Ecce Sigum

Immanentize the Empathy

Weekly Round-up, January 24, 2026

John Winkelman
Sparrow wing tracks in the snow.

As I finish writing this post, late Saturday afternoon, the outside air temperature is about 6° Fahrenheit. That makes it about 20 degrees warmer than when I got out of bed this morning, a little after 5:00 am, when I stuck my head out the door just to experience probably the coldest air to ever touch my face.

I didn’t like it.

Twenty years ago I would have gone for a walk so I would know what a warm day in the Siberian gulags was like. But older me is less resilient to extreme temperatures, though the possibility of gulags gets closer every day.

In Minneapolis, ICE is ramping up its murder of American citizens in the streets, which is exactly what every Trump voter intended. ICE is Trump’s gestapo, and every single one of them needs to be prosecuted, incarcerated for life, and all of their worldly wealth and possessions confiscated, so that neither they nor their families ever have any companionship, success or comfort, ever again. Let all ICE agents be cold, lonely, desperate, immiserated, and afraid until the end of their days.

Fuck ICE.

Fuck everyone who supports ICE in any capacity.

Fuck the entire power structure which enables ICE.

There. That’s my political thought for the day.

Reading

I finished The Age of Addiction, which was informative but lighter than I had hoped. I am indebted to the author, Dan Davies, for introducing me to the concept of “limbic capitalism,” which I will most certainly explore in the days to come.

And yesterday morning I finished Devouring Time, Todd Goddard’s superb biography of Jim Harrison.

Writing

The current level of insanity has left me little time or energy to write anything creative outside of a rough draft of a poem here and there. And by “rough” I mean a line or two on which I might some day hang a stanza, which might be the seed of an actual poem one day.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Evolution, Politics
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name Of.”

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 17, 2026

John Winkelman
The view of Chicago from high up in the Aon building in Chicago.

2026 really isn’t messing around.

Reading

In my very few spare moments, working toward the end of The Age of Addiction.

Writing

One of my goals for the new year is to write at least a full page in my journal every day. Preferably two. I have plenty to write about, so the entries won’t be recursively self-reflective wankery. Nope. My wankery is ORIGINAL AND UNIQUE. But this new work project is devouring large chunks of my writing time, so I may need to play catch-up once the initial insanity is behind me. So maybe sometime in June. 2030.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Art
Setting: Space
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

Diana Ross, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?”

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 10, 2026

John Winkelman
The Chicago skyline at night, as seen from the sidewalk near Millennium Park.

I traveled to Chicago for a project kickoff this week, so this will be a light update.

I have traveled a lot in the past six months. About as much as the previous five years combined. I realize here in the post-quarantine era that doesn’t mean much, but I find it to be exhausting. Travel like this would have been fun a decade or two ago and, more importantly, when I was single. Now it is tiresome and more than a little depressing, even when visiting cities like Chicago and Dallas. Most of what I see is through an office window, and at the end of the day I am too tired to go out and enjoy myself.

At least the food is good.

Reading

David T. Courtwright’s The Age of Addiction. Limbic capitalism, baby! It is interesting and well-written, and is giving me ideas for some of my own writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

And it must be said, it is a good wake-up call for how capitalism exploits human vulnerability. Then again this wake-up call has been shouted from the rooftops since the invention of advertising.

Writing

Little to no creative writing, but lots of code. Lots and lots and lots of code.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Apocalypse
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Slipstream

Listening

Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons.” Kind of the space my head is in right now.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 3, 2026

John Winkelman

I am at the end of two weeks off from work. This is the first real break I have had in well over a year. I have had time off, certainly, but most of that in 2025 involved some intensive travel, either for vacation or family obligations. And while fun and worthwhile, such vacations are not restful and restorative.

This one was. I didn’t realize how exhausted I had become from the events, personal, national and global, of 2025, but instead of accomplishing the mountain of goals I had made for myself, I slept.

A lot.

Like, going to bed at 22:00 and waking up at 11:00. Repeatedly.

It’s good that I had this break because when I return to work in a couple of days I will be travelling for much of the week. I haven’t had to travel for work since before the COVID lockdowns. When I was younger, this would have been exciting. Now it is just exhausting.

Not that I won’t have the opportunity for a couple hours of fun here and there. Chicago is a city where Things Happen.

Reading

I started off the year by finishing A Fading Sun by Stephen Leigh, and now I am reading The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business, by David T. Courtwright. If I get nothing else out of this book, I am indebted to Courtwright for introducing to my lexicon the phrase “limbic capitalism.”

Writing

When I finally pulled myself out of bed for long enough to accomplish anything, I finished transcribing a large-ish pile of poetry from the last couple of my journals.

