The Haunted Sleep

The Haunted Sleep by Jonathan Wood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I cannot tell you whether or not the choice of cover art for this slim volume was intentional. I can tell you that it is meaningful: The Queen of Clubs, faceless, hollow, her head a gateway to void, one hand upraised (as Mary's is frequently represented in medieval and renaissance art) to heaven, the other holding a dagger, ready to strike. There is no deception here, things are what they seem. The Haunted Sleep awaits us all.

Wood presents with a series of prose poetry and verse. I admit that it took a moment for me to key in to the syntax, as it is often "experimental" in nature. Narrative flow is often implied, but never explicit. And yet, there is a skeleton, if you will, to which the words always return, a base of existentialism that sometimes dips into pure nihilism, but sometimes embraces the need to accept and embrace inevitable fate in a way that is bounded by paralytic complacency, on one hand, and futile, but optimistic action, on the other.

At times, the nihilism can be overwhelming. But as the reader pushes forward, they will find that the void and the stark recognition of its final, utter blackness, is a baseline for experience. There are moments of . . . not hope . . . rather, acceptance of the mystery of what does or does not lie beyond. "In Lonely Distant Temples We Dream of Freedom from the State," for example, points to the "little death" of the French as one moment, lasting merely seconds, when we are truly free of everything, even the self. It is a minor escape, but an escape, nonetheless, from fear and oppression, available to all.

My parents both passed away this year. Mom in February, Dad in April. They were hospitalized within one week of each other for different reasons. But neither of them came home. And, in fact, we had to make the decision in both of their cases to take them off life support. I spent every day of my Dad's last two weeks with him, knowing he was dying of a cancer that was riddling his brain. He had a very difficult time communicating, since he had a tracheostomy and since he was losing his facility for speech and coherent thought quickly. But in the snippets of conversation we were able to have, I knew that he knew that Mom had passed (this was not a foregone conclusion - it's too long of a story to share here, but he knew that she had passed, forgot, remembered, several times). Maybe two days before he died, I asked him if he was ready to go, to which he nodded, feebly, "yes". I asked him if he wanted to see Mom again, to which he also responded positively. Now, say what you will about people's belief or unbelief in life after death, but my father found comfort in the knowledge that he would see his wife again and also, I learned through further conversation, in the possibility of seeing his parents, aunts, uncles, etc.

Because of this, "Folk Memory," which is a prayer, a ritual, to one's ancestors, struck deeply. It is the most hopeful of pleadings to the ancestors in the dead of winter. It is a matter-of-fact acceptance of the inevitable, with a touch of hope that while we sleep in winter, winter will, ultimately end.

Threaded throughout the volume (it is, incidentally, a beautiful artifact, in and of itself) is this acknowledgement of death. It is open eyed, morbidly candid, and seems to open a Hegelian dialectic between utter hopelessness and overly-naive optimism. This dynamic doesn't take place by comparing the two, but by walking toward the void, noting the banal along the way, and seeing the abyss as a way ahead, as the only way ahead, never slackening one's pace, even as the vast awesomeness (I use the term in it's sense of "full of awe") opens its unstoppable maw to engulf the individual, who is then free, finally free, from the pains, stresses, and complications of mortality. Carpe Diem , even when the day is the Day of the Dead.

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De Profundis

De Profundis 2nd Edition by Michał Oracz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I pointed out in a recent blog post, I was introduced, indirectly, to this game via a newsletter (yes, a physical newsletter sent via post) that a fellow gamer created. I was so intrigued that I bought this book and immediately set about reading it.

De Profundis is written in the form of letters, an intriguing conceit given that the game itself is played by writing letters to one another and riffing off of each other's comments, pulling questions forth from your correspondents, and tweaking your responses a bit to construct a shared universe on the fly. It seems theoretically simple, but I'm intrigued to see how it plays out in real-time.

The trick, of course, is managing expectations. To do this, the person proposing the "campaign" constructs, either alone or with other potential correspondents, a "Society," complete with goals, members (i.e., characters), an agreed "convention" (e.g., "X-files" or "High Victorian Society" or whatever), the expected literary "level" of the game, and, for games specific to the Cthulhu mythos (which was the original intent of the game), what level of weirdness or eeriness should be permitted/aimed for during play. And, of course, one needs a starting plot to get things going, a premise, an opening riff.

There are several examples of such Societies given in the book, and this is a good thing, as the high-level description would be too vague without some concrete examples. The authors are very self-aware that there is a tendency to unravel if clear expectations aren't set from the beginning. That said, there is no arbiter, no game "master". All should participate with an equal level of agency and, potentially, input. Dice may be rolled, and random tables are provided with each example, but instructions on when they are to be used are either not there or I lost them in the rest of the text (both possible).

