The Vital Past

I read the newest Sirenia Digest to-day, which contains a new series of vignettes by Caitlin R. Kiernan called "THE ULTRAVIOLET ALPHABET". Each vignette corresponds to a letter, from A to M. A few of them are just like nice miniature lectures from a palaeontologist, which Caitlin indeed happens to be. I particularly liked "K is for Komodo Dragon" which discusses the komodo dragon's effect on the human imagination since its relatively recent discovery in 1910. Caitlin also goes into detail about an Australian ancestor of the komodo dragon, a much larger lizard that coexisted with aboriginal humans. I hadn't heard about it and it was interesting.

Other vignettes harken back to the Digest's original purpose, as a showcase of Caitlin's weird erotica. "C is for Clit" is an affectionate rumination on that renowned female body part while "J is for Journey" ponders a strange and exceedingly beautiful naked woman. All the vignettes have good qualities though I was a little puzzled by a reference to An American in Paris paired with a reference to Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Was Caitlin thinking of Funny Face? I enjoyed the vignettes in any case.

I walked along a river to work yesterday and got this song stuck in my head:

Pollution Goblin

Happy Good Friday, everyone. The latest Caitlin R. Kiernan story in Sirenia Digest is sort of appropriate to the topic. It's an exceptionally good one in any case, called "STRANDLING", which mixes Lovecraftian eeriness with the melancholy topic of the impending death of a loved one.

It also incorporates the housing crisis as the two characters, a married couple, are able to obtain the seaside property the dying partner longs for because its beaches are hopelessly polluted, driving down the property value. The dying woman finds her reflection in a dying world. Then there are hints of something weird from that same sea, something the mind is not as ready to contemplate. So it's a fairly good story for Good Friday.

I also watched a bit of The Long Good Friday again on The Criterion Channel. It's just a good gangster movie, more of an ironic Good Friday movie, I suppose. I feel like there are more Good Friday movies than Easter movies. Taxi Driver comes to mind, mainly because Martin Scorsese's priest told him the movie had "too much Good Friday, not enough Easter Sunday." Well, really, there are a lot more Easter movies, but still far fewer than there are Christmas movies. I should make a list, maybe I will before Sunday.

X Sonnet #1829

The lovers' cloud obscured a bloody sun.
Logistics change the means of death.
As murder plots or sudden strikes are done,
A million things can stop a hapless breath.
A self-inflicted symbol staunched the blood.
Precocious dolphins damage fish to eat.
The shapes of older cats have changed the mud.
Sequestered bones were long behind the meat.
Condensing hist'ry haunts the lonely brow.
A story's spun to cheat the sane from health.
Despondent souls await the rusty scow.
For extra kelp the sea discharged its wealth.
A jagged isle spotted grants a wish.
But danger lurks behind the eyes of fish.

Nowhere to Look

Last night I read "Gorgon", the new Caitlin R. Kiernan story in the Sirenia Digest. It's a good story that combines several elements that tend to recur in Caitlin's work; there's dialogue with a possibly dead woman in a dream state, there's a reference to "The Lobster Quadrille", and palaeontology. That last one is not so common in Caitlin's work as you might expect given that she happens to be a palaeontologist but it always adds an appreciable extra layer of credibility whenever she does include it.

Like a lot of great horror fiction, it succeeds a lot by layers of suggestion rather than direct descriptions. I especially liked one character talking about a dream she had of a strange sea beast. It's a good story.

Speaking of dreams, last night I dreamt Maynard James Keenan had died. Some friends and I were trying to get to his funeral but we got stuck in an endless labyrinth of mall service corridors. Googling Keenan to-day, the headless I see are "Maynard James Keenan has been training in the popular mixed-martial art, known for its grappling technique", and "For the past 20 years, Maynard James Keenan has worked tirelessly to bring Arizona's burgeoning wine industry to international attention." Yes, the guy who wrote "Sober" is now in the wine business. I wonder how many people have made jokes about that.

