Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the dew.
It is a fine new day and the suns are bright. Dew glistens on the robot and the axe. The robot says Good morning, or perhaps it is the axe, which you stole as a child from the secret fortress in the mountain, and which looks very grave today. Suddenly a mother ship of the enemy pierces the upper atmosphere, blotting out a sun. The axe begins to sing. Nothing could be finer than to live inside an opera, just before the aria of the war.
—posted 899 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of wonder.
Whatever, in short, occurs to us we are fond of referring to some species or class of things, with all of which it has a nearly exact resemblance: and though we often know no more about them than about it, yet we are apt to fancy that by being able to do so, we show ourselves to be better acquainted with it, and to have a more thorough insight into its nature. But when something quite new and singular is presented, we feel ourselves incapable of doing this. The memory cannot, from all its stores, cast up any image that nearly resembles this strange appearance. If by some of its qualities it seems to resemble, and to be connected with a species which we have before been acquainted with, it is by others separated and detached from that, and from all the other assortments of things we have hitherto been able to make. It stands alone and by itself in the imagination, and refuses to be grouped or confounded with any set of objects whatever. The imagination and memory exert themselves to no purpose, and in vain look around all their classes of ideas in order to find one under which it may be arranged. They fluctuate to no purpose from thought to thought, and we remain still uncertain and undetermined where to place it, or what to think of it. It is this fluctuation and vain recollection, together with the emotion or movement of the spirits that they excite, which constitute the sentiment properly called Wonder, and which occasion that staring, and sometimes that rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling of the heart, which we may all observe, both in ourselves and others, when wondering at some new object, and which are the natural symptoms of uncertain and undetermined thought. What sort of a thing can that be? What is that like? are the questions which, upon such an occasion, we are all naturally disposed to ask. If we can recollect many such objects which exactly resemble this new appearance, and which present themselves to the imagination naturally, and as it were of their own accord, our Wonder is entirely at an end. If we can recollect but a few, and which it requires too some trouble to be able to call up, our Wonder is indeed diminished, but not quite destroyed. If we can recollect none, but are quite at a loss, it is the greatest possible.
—posted 907 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
Another secret of magic.
Approached differently, the construction of science and religion as antagonists implied a third position representing where the categories both convene and collapse. In my last book I deployed this trinary in a genealogy of the category “religions,” but here I want to follow the third term. Negatively valenced, it is understood to be superstition and in this respect appears as the double of either religion or science. Hence, a certain cross-section of scientists trumpeted the power of their respective domain by suggesting that all of religion was a superstition. Positively valenced, the third term is magic, which was often supposed to take the best elements of religion and science together or to recover things suppressed by “modern” science or religion. Indeed, most of what gets classified as contemporary esotericism or occultism came into being as an attempt to repair the rupture between religion and science.
—posted 987 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of Collections.
And though a Collection is not esteemed to carry with it a Proof of Genius and Understanding like a genuine Composition, yet the Labour must be allowed greater, as ’tis certainly more easy for a Person to pen his own Thoughts, than dexterously to select and range those of others; more especially if he has them to seek, compare and correct from a large Variety of Authors in different Languages. This has been my Task. And I wish my Performance may be looked on like the Bee’s Industry; as Honey will not lose its Taste or Virtue, by reflecting that that Insect was only a Collector, not Author of its Sweetness.
—posted 997 days ago
Better hit ’em on they ansible
Four weeks ago it was unconscionably hot. Remember? The heat dome squatting over the Pacific Northwest, and temperatures inside our shaded breezy house rivaling the usual outer bounds of high temperature outside for a day late in June. —When our internal temperature finally dropped below 80°, I could once more turn on my elderly Mac without fearing it would melt, and open up the file to see how far I’d got. (I do have other ways to write, but when it’s 110° outside and only twenty degrees cooler within, one would much rather lie on a bed without thinking rather than strive, diligently, to unstick oneself from one’s ways.) So I opened up the file to see I was only just barely quite halfway through the first draft of no. 38: the barker had only just started his (completely rewritten) spiel. —That was four weeks ago.
Since then: the gates have opened; we’ve been exploring the centerpiece of the whole dam’ thing (which didn’t snap into focus almost until I was upon it) (and then there’s the whole new character it turns out I didn’t need, who I have to go back and unwrite, sorry Nick)—but: but. I still haven’t gotten to Gun Street. I’m not sure no. 38 will be done in time to appear in August. I think I’m gonna miss the deadline. (Whoosh.)
No. 38, “ – Ekumen ain’t everything – ”, lines up if you like with the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana, Old Mister Scratch his own dam’ self: dark sides and shadow selves, forbidden thoughts released, the ties that bind made manifest to be tested and indulged: when snowballs don’t stand a chance, as we prepare to take our leave of the realm of fucking around, and our first steps into the world of finding out. —Perhaps that’s why picking my way through’s been so infuriatingly slow?
Sure. Let’s blame that.
Structurally speaking, this is the last of the wind-up installments: the next, no. 39, sits in the very middle of this volume, the apex of its rising action: decisions will be made, positions staked, irrevocable actions taken, perhaps even a blow or two to be struck. And then the four falling, unwinding installments, echoing and reverberating, and the final climactic novelette, no. 44, that will end the volume and the season. (Should I have tagged this with a spoiler warning? Do you feel spoiled? Apologies.) —Maybe that also has something to do with it.
