Last Update: Jan 12, 2025

I just received my copy of Anders The Obsolecense of the Human early this week, before then I was going into Tom Cohen's Ecocide and Inscription and they've been great to read together. I really appreciate all the references Cohen makes to to Hitchcock's The Birds, especially this one quote, "it is not accidental that these birds are linked to oil, what we call "stored sunlight," without which there would be no artificial light or cinema, yet itself black." This becomes even more interesting when you consider the literal scene where they're set, just north of San fransisco in Bodega Bay, not far from Hollywood itself. The fault lines connecting Hollywood and oil run deep. Los Angeles, is literally built upon oil. The massive underground reserves enabled the city to supply its own fuel from as early as the late 19th century, which powered all other industries from which the city grew (railroads, electric power generators, and as a coal substitute). Only by the time Hollywod began to establish its presence in the late 20s/30s, oil as the main energy source gave way to imported natural gas, and the presence of Oil in the social conscious withdrew. Over time, oil even lost its symbolic representation on the LA county's Seal (see 1957 version vs. 2007 version). Also when Cohen says, "In a way, when the tertiary retention hits the mirror stage and takes a selfie, short-circuiting is triggered," this felt like the perfect opposite to, "We need to see ourselves watching ourselves before we all die", which is something I'd been shared sometime in late November 2025 here. I wonder if this play of opposites, visibility / concealment, retinal light / sensorial light, hibernation / extinction, might even be relevant within this passage from Derrida's reading of Oedipus at Colonus? Recently I've been feeling a strong emotional attachment to cherubs, the little angels who continuously praise god. I'm actually working on a drawing of a particular stone cherub as well. This feels important in context to what I was saying about Los Angeles earlier, with it's double name being the "city of angels". In fact, Frank Ruchala Jr in OiLA makes two very interesting observations that loop mythology into the origin story of LA itself. He posits that the oil wells which dotted the Los Angeles basin could be read as inverted nipples like those from which Romulus and Remus drank milk from the Capitoline wolf. Only rather than milk, it was oil that did the feeding, and rather than Rome, it was Los Angeles that was built. Hitchcock's The Birds was based on a true story, originally transpiring in Capitola, near the bay area. There's something ironic about Capitoline Wolf/Capitola pairing. Between the life giving energy of breast milk, and the swarm of crows in Capitola "like so many tiny black suns", threatening to take life itself. I will finish with another Cohen quote that fairly sums up my feeling between these readings, "...it is much too interesting, all these lubricants..."
-Mark