Perceptions of Falling

I read the new story in the latest Sirenia Digest this morning, "NEITHER FROM NOR TOWARDS" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's sort of an alternate version of one of her older stories, "Galapagos". I enjoyed it, particularly as it revolves around a number of references to the first couple chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

I think the reason there's never been a proper film version of the Alice books is that their genius is in how much they accomplish with so little. That first part of the story, where Alice is falling and having confused thoughts about her identity, her physical location, her knowledge, and her perception are such compelling prompts for interpretation. Every film or video game version inevitably boils down to the adapter's interpretation so that it cannot match the depth and complexity of those relatively simple twenty or so pages of a children's story. "NEITHER TO NOR FROM" captures some of that sense of disorientation as Caitlin expands out from one particular facet with a story about Mars and a strange artefact. It's good.

Alice in Wonderland has been on my mind a lot lately. So has Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the big life change of moving to a different country, my life in Japan also means I'm living in the countryside for the first time after 40 years of living in a big city. Without going into too much detail, I'm finding Holmes' famous quote about the countryside to be quite true. You can hear Jeremy Brett delivering it in this adaptation of "The Copper Beeches" (at around 23:40):

Our Dreams are with Us

Yesterday I read the new Sirenia Digest which contained a new Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "A Buyer's Guide to Commonplace Bizarreness". It's a little excursion into Lovecraft's Dreamlands, to Dylath-Leen, as well as a dovetailed vision of our waking world. Or supposed waking world. It's the kind of disorienting blend Lovecraft touched on occasionally but may remind a reader more of movies like Videodrome or Inland Empire. It's lovely. Caitlin includes a phot of the basalt formation called the Giant's Causeway in Ireland that influenced Lovecraft's conception of Dylath-Leen.

I love Lovecraft. My nice hardback copies of his stories are among the books I miss the most back in storage in California. I've been resisting the temptation to buy them again. My resistance is aided by the fact that they seem to be much more expensive on Amazon now.

This month, the Criterion Channel has a playlist called "Grindhouse Gothic" featuring Roger Corman's film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe. Included is The Haunted Palace, which is actually based on Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and contains only a couple references to Poe's "The Haunted Palace". In the '60s, Poe was the more bankable name. I wonder if that's quite reversed now. Anyway, I watched a bit of it again. Corman makes the plot a lot sillier but the production design is pretty and Vincent Price is always terrific.

Where's My Lagoon?

I read what I think was the newest Sirenia Digest this morning. It contained a Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "BLACK WATER (MURDER BALLAD NO. 14)". It's nice. A disturbing meditation on the Black Dahlia murder and connecting it aesthetically with Creature from the Black Lagoon. The first part reminded me that Caitlin had written about reading Edgar Allan Poe again recently in her blog as the first person narrator reflects on the motive for murder. It was good.

It's really hot here to-day, I'm mostly sitting in my apartment and sweating, trying not to run the air conditioner.

Last night I watched the new episode of the resurrected Futurama. It's very meta and unfunny but what did I expect? The show has to catch up with Rick and Morty which is growing stale, too. Billy West and Phil Lamarr sound really old.

X Sonnet #1721

With careful steps, affection wound the seats.
With hapless souls reserving senses late.
Beneath the knuckles, punchy breakfast beats.
We think of this as monsters pound the gate.
When high above his shoes, the man's a foot.
Assumptions spat the gummy ear to bears.
A thousand noses know where beaks are put.
But laughter coughs a lack of vital cares.
Examples zerged the syllogistic sins.
Extorted clams implore vanilla waves.
Exemptions cut the undigested fins.
Exported Davids changed to local Daves.
Expensive zithers spring for minor notes.
Examined tides disperse collected boats.

Plastic and Memory

I read the new Sirenia Digest while eating lunch to-day. The new Caitlin R. Kiernan story, "The Moment Under the Moment", is a deliberately Lovecraftian tale, another nice exploration of the tangled psychological space, a portrait of human mental functioning fractured and frustrated by dreams and bizarre trauma. The first person narrator recalls a lover who spoke of the Bering strait land bridge and William Beebe. an American scientist and explorer. The narrator also describes the plastic pollution of the ocean in strikingly vivid and horrifying language, convincingly arguing the horror of this byproduct of scientific progress my equal or surpass that of the atomic bomb. It's a good story. Lunch was a sandwich with lettuce, Spam, and mayonnaise on bread I made yesterday. I've discovered I really like Spam. Another strange product of science.

Siren Party

Last night I read "Build Your Houses With Their Backs to the Sea", the Caitlin R. Kiernan story in the new Sirenia Digest. It's a particularly nice one.