After reading De Profundis, I have dedicated myself to figuring out a way to carry out a campaign with a very select group of my favorite gamer friends. But rather than be subject to the rules vagaries regarding the use of tables, I think I will tweak another great RPG find of late, English Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game, which is a solo game that can optionally be played with others. I don't think it will take much to integrate the two, and English Eerie has more clear guidelines on how to randomize events (using face cards instead of dice - a good excuse to pick up a cool set of playing cards). Combining the strengths of the two could provide a thoroughly engaging game of correspondence. I am excited to experiment with this!

Just the other day, a letter arrived in the mail in response to my blog post. It was from an individual who has become even more disenchanted with social media than I have; a person whom I have gamed with both in person and online, a great roleplayer! Last night, I bought a bunch of decorative (read: dark, gothic) paper and some fancy pens and wrote him a response, folding the paper into an envelope that I'm hoping will survive the rigors of the US Postal Service. He will be one I will definitely invite. I'm take another step back toward analog, toward more personal interaction than what I normally get on social media. Goodreads is, of course, the exception. But it's more than just a social media, isn't it? So much more.

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Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa by Robert Aickman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wouldst thou like to write sentences deliciously, like this?

I might compare them, though a little distantly, with the once controversial last works of the late Charles Sims: apparently confused on the surface, even demented, they made one doubt while one continued to gaze, as upon Sim's pictures, whether the painter had not in truth broken through to a deep and terrible order.

Of course, you would. You're tired of Lovecraft's confused, adverb-sodden descriptions. Bored with his hundreds of pale imitators. But you still want to capture that eerie sense of something missing.

You, my friend, want to read Robert Aickman.

Aickman's clarity and ability to plunge the reader under the water of the mind and personality of his narrator here locks the reader in and provides confidence that the author is going to deliver something special. Reading this is a lesson in writing. A graduate seminar, no less. Like any class, there is at least one "slow" point, but this might be a mercy, rather than a failing. Given the height of literary airs here, one must come down into the atmosphere to breathe, at least once. Given the depths of subtly-hypnotic writing that draws the reader down like a long-missed lover on a warm bed, one must, for a moment, come up for air.

The opening breath, "Ravissante" is, at turns, wonderfully subtle, then ridiculous, then embarrassing, then horrifying. There may or may not have been a supernatural element to the story - a black poodle that was as much spider as dog, a domineering crone who stoked the bellows of lust in the narrator for a girl that may or may not have been real, an insect-demon, all of which might have just been occlusions of the mind - or not. Marlowe is banging his head against his sarcophagus because he knows what Faust could have been, since Aickman has shown the world how to best portray the invasion of the demonic into the banality of life on planet earth. Five stars that may be either real or imagined. You decide. Aickman isn't telling.

As the trees around me became yet bigger and thicker, fear came upon me; though not the death fear of that previous occasion, I felt now that I knew what was going to happen next; or, rather, I felt I knew one thing that was going to happen next, a thing which was but a small and far from central part of an obscure, inapprehensible totality. As one does on such occasions, I felt more than half outside my body.

"The Inner Room" is a creepy dollhouse story. Take the best of Danielewski, Angela Carter, and Brothers Quay, stir it together, make the syntax perfectly exquisite, the imagery simultaneously vivid and murky, and each character's mannerisms subtly but thoroughly manifest through their dialogue and actions, with just a touch of philosophical insight into people's hearts, and you have a start. But only a start. Add this bit of inner dialogue, which accurately portrays the strange frisson that children often feel, or at least that I often felt as a child, before an ominous, momentous event:

As the trees around me became yet bigger and thicker, fear came upon me; though not the death fear of that previous occasion, I felt now that I knew what was going to happen next; or, rather, I felt I knew one thing that was going to happen next, a thing which was but a small and far from central part of an obscure, inapprehensible totality. As one does on such occasions, I felt more than half outside my body.

. . . which is reflective of the way I felt as I read this story. Five stars.

"Never Visit Venice" coddles you in hope, warmth, and the promise of love. It lulls you, like a gondola on the water. Then, it thrusts you into the waves and begs, nay, insists the question: Is it preferred to live like a lion for an hour than to live a lifetime like an ass? Five stars above a lilac sky with the waves lapping up against the sides of your wooden gondola.

There's synchronicity in that I read "The Unsettled Dust" at the same time I read Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia. A (un?)happy coincidence(?). Like the landscape it's set in, this is a slow, malingering, matter-of-fact character study intertwined with the supernatural. This one is a little more straightforward for Aickman, but still sprinkled with the dust of uncertainty. Four stars.

"The Houses of the Russians" is a prime example of Aickman's ability to control pace. You think you're coming to a horrific conclusion, then find out you're not. You think you are going to gain some great knowledge, and you do not. You think that the nightmare is over, but it has just begun. Aickman says this is his own favorite story of the collection, but what does an author know about his own work? Nothing, I can assure you. And though this is a fabulous story, I don’t think it’s the best of the collection. Then again, how does one compare one story’s quality against another’s when every story is a miniature master-class in writing? Five eerily-meandering stars to this tale of anachronistic spectres . . . or not.

