And new in 2026: I’ll…

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We will meet Fridays at 18:00 UTC and Saturdays at 21:00 UTC for 90 m…

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I had hoped that my Stubshack would be more put together before sending out my first message, but here we are at the whim of yet more tech companies and their garbage applications and erratic decisions. By now, you have received notice that you’re a subscriber. If that’s okay with you, then you don’t need to do anything. If getting that announcement out of the blue pissed you off, then you will need to unsubscribe using the one-click link in that email. Or send me an angry email, and I’ll manually delete you myself.

In case you haven’t already been aware, I have been writing a monthly column for Minor Literature[s] called Better Shopping Through Living. It comes out the first Wednesday of every month. You should check it out along with everything else that ML[s] publishes. My own website is still at https://frankgarrett.online/. I don’t know if I’ll return to Twitter.

Come January I will announce the next cycle of the philosophy study group I’ve been organizing since 2021. Spoiler: it’s Gilles Deleuze. Stay subscribed to get the reading list and schedule.

As for Exergue, it was the title of a short-lived philosophy journal that I started shortly after defending my dissertation. The somewhat pompous title here is very much meant to also be a play on “working out” and “out of work” in addition to the standard “outside the work.” My intention, aside from this first message, is to use this platform for more serious writing. I hope you’ll stick around for it.

Perhaps as a treat for lasting this long, here is my very recent translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Abend.” It will be included in December’s Better Shopping Through Living, which will ostensibly be about the artist Robert Irwin.

Abend

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,
die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält;
du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder,
ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt;

und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend,
nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,
nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend
wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt –

und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn)
dein Leben bang und riesenhaft und reifend,
so daß es, bald begrenzt und bald begreifend,
abwechselnd Stein in dir wird und Gestirn.

Evening

Slowly the evening strips from his finest cloth,
that for him a circle of ancient trees holds up;
you survey: and the realms from you withdraw,
one skywarddarting and one that drops;

and leaving you to wholly belong to none,
not so very dark as the house that keeps quiet,
not so very sure the Eternal to summon
like what becomes a star each night in flight—

and leaving you (to unspeakably disentangle)
your life afeared and ripening and vast,
so that it, now bounded but presently grasped,
by turns becomes stone in you, a constellation.

Thank you for reading.