An art journalist takes an assignment to attend an exhibition of some kind. The story is told in first person and the journalist is established with a credible, down-to-earth, tone that makes the weird stuff effective for the contrast. It's another especially Lovecraftian story and yet also not. There are suggestions of a blurring between human and sealife but there's something more ethereal about it than typical for Lovecraft. It's a Sirenia Digest story that possibly references an actual siren. Caitlin even mentions This Mortal Coil's famous cover of "Song to the Siren", which happens to have been much on my mind lately. It's a nice, haunting little story.

The Broken Box

I read the new Sirenia Digest on the train to-day, a new story from Caitlin R. Kiernan called "Discord in Anthracite". It's exciting to see Caitlin combine her love of HP Lovecraft with her palaeontology expertise.

The point of view character discusses childhood memories with a figure who shifts between a psychiatrist and a dead girl. It has the quality of an internal dialogue, the sort of thing we do when we try to explain things to ourselves by imagining a friend, family member, or authority figure to whom we're delivering the explanation. In those cases, we may well switch out the identity of the listener/interrogator mid-explanation. The people we choose can be indicative of our priorities and perspectives, as it is for the narrator of Caitlin's story.

This all, like the personalities of Lovecraft's narrators, helps establish an emotional reality for the fantastically horrific. It's a nice piece of work, it gets under your skin, or your scalp.

This Cloistered Earth

Last night I read the new Sirenia Digest which contained "PASSAGE OF VENUS IN FRONT OF THE SUN", a new story from Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's good, beginning with sort of a drowsy mood and becoming a story about a very gentle alien invasion of Earth.

The aliens are primarily concerned with stories, their society somehow not being able to generate such things. The discussion then becomes about censorship and the destruction of works of fiction. It's a timely topic when people from both political sides these days have started to endorse the destruction of texts. Caitlin makes reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Francois Truffaut's film adaptation of the book. I think the two great works to read on the topic are that and Milton's Areopagitica. Milton gives the devil his due (as usual) and famously describes books as living things, capable of exerting real influence on people's minds. But he just as famously said that he cannot praise a "cloistered virtue", a person whose virtue is due entirely to never having been exposed to challenging ideas. The fact that people are so quick to fear works of fiction these days is surely a sign of rampant cowardice, cowardice being something that used to be regarded as a negative trait.

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary." - John Milton

From Seas to Theatres

It's spider season here again in Kashihara.

This morning I finally had time to read the latest Sirenia Digest, number 200. For this issue, Caitlin R. Kiernan created a story about stories. Not an unusual matter for her but it's particularly appropriate for a commemorative issue of a monthly digest of stories.

One scene of the protagonist dreamer glimpsing a variety of fish reminded me of Salman Rushdie, in one of his own famous postmodernist commentaries. Other parts of the new story from Caitlin, "A Travelogue for Oneironautics", reinforce the impression of a story commenting on stories. The dreamer and another character, a naked woman in a sailcloth, traverse a sea of red water, and both are unable to access their identities or motivations. The dreamer seems more interested in making the attempt than the woman, who seems content or resigned to her own ambiguity. This dynamic is repeated as the scene shifts to different locations and time periods, with the woman being replaced in separate occasions by a sort of werewolf and then a talking dog. And always, as is so often the case in Caitlin's fiction, the protagonist seeks answers from a conversation partner unwilling and/or uninterested in providing them. That in one case this is symbolically portrayed as a kind of violence to the dreamer, in the case of the werewolf, has an intriguing implication of how the refusal to divulge information may be a kind of harm. It brings to mind the lyrics to The Beatles' "I'm So Tired".

It's another nice and haunting story for the Digest. May there be many more.

Twitter Sonnet #1634

A case was tossed beside the road for beer.
Some extra paint would never catch the eye.
A park contained a bloody mob of deer.
The offered cookie fell beneath the sky.
The cans of ships were fresh as evening grapes.
A morning stew was fit to shave a beard.
Remembered treks could fill the ancient tapes.
There's something strange to see but never weird.
The peaks of Peck were dark above the glare.
A devil boy detained the sternest man.
A Doctor told the captain, take the stare.
The empty words combined to feed from Pan.
A faceless man has stumbled 'pon a mug.
The tangled brain was used to weave a rug.

