecuadorized it.
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After midnight
The modern world races forward with all its technological might, yet remains trapped in a reactive cycle of disasters. Necessary responses follow catastrophes rather than prevent them.
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The Palestinian seafront of the future — Joséphine Baker in Haifa
Long ago, on the coast of Palestine, an elegant Modernist casino was frequented by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. One night in 1943 Joséphine Baker performed.