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slide out of your skin and let me in
I needed to get the sun on my face today. I walked three or four miles via the cuts, down to Aston Science Park and turning off towards Digbeth. Catkins out, red deadnettle and gorse in flower; a Paul Nash-ish daymoon in the sky. There's a certain music to bridges: the slop and lap of the canal after a boat has passed, water dripping from a brick ( Read more... ) -
and you're draped in kelp, below by 8000 feet
Friday C and I went to see Leviathan at the MAC, a loose dance adaptation of Moby Dick. We ran into friends in the bar and chatted about theremins (I still don't know how you can play one with a cat and still have a face) and nostalgia for cassette tapes. The actor playing Ahab was superb - stalking about in undershirt and cargo pants with the ( Read more... ) -
Hey ho, who is there? (part one)
Longtime readers will know I've had a fascination with the Mari Lwyd for a few years now, even going so far as to write a poem about her (which Strange Horizons were good enough to publish). Well, I've actually met my obsession at last ( Read more... ) -
Misericords and nooses
I went home yesterday to my folks. Hoped to get some walking in, but it was too dingycold and mizzly to bother going out again. I found out an old friend of my dad's had died recently; someone I didn't know well but liked: I remember best the smell of pipesmoke and the parping tunes he made through the pipe when he wasn't smoking. My contributors' ( Read more... ) -
How are the children now they are fed?
...is the question someone asked me in my sleep this morning, but I can't remember a dream associated with it. (The one I did have gave me an undercut bob and heavily-kohled eyes and I liked my face like that.) I woke up and there it was in my head, like a line from an old folk song. It needs a story as answer, and I don't think it can be anything ( Read more... ) -
And all the ashes turned to stars
I was writing the previous entry when the intercom rang. I went to answer - expecting a parcel and dreading the hoohah I'd had getting post back a few weeks ago - but it turned out to be some guy wondering if there were any Spanish-speaking people in the block. It was a short conversation ( Read more... ) -
New myths
As usual, I've been away too long. Some news this time: yesterday Tartarus Press released This Spectacular Darkness, a collection of Joel Lane's critical essays on horror and weird fiction, edited by Mark Valentine and John Howard. Many of the essays appeared in the journal Wormwood. Joel always intended to write a full-length study on modern ( Read more... ) -
"First status I achieve, holds nothing I believe"
I have spent most of this day numb and cold with grief and quiet rage. I didn't think this could happen. Woke up at eight, switched on Today and heard the news. Hoped I was having a nightmare, but we don't get to wake from this one. I wrote on Facebook: Another triumph for isolationist fuckwits. To all my American friends - you have my love and ( Read more... ) -
"Better that both fellowship and trees stand."
I listened to a TED talk on R4 an hour back featuring - what do we call this, surely not the music of the spheres? - a few minutes on the radio waves generated by planets and stars. Jupiter sounded like the scratches in a well-loved record. I wish I was a sculptor; I suddenly had an idea for an orrery, each little world with a recording of its " ( Read more... )