Dinosaurs and Darkness

The above 1901 painting by one CRK, Charles R. Knight, is featured with the work of another CRK, Caitlin R. Kiernan, in the newest Sirenia Digest. It contains the last third of Caitlin's new story, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. It features some nods to old adventure stories but has a more realistically untidy ending. Like the way most things in life end, it just stops.

Like the earlier portions, and much of Caitlin's fiction nowadays, it's composed of isolated, separate narrative pieces that give a sense of scope and sometimes, surprisingly, provide momentum. But my favourite part is the last fragment, taking place in a prehistoric forest. There are some wonderfully ominous descriptions of the place and the impending fate at hand.

Lately I've also been reading H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra, a book that has a lot less to do with Cleopatra than I was expecting. She's actually much more prominent in the first part of the book even though she doesn't make an appearance but is only talked about. That at least makes her seem important, and she functions as a threatening figure in everyone's mind. But when the novel's protagonist, Harmachis, gets himself installed as her high priest, if turns into a silly harem drama, with Cleopatra and her handmaiden vying for Harmachis affection. The book is much better before that.

When Harmachis meets the goddess Isis, some of the description is Lovecraftian in its sense of scope and dread.

Soon the lights began to pale in the rolling sea of air. Great shadows shot across it, lines of darkness pierced it and rushed together on its breast, till at length I only was a shape of flame set like a star on the bosom of immeasurable night. Bursts of awful music gathered from far away. Miles and Miles away I heard them, thrilling faintly through the gloom. On they came, nearer and more near, louder and more loud, till they swept past above, below, around me, swept on rushing pinions, terrifying and enchanting me. They floated by, ever growing fainter, till they died in space. Then others came, and no two were akin. Some rattled as ten thousand sistra shaken all to tune. Some rang from the brazen throats of unnumbered clarions. Some pealed with a loud, sweet chant of voices that were more than human; and some rolled along in the slow thunder of a million drums. They passed: their notes were lost in dying echoes; and the awful silence once more pressed in upon me and overcame me.

...

Twitter Sonnet #1614

The Arctic sneaker carried cold to woods.
Escaped beyond the hedge, the clippers fight.
To tread a road of rice, request the goods.
A waxy shell can clutch nutrition tight.
The tiny 'stache was sharp as cactus spines.
Interrogated fish could only stare.
The passing seal would bark at jagged lines.
A party chose instead to suck the pear.
An answer waits across from faded locks.
Effective arrows bide the time of moons.
Enforcing sales recall the part of stocks.
The animation grants to bugs a boon.
Above the stones a sudden fight erupts.
They're old as hell but hold the tiny pups.

Through the Doors of Time

Last night I finally had time to read the newest Sirenia Digest, which is part two of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. It was good. Part of it continues the tense situation arising from a bad leg injury in prehistoric times. Other parts are interesting found text style things, reminding me of The Secret History of Twin Peaks. I particularly enjoyed a podcast Caitlin wrote with a host adept at the poetic stylings of Morning Zoo DJs. I haven't listened to many podcasts, I hope there really are some like that.

I'm really sleepy to-day after two nights of staying up too late. It's not exactly insomnia. Last night I just fell into a spiral of watching things. I watched an episode of The Boys on Amazon Prime and an episode of Spy Family on Netflix. So far Spy Family is much more interesting but The Boys has its good qualities. I'm in the middle of season two, struggling a little to stay interested. The Boys is good when it lampoons modern superhero movies but it gets really dumb when it tries to tackle politics. It aspires to be kind of a combination of Watchmen and Punisher but it's more like The Tick if it'd been written by Bernie Sanders zealots.

Spy Family is the latest craze among the junior high school students here in Japan. Like Kimetsu no Yaiba, I find it has surprising depths. Beneath its Mr. and Mrs Smith-ish premise is a real commentary on the interplay between intimacy and psychological distance that exists in Japanese households. It's not hard to see why young teenagers in particular love this series.

After that, I found myself watching Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and Smiths videos and then finally I started watching The Long Haul again. God, Diana Dors is just perfection in that movie.

Is There a Better Life?

