Second
Thoughts
A home for personal meditations, critiques of art and literature, politics, sketches, and deconstructions that dive beneath the surface of thought. Experiment with form here, relate with current events, read and talk about a book you’ve never read or perhaps want to read, and criticize something, anything, everything.
The Mundanity of Apocalypse à la Centralia Pennsylvania
Last summer, I finally made the drive up from Philadelphia to Centralia. Reddit posts warn that little draw remains. Gone are the pits spewing white smoke that Bill Bryson described in A Walk in the Woods while commenting that Centralia is “the strangest, saddest town I believe I have ever seen.” The stretch of Route 61, cordoned off due to the fires and transformed by taggers into a shifting canvas affectionately named "Graffiti Highway,” was buried in 2020.
Jesse Welles and the Resurrection of Artistic Confidence
He’s scruffy-haired, 5’7”, dresses in the clothes my grandfather used to wear, and seems to forever breathe through a harmonica. His name is Jesse Welles, a 32-year-old folk-singer, songwriter, and poet whose backwater presentation is rooted in his working-class, Ozark, Arkansas upbringing. He has been hailed by many as the Bob Dylan of the new generation. I believe he’s the reincarnation.