I am re-creating my writing-editing-submitting pipeline in my spare moments. Since I have been writing poetry off and on for over 30 years, I have a lot of old work to review and organize. Not that I really expect the world to still exist come this time next year, but it would be nice to release some more poetry into the wild.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Death, Mutants
Setting: Wasteland
Genre: Western

Listening

Sick Dick and the Volkwagens, “Flame Flows Down,” from their album Interference. Recorded somewhere around 1980. Yes, I just read The Crying of Lot 49.

Interesting Links

December 2025 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

December was a surprisingly book-heavy month, fueled in large part by me taking a full two weeks off from work. This is the first vacation in a long time where I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything for the entire break. So I read. A lot. And I wrote in my journal. And I slept a lot.

I didn’t set out to pick up so many books in December, but opportunities to increase my collection just kept appearing.

If you look at the dates where I completed reading books, you will see that they start at the beginning of my time off. And they continue right through to the end of the year. I am still reading, and will likely complete at least one more book before I return to work on Monday.

One additional note: Two of the books i read – The Crying of Lot 49 and The Poppy War – I picked up from the Grand Rapids Public Library. One of my goals for the new year is to spend a lot more time at the library. I love acquiring new books, but collecting is expensive and the library is only a few blocks from my house.

Acquisitions

Reading material I acquired in the month of December, 2025
Reading material I acquired in the month of December, 2025
  1. Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You (Haymarket Books) [2025.12.07]
  2. New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #5 [2025.12.11]
  3. New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #6 [2025.12.11]
  4. New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine #7 [2025.12.11]
  5. Katelyn Millett, From the Stillness Within [2025.12.20] – Kate is a local poet and for a time was a student in the Tai Chi class. She has some serious talent.
  6. David Day, An Atlas of Tolkien [2025.12.22] – Received as a Christmas gift from my wonderful partner.
  7. Scott Krieger, Certain Lightnings (Grand River Poetry Press) [2025.12.23] -Received as a gift from the author.
  8. Arthur Waley (translator), The Books of Songs [2025.12.23] – Received as a gift from Scott K.
  9. Wu-chi Liu, Irving Lo (editors), Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Indiana University Press) [2025.12.23] – Received as a gift from Scott K.
  10. Pat Thomas, Evergreen Review: Dispatches from the Literary Underground: Covers & Essays 1957 – 1973 (Fantagraphics) [2025.12.29] – A Christmas present to myself, to complete my collection of Evergreen Review anthologies.
  11. Varlam Shalamov (Donald Rayfield, translator), Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories (New York Review Books) [2025.12.30] – A Christmas present to myself, to go along with Kolyma Stories, which I picked up a few years back. I had no idea there was a second volume to this set.

Reading List

Books

Books I read in the month of December 2025.
Books I read in the month of December 2025.
  1. Ivan Turgenev (Charles and Natasha Hepburn, translators), A Sportsman’s Notebook [2025.12.22]
  2. Christine Stephens-Krieger, Love Garden at the End of the World [2025.12.23]
  3. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 [2025.12.27]
  4. Scott Krieger, Certain Lightnings [2025.12.28]
  5. R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War [2025.12.29]

Short Prose

  1. Jim C. Hines, “Images of Death” [2025.12.01]
  2. Kameron Hurley, “Mother” [2025.12.04]
  3. Jim C. Hines, “Crimson Frost” [2025.12.28]

Happy New Year!

John Winkelman

While I can’t say I expect 2026 to be a better year than was 2025, I feel better prepared to weather the slings and arrows. Things may improve, or they may not. It is clear that the upcoming year will be interesting.

As Antonio Gramsci wrote, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” This is always the case, everywhere, all the time, simply because our ideas of “new” look a lot like the old with a new coat of paint.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful New Year, and that 2026 is more gentle and nurturing than was 2025.

Weekly Round-up, December 27, 2025

John Winkelman
The view of downtown Grand Rapids, from a building just west of the Ecliptic at Rosa Park Circle.

Here we are in the last weekly round-up of the year. I am in the middle of a two-week break from work, which was long overdue, and not even remotely adequate. But the holidays are a break from work, not really a restful, relaxing time, except in the spare moments when not being sociable.

Reading

I just finished Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and it was wonderful and weird. This was my first Pynchon, and I may need to wait a bit before diving in again.

Writing

I don’t have much to report here. Maybe in the second week of my vacation I will have some energy and focus.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Dreams, Robots
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Literary Fiction

Listening

Traffic, “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys,” from their 1971 album of the same name. This song entered my head through a silly little meme which was fed to me by the Facebook algorithm. And it is beautiful!

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, December 20, 2025

John Winkelman
Piles of snow at the bottom of the Grand Rapids Community College parking ramp.

And just like that, I am finished with work for the year.

This past week was hectic but fun. Last weekend my partner and I drove to Novi so that I could attend a ConCom meeting for Magical ConFusion. While I was in the meeting Z sat in the hotel restaurant working on her business Gallafe, which she is re-launching in January.