To-day I read the latest issue of Sirenia Digest. It includes the first part in a serialised version of Caitlin R. Kiernan's upcoming book, Living a Boy's Adventure Tale. Though so far the protagonist is a woman, a scientist wandering among dinosaurs in prehistoric times. Not even a naked bombshell as depicted in the Richard Corben art borrowed for the cover. So it promises to be a recontextualising of the "boy's adventure tale" concept, a surprisingly postmodern idea for Caitlin. But it is good so far, concentrating as it does on the raw meat of a time travel journey. It actually does remind me a bit of Tarzan. I really liked a comparison Caitlin draws between triceratops and cattle. Somehow it really reminds me of late '70s and early '80s David Bowie.

I've been very much in the mood for jungle stories lately. What else have I been reading? Well, I've been reading William Dampier's journal again, also a sort of boy's adventure tale, even if it is non-fiction. I've come to the pirate scientist's adventures in and around Peru of 1683:

November the 3rd, at 6 a Clock in the Morning, our Men landed about 4 Miles to the South of the Town, and took some Prisoners that were sent thither to watch for fear of us; and these Prisoners said, that the Governour of Piura came with 100 armed Men to Payta the Night before, purposely to oppose our landing there, if we should attempt it.

Our Men marched directly to the Fort on the Hill, and took it without the loss of one Man. Hereupon the Governour of Piura with all his Men, and the Inhabitants of the Town ran away as fast as they could. Then our Men entered the Town, and found it emptied both of Money and Goods; there was not so much as a Meal of Victuals left for them.

The Prisoners told us a Ship had been here a little before and burnt a great Ship in the Road, but did not land their Men; and that here they put ashore all their Prisoners and Pilots. We knew this must be Captain Eaton's Ship which had done this, and by these Circumstances we supposed he was gone to the East-Indies, it being always designed by him. The Prisoners told us also, That since Capt. Eaton was here, a small Bark had been off the Harbour, and taken a pair of Bark-logs a Fishing, and made the Fishermen bring aboard 20 or 30 Jars of fresh Water. This we supposed was our Bark that was sent to the Lobos to seek Capt. Eaton.

In the Evening we came in with our Ships, and Anchored before the Town in 10 Fathom Water, near a Mile from the shore. Here we staid till the sixth Day, in hopes to get a Ransom from the Town. Our Captain demanded 300 Packs of Flour, 3000 Pound of Sugar, 25 Jars of Wine, and 1000 Jars of Water to be brought off to us; but we got nothing of it. Therefore Captain Swan ordered the Town to be fired, which was presently done. Then all our Men came aboard, and Captain Swan ordered the Bark which Capt. Harris commanded, to be burnt, because she did not sail well.

Alongside casual accounts of pillage and plunder, Dampier describes the geography and wildlife:

This Island at Sea is of an indifferent height, and appears like Lobos de la Mar. About a quarter of a Mile from the North-end there is a great hollow Rock, and a good Channel between, where there is 7 Fathom Water. The 15th Day we went ashore, and found abundance of Penguins and Boobies, and Seal in great quantities. We sent aboard of all these to be drest, for we had not tasted any Flesh in a great while before; therefore some of us did eat very heartily. Captain Swan, to encourage his Men to eat this coarse Flesh, would commend it for extraordinary Food, comparing the Seal to a roasted Pig, the Boobies to Hens, and the Penguins to Ducks; this he did to train them to live contentedly on coarse Meat, not knowing but we might be forced to make use of such Food before we departed out of these Seas; for it is generally seen among Privateers, that nothing emboldens them sooner to Mutiny than want, which we could not well suffer in a Place where there are such quantities of these Animals to be had, if Men could be persuaded to be content with them.

Have you been eating any coarse meat to dissuade you from mutiny lately?

Twitter Sonnet #1604

With meaning, apps delay the rise of blue.
To proof a coffee, triple suns appear.
The strength to ape is weak but really true.
A lizard asks a wasp to brew a beer.
Another useless paper grew above.
Beneath the house an ant could dwell alone.
An itchy hand imbued the soulless glove.
And so the finger bath its paths atone.
A pretty orc creates an axe of gems.
A flying word could send a sentence up.
A special spider grew a thousand limbs.
An ancient brew could crack the golden cup.
A jungle journey ends in sugar fields.
A keg of rum is all the harvest yields.

