Berlin, 1927

Berlin, 1927

Berlin, 1927I was in Berlin in the late 1920s. I want to record what it felt like from the inside, because I think the texture of it is relevant to the present moment and I have not found a way to describe it precisely in any of the forms I have used for...
The Black Sun: What Authority Becomes

The Black Sun: What Authority Becomes

Various, consolidatedEvery century I have moved through has produced its particular version of the same configuration: a system of authority that begins with a claim to legitimacy, accumulates power on the basis of that claim, and eventually uses the accumulated power...
Paper Kingdoms

Paper Kingdoms

Various, 1720 to presentThe Mississippi Bubble of 1720 was the first time I watched a modern financial system collapse under its own invented certainty. John Law’s system was genuinely sophisticated for its time: it attempted to decouple value from gold and...
The Forms That Bearing Witness Takes

The Forms That Bearing Witness Takes

Present Day, March 2026For centuries I documented in journals. The journals from my early years in Florence are careful and specific: names, dates, conversations, the details of events that I suspected would be significant before I could be certain they were. The...
The Quiet Machine

The Quiet Machine

Present Day, March 2026I have been watched. This is not paranoia: it is a fact of my existence, a practical consequence of living past the point at which any plausible human biography allows for continued presence. I have had to become very good at managing how I am...