We arrived at the hotel Saturday and immediately set out looking for food, which we found in abundance at Bi Bim Bap inside the Atrium of Novi. The food overall was very good, and the kimchi was ferociously spicy and (assisted by a hot toddy back at the hotel) scorched my cold-ridden sinuses clean. Highly recommended.

On Sunday, after the meeting, we met up with a friend at the Basil Bowl on Haggerty, which is also excellent, and offers good food for when one is recovering from a cold or a hangover.

This past Wednesday, Z and I drove over to the Frederick Meijer Gardens to experience Enlighten, which was most excellent. Fortunately the outdoor temperature Wednesday evening was considerably warmer than the past few weeks, so the two-plus hours we spend wandering the mile-long path through the installation was comfortable and enjoyable. If you have a tolerance for being outside in the snow, I highly recommend attending.

  • Light show at the Enlighten event at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Light show at the Enlighten event at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Light show at the Enlighten event at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Light show at the Enlighten event at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Light show at the Enlighten event at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Reading

I am about three quarters of the way through A Sportsman’s Notebook, and should be able to complete it by the end of the year. Then on to the next thing.

Writing

I didn’t have time to write anything new this week. However, when reviewing the links in my Literary Matters page I discovered that Coffin Bell, the online journal which published my short story “Occupied Space,” has closed. So I have now published “Occupied Space” here on my website.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Mutants, Fae
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Scott Krieger reading from his new book of poetry, Certain Lightnings.

Christine Stephens Krieger reading poems from her new book Love Garden at the End of the World.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, December 13, 2025

John Winkelman
Two tree stumps in the snow, backed by an old wooden fence.

This was another hectic week. The above photo is part of the hecticness.

The stumps are the remnants of a hackberry tree which was sending its roots under the floor of my basement, causing the concrete to heave and putting upward pressure on the poles under the floor joists. That upward pressure was causing a noticeable bulge in the floors above, and recently we have noticed some new cracks in the old plaster on the walls of the second floor.

I contacted Armand the Tree Guy (aka Armand Lawrence) a couple of weeks ago, after my next-door neighbor recommended his work. He and his crew arrived around 10:00 and were done with the tree at 12:30. And the whole forty-foot, double-trunk tree, chopped into pieces, fit into a single trailer.

Hopefully the damage will now stop, and the floor of the basement gradually subside as the roots of the tree decay over the next few years. I am sad to see the tree gone, but I would be more sad if, say, the plaster on the interior walls were to collapse and bury the cats.

Reading

I am still working my way through Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook, and still loving it.

Writing

Due to the afore-mentioned chaos, I have not had time to write.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Aliens, Fae
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Noir

Listening

On the evening of Wednesday, December 10, Jack and Julie Ridl hosted a virtual poetry reading in which a dozen poets read their work to an online audience of over a hundred. It was wonderful! I saw many names and faces which I have not seen in many years, several of them from the Caffeinated Press/3288 Review days, and some from more recent events involving the Grand River Poetry Collective and the Grand Rapids Literary Festival. I took notes, and I hope to retain this energy into the Christmas holidays, when I will have some time off and maybe will have the focus and energy to do something creative and meaningful.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, December 6, 2025

John Winkelman

The first week of December, 1984. I was nearing the end of the first semester of my sophomore year at Springport High School. When I wasn’t in class or attending wrestling practice, or band practice, or milking cows, I was holed up in my room with my Commodore 64, learning how to program and playing games. And learning how to program games.

I was also listening to the radio. I had a cheap clock radio thing at the time, which mostly brought in static and country music, but could be coaxed to pull in the oldies station or the contemporary rock station Q106 (“It may not be your favorite song, but it has a lot of the same notes!”). John Lennon had been murdered four years previously, and his son Julian Lennon was on the charts with “Valotte” and “Much Too Late for Goodbye.”

I bring this up because for the past few months I have been following “Charlie’s 80s Attic Radio Station” on Facebook, and recently made the mental leap that, if there is a Facebook page, maybe this Charlie fella has website.

And he does! Charlie’s 80s Attic is real! And he streams the music which is on his social media lists, along with a whole lot more.

In general, I try not to go nostalgia-mining when writing, but these tunes sure do bring back a lot of memories.

Reading

Having finished Invisible Work, I am now about a quarter of the way through Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook. I have the Everyman’s Library hardcover edition, which includes a bookmark ribbon attached to the spine. This ribbon is one of the greatest cat toys ever invented, and I need to be circumspect whenever I read this book anywhere near Poe or (especially) Pepper.

Writing

Not much of anything new this week. My brain was fried from an unexpectedly chaotic and busy Thanksgiving holiday.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Portals, Cyborgs
Setting: Urban
Genre: Folk Tale

Listening

Julian Lennon, “Valotte,” from his 1984 album Valotte.

Interesting Links