The Menace in the Lake

This morning I read a recent Sirenia Digest, #196, which contains the beginning of Caitlin R. Kiernan's unfinished novel, The Merewife. It's a nice, eerie story told from the perspective of Grendel's mother, the monster from Beowulf.

In her prolegomenon, Caitlin talks about the influence of John Gardner's Grendel, one of the many works of fiction from the '60s and '70s that takes the perspective of a villain from a classic work of fiction. Caitlin started The Merewife in the mid-90s, before recontextualised villain stories became the institution they are to-day with big budget movies running the gamut from the daring and successful Joker or Frozen to the safely declawed likes of Maleficent and Cruella.

The Merewife is a nice blend of vivid visceral detail and an exploration of the psychology of a creature whose mind blurs distinctions between human and animal. There are also fascinating references to Norse gods and how myths organically arise over time. It would be nice to read the complete novel but it actually works quite well as a piece of short fiction on its own.

The Middle of Mars

Last night I read two Sirenia Digests, numbers 188 and 189, which contained parts one and two of M is for Mars, a novella Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote back in 2016. It's a nice peek into a world Caitlin has explored in other stories, a fictional, colonised Mars inhabited entirely by women due to an infectious agent in the atmosphere that affects only biological males.

M is for Mars feels a lot like the middle of a longer story. It follows a professor names Babette Flanagan who gets mixed up in some business involving a crashed ship. We learn that she fled from another town where she committed a crime of some kind but we never learn what that crime was. It's kind of an interesting Rorschach test for the reader. Some readers will be inclined to assume she didn't do anything particularly bad and that it was only tyrannical laws that got her in trouble, others will assume she's really guilty of something terrible and ought to seek atonement.

That's half of what turns out to be what you might call book-ends of blanks. The story ends without really providing the answers to tantalising prompts that come up. Like a lot of Caitlin's fiction, M is for Mars also features a lot of dialogue between characters asking each other questions and avoiding answering any of them, usually with a lot of swearing. It's good.

On another subject, lately I've been experimenting with putting my blog entries on YouTube. So far I've made videos for Snow White and Raya and the Last Dragon. Enjoy.

Red Pages

Another box of my old books arrived a few days ago, this one a very small box containing just a few of my Caitlin R. Kiernan, Poppy Z. Brite, and Neil Gaiman books as well as a book about Dahomey. There were also fragments of another box in the box as well as a stamp indicated the item had been received in a damaged state in Nevada. I suspect the original box somehow fell apart and my books were scattered. I also suspect some of my books were lost considering I received only about twenty pages of Caitlin's Low Red Moon. I remember that book fell apart while I was reading it but I'd had it carefully packed between a couple other books. Who knows when I'll ever know what books I lost? I kept no record of what books went in what box.

Anyway, speaking of Caitlin R. Kiernan, I read the new Sirenia Digest to-day, containing a portion of a novella she'd started a few years ago. It's about the world after a plague has devastated the planet, doing something sinister to human women that somehow prevents or distorts natural birth. It's an interesting story brought to life with Caitlin's colourful use a colloquial fantasy dialect. It begins with a bit of rumination on the Garden of Eden, the sort of thing I'm always bound to find interesting after years of studying Milton.

It's supposed to finally be a bit warmer here to-day in Kashihara, Japan, so I think I might go for a walk. Here's a little sign of spring I spotted a few days ago:

Twitter Sonnet #1526

As fish, we drank the water fast and full.
But now the desert sells a house for song.
So mix an apple, big and sauced and cool.
The core is short but who's-your-friends're long.
The swinging bat's a quiet switch to wind.
Before the shaking pitcher, mitts were cold.
The score to-day has edged around the bend.
Before the second inning, hope was old.
A certain time restricts the sacred wrist.
The arm's distraction fit the panty bill.
Explain to vapour all the air you missed.
We stuffed a day's supply beneath the gill.
The scattered pages rode Pacific winds.
Across the marsh, a sickly lantern wends.

What Red Lights Mean

Another two issues of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirenia Digest were in my inbox yesterday, issues 185 and 191. They're both good but 191 is by far the superior.