If you follow the Pixelfed, you’ve already seen the cover reveal: a photo taken in the middle of the Tilikum Crossing, which the kid once said is like the sort of bridge they have in Pokémon cities. It won’t, insofar as I know, appear in the novelette itself. —Go, then, and prepare thyself for the Dog Days. They’re a-comin’.
—posted 1005 days ago
(Originally posted on the Patreon.)
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of ornament.
His argument was that the name we give to that supposed author disguised a bias modern folk have for writing and against listening. In Kanigel’s words, literary critics of the twentieth century associated reading and writing with “advanced civilizations,” and disliked the “repetition and stereotype” that characterizes oral poetry, a leaning that “blinded them to the fecund richness of illiterate cultures.” Although this theory had been modestly proposed by a number of scholars before Parry, and the groundwork was laid by the French scholar Marcel Jousse, who himself grew up amid the oral songsmithery of a largely illiterate community in France, Parry’s innovation lay in the scientific way he proved his inklings.
Using numerical methods, he counted exactly how many times the “ornamental epithets” so characteristic of Homeric epics—γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη (bright-eyed Athena), πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (loud-roaring sea), and so on—appeared, and, crucially, where in the dactylic hexameter of the poem’s lines they cropped up. Such epithets were not, Parry showed, functionally descriptive at all; they tended to provide no new information about whatever story was being told, but instead existed for what he called the “convenience” of people performing the song. The epithets showed up in “prescribed position and order,” he wrote, essentially filling in metrical gaps wherever they occurred, “giving a permanent, unchanging sense of strength and beauty.”
—posted 1027 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of modernity.
Modernity becomes a nonteleological category when used to describe multiple, overlapping lifeworlds, sexual norms, and self-understandings produced by an unevenly developing world system. Those lifeworlds and sexual norms that characterized an increasingly residual world of feudal peasantry, small proprietors, urban artisans, and noble classes combined and came into conflict with the emergent norms and lifeworlds of cities, proletarian populations, and ascendant national bourgeoisies. Thematizing this unevenness and conflict establishes the disjunctive temporality and shifting borders of change without representing the historical process as some unilinear succession or archæology settled into impassable, sedimented layers.
—posted 1059 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of a good breakfast.
It must surely be more stimulating to the reader’s senses if, instead of writing “He made a hurried meal off the Plat du Jour—excellent cottage pie and vegetables, followed by home-made trifle” (I think this is a fair English menu without burlesque), you write “Being instinctively mistrustful of all Plats du Jour, he ordered four fried eggs cooked on both sides, hot buttered toast and a large cup of black coffee.” No difference in price here, but the following points should be noted: firstly, we all prefer breakfast foods to the sort of food one usually gets at luncheon and dinner; secondly, this is an independent character who knows what he wants and gets it; thirdly, four fried eggs has the sound of a real man’s meal and, in our imagination, a large cup of black coffee sits well on our taste buds after the rich, buttery sound of the fried eggs and the hot buttered toast.
—posted 1074 days ago
Aughtfold.
So about two weeks ago I was about to start in on the last scene, and here I am, two weeks later, just about to finish it. —This is not so much a bad thing; in those two weeks I essentially rewrote the entire first draft, soup to nuts, and it’s tighter, each scene with its purpose at least in mind if not revealed, much closer to what I usually consider to be my level and standard of first draft: tight, clean, purposeful.
But it’s not so much a good thing, either: I’m falling behind what passes for a schedule around here, a passing fancy I’d been managing to keep to for the first time in a while.
I’m still ambivalent, aren’t I. —Among the 22 novelettes that (will come to) make up Spring; Summer, this one, no. 37, lines up with the Temperance card: the angel, sat upon the bank of a river or a crick, engrossed in pouring water or liquor from the one cup to the other, waiting, perhaps, for the corpse of an enemy to float on by, I don’t know. Balance. Moderation. Patience—but also neither fish nor fowl. An April 25th type of deal, which isn’t nearly as amusing on a May 14th without much rain.
The lesson to’ve been learned from writing this thirty-seventh novelette would seem to’ve been that it’s one thing to know what needs to be said, and to whittle and shape and reframe until you figure out how it’s going to be said; it’s another entirely to have a flavor in mind, a taste in the head, a how that some as-yet unknown thing ought to be said, and to flail about in the finding of what it is that ought to be said in this way. (At least, you flail enough, there’s something there to be whittled and shaped and etc. —Appearances, and there being enough thereof.) —I believe, rather late in the day, I’ve finally settled on the order of the scenes; now, I just need to do that final editing pass, and then get the copies finaled and polished for the patreons, and then, and then—
But! I (still) don’t mean to alarm anymore than I do to exult. It’s doable, yet, or it yet looks doable from here: to have no. 37 done and dusted before Memorial Day. You’ll be kept posted. —In the meanwhile, here’s the photo that’s going on the cover. Enjoy!
—posted 1078 days ago
(Originally posted on the Patreon.)
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the Photographer.
Ruslan Lobanov is one of the most popular artists in the post–Soviet Union space. He isn’t a classical author of art photography. It’s something more than that. Нe defines his genre as a cinematic photography. Uniqueness of Ruslan’s photos based on analog technologies that he used for their realization. Mystery and elaborate elements of female nakedness, which blend harmoniously with collectible accessories, handmade costumes and attentively selected locations, are embodiment of the Photographer’s perception of the World. Ruslan Lobanov compares photo with a puzzle. The main satisfaction for creator is a final result, which is admirable by fans.
—posted 1083 days ago
