Welcome to The Flying Fish
Anti-market literature published on a market platform. Terminal essays paid for with coins from a dead country.
A Note to the Dear Reader Person: Most of the writings presented are an exploration of the modern world as Tomasz Goetel sees it. Some text contains strong themes and a dark view of present human reality. No cuddles in the kitchen to get things off the ground, so to speak. The Reader might want to skip some published pieces — or proceed with fortitude.
A quick, loving note to my Family & Friends who read this: Please do not mistake the darkness I write about for the light I live in. I find myself, in fact, a profoundly content and grateful man — but I am an unhappy writer. Well I say such is the price of drawing maps which must closely resemble the territory.
We write prose that admits the plane is in free fall, the pilots are two anxious pathologicaly altruistic liberal women, the airline executives are corrupt globohomo funnymoney clowns, the emergency services have their backs broken and their children stolen, and the emperor has no clothes. We write not to save you, but to keep your eyes open for impact. Terminal literature, someone called it.
This substack is using market infrastructure—a contradiction we relish rather than resolve.
We operate on currencies that no longer circulate: pre-modern eros, Christian mysticism, poetry that refuses to convert to clicks.
As our American friend says, “You can’t have no fun with an unloaded gun.” But we digressed.
When the platform wants cartel violence in the headline, we hide it in a footnote.
When the feed tastes of silicone, we write to describe the gag accurately.
A reader said you’re too Catholic for the right, too heterodox for the left, too European for the Americans, too Americanized for the Poles. I don’t know what to say to that. One day…
No “newsletter posts.” More of a samizdat, a digital fanzine or online Künstlerroman, we’re not a newsletter business. Trapped in a notification-feed economy, we are using Substack as free web hosting.
Oh, also no verticals. No actionable insights. No hopepunk alternatives.
We jump from Polish mysticism
to Weimar prostitution
to Pentagon budget analysis
without warning.
If you require meh ROI on your attention, don’t subscribe, darling. If you prefer your wreckage described with precision, stay and consider giving us your electronic mail address below, and hit the red button.—