191 features a story called "Metamorphosis D (Imago)" and it's about a couple who have conflicting memories about a possibly extraterrestrial encounter in the woods. The interesting thing is how this leads to an argument between the two and it becomes a nice illustration of how two people can be misled down paths of reasoning by invoking knowledge and experience that aren't precisely appropriate. But they may be imprecisely appropriate, or related on some fundamental level of human conception. Which makes misunderstanding more likely--because they're compelling rabbit holes.

One character says something in her sleep which the other misinterprets. The first interprets anger in the other as the prelude to physical violence. It may not be, or maybe she's picking up on a frequency in itself that is as irrational as physical violence. This is part of a story that also includes the narrator's perception of physical transformation and two distinct recollections for the same period of time. It's great--it's one thing to have a story about conflicting perceptions, it's another thing to have one that makes it so intimate.

185 featured another of Caitlin's stories with a narrator using futuristic dialect, another nice, poetic experiment in language craft. The story about sinister mannequins is not bad, though maybe not the most interesting one I've ever seen in the Digest.

The Darkness on the Train

This morning I read the newest Sirenia Digest containing a nice new Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "IN UTERO, IN TENEBRIS". Set on a moving train, the story mainly consists of dialogue between two characters, a pair of lovers. There's a line I like early on where the both of them shut their eyes when the train goes through a dark tunnel. One of the characters, the narrator, describes it as making another layer of darkness. Which is sort of a way of describing the story itself as one of the characters describes a dream set in what might possibly be a warehouse. Mention of how manufacturing jobs going oversees have left behind so many abandoned warehouses in the U.S. is a fitting, but not so belaboured it becomes allegorical, observation as the strange, horrific, supernatural body horror aspect takes over. There's a sense of doom overhanging the story, more oppressive than usual for the Digest. The descriptions of darkness reminded me of the famous "darkness visible" lines from Paradise Lost.

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

A lovely story, anyway, and another good reason to be subscribed to the Digest.

Twitter Sonnet #1454

Explosions part the mind between the heads.
We never question glasses looking sharp.
But spider points refuse to quite the meds.
We ask that vetted weasels play the harp.
Existing bugs would make a louder noise.
Dividing bees from wasps we close the door.
We bandied words describing girls and boys.
We fixed the phony rifle's screw and more.
The time to wrestle passed the spinning leg.
Returning rangs were boom a hunting boars.
Appearing late the lady brought the egg.
A perfect human scored beyond her chores.
The quarry's silent now with drifting dust.
The empty Dalek now acquires rust.

Keeping It Under Your Hat

Last night I read one of the newly released Sirenia Digests, #174, a short story from Caitlin R. Kiernan called "The Man Who Loved What Was". Speaking as someone who loves What Was myself, the story is an absorbing contemplation of the value of collecting old things in one's brain. Seemingly treating the concept as an actual accumulation and transportation to a separate plane of existence, the story contextualises the act of studying and researching history to make the psychic impact have something like a physical. There's a sadness and eeriness to it.

To-day I've been reading John Milton again. I have the big collected Milton on my kindle but it just wasn't adequate for me--not to mention difficult to jump to specific points in--so I ordered one of the 1952 Encyclopedia Britannica editions from a thrift store on Amazon. All of those are pretty nifty hardbacks, by the way, and I wouldn't mind having the full collection one day. I brought two of them with me to Japan (Boswell and one volume with Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne).

The Milton volume has miscellaneous poems--including "Comus", "Lycidas", "L'Allegro", and "Il Penseroso"--as well as Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Areopagitica, all unabridged. These really are the essentials if you're going to put Milton into such a slender volume. It's strange what a feeling of peace and invigoration Milton can give me, just reading "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" on the train this morning. None of the millions of Miltonic analyses quite addresses it, probably because words can't. And after all, what's the point of any art if its essence could really be explained?

Twitter Sonnet #1451

The stooges changed atop a skinny hill.
With warnings dire, rocks began to roll.
We waited late but won't receive a bill.
The stain of mustard takes a ketchup toll.
As Stanley built a cue from trees we left.
There's something wrong about a herring bone.
Devised along a needle cut a cleft.
It's knitting, chums, that makes a yarn atone.
We're waiting 'long the wobbly yard for wind.
Let's toss the glass from deck to lofty spar.
I heard the garnet's lately on the mend.
Let's cook a boat of thick and heavy tar.
The sleeping singer sorts a sneeze to song.
Abaft the whales, the chopping keel was strong.