"No Stronger Than a Flower" is the one disappointing tale in the book; inscrutable, really. Is Nesta a vampire, insane, or merely symbolic? Maybe all three? In any case, her withdrawal seems merely whimsical, perhaps a touch spoiled. A mere three stars here.

AAAAH!!! CREEPY CHILDREN! "The Cicerones" has them. This tale is particularly chilling when compared to the others in this collection. “Sinister” doesn’t even begin to describe the level of paranoia-inducing conspiracy that this tale dredges up from the catacombs. Yep. I've got the shivers now. And yet, this story still has that Aickmanesque power of understatement (unlike my screaming introduction to the paragraph). The ending phrase "especially after everyone started singing," so seemingly innocent when seen alone, is absolutely one of the most terrifying things I have ever read in context. I do not want to hear that hymn! Five stars.

The novella, "Into the Wood," the centerpiece of the book (though it appears last) is one of the most satisfying reads I've had all year. Ostensibly a story about insomnia, it's really a (strange) tale about self-discovery and empowerment of the main characters, Margaret. It's a walk into dreamlessness that blurs the line between night and day, erasing notions of the way things "should be," while remaining gentle and respectful of the needs of those who don't follow the same path. It's about as feminist a work as a man writing in the early 1960s could produce. Consider the thoughts of Margaret, the protagonist, who has accidentally checked in at a Scandinavian resort for insomniacs while her husband attends to business matters in a nearby city:

Margaret took a small pull on herself. Henry must be broadly right and she broadly wrong, or life would simply not continue as it did, and more and more the same everywhere. The common rejoinder to these feelings of rebellion was, as she knew well, that she needed a little more scope for living her own life, even (as a few Mancunians might dare to say) for self-expression. But that popular anodyne never, according to Margaret's observation of other couples, appeared in practice to work. nor could she wonder. It reduced the self in one to the status and limits of a hobby. It offered one lampshade making, or so many hours a week helping the cripples and old folk, when what one truly needed was a revelation; was simultaneous self-expression and self-loss. And at the same time it corrupted marriage and cheapened the family. The rustling, sunny forest, empty but labyrinthine, hinted at some other answer; an answer beyond logic, beyond words, above all beyond connection with what Margaret and her Cheshire neighbours had come to regard as normal life. It was an answer different in kind. It was the very antithesis of a hobby, but not necessarily the antithesis of what marriage should be, though never was.

This paragraph perfectly brings to light the desire and need I have to read and write "spooky" or "strange" fiction, as well as my drive to immerse myself so much into roleplaying games, and my penchant for strange art and hiking alone in the woods. I've learned something about myself and my desires/needs that I couldn't articulate before, but Aickman renders clearly and compellingly into words. Wonderful!

The satisfaction of "Into the Wood" is worth the entire price of the book. And, while Aickman thought "The Russian Houses" was one of his best stories (in this volume, at least), I think he under-rates what he's created here. The depth of insight here, into desire for self-satisfaction (without hedonism) and into the pleasures (not sexual) of losing oneself, is profound. This story is ripe for analysis, whether Marxist, feminist, or what have you. I sense that this story would hold up to any sort of theoretical microscope under which it is examined. It is a writer's story by a writer's writer, nearly perfect in every way. Five stars.

If you are not a writer, have no fear. Well, I take that back. Have some fear, but let Aickman serve it to you in little, enticing doses of unease and just a hint that something isn't right, though it may be; but it probably isn't, unless you look at it in a certain way, which you shouldn't. You think I'm full of vagaries? Try Aickman. The difference is that Aickman's vagaries are as carefully measured and doled out, calculated, really, as mine are flippant and chaotic. Aickman is in control.

Aickman is always in control.


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Analog Kid

If I don’t write this post now, I never will. I’ll get too caught up in other social media and waste my time away. So, I’m writing now, while the thoughts are hot.

I’m no luddite. I embrace technology. I’m on a lot of different social media platforms, Youtube is almost constantly streaming at my home (for obscure music, if nothing else), I have this here blog (duh), I host a podcast etc. And though I’m about to hit the half-century mark, I don’t consider myself “old,” not by any stretch of the imagination. I finally admitted I was middle aged when I turned 48 (reason: Grandma died at 96, and that’s one of my uncontrollable goals). In my church volunteer work, I spend many hours, every week, working with and alongside singles aged 18-30. Even years after back surgery, I *feel* young. No, not ride-my-bike-to-strange-unexplored-places-for-an-entire-day young, but still, young. I keep telling my kids that I’m still 16 in my head; 17 on a particularly mature day.

But I know, especially after burying both of my parents this past spring, that I don’t have all the time in the world. I love my parents, but they were hardcore television addicts. They did other things, of course, but as far as I can remember there was rarely ever a time when the TV wasn’t on in our house. Even as an adult, when I would call or visit, the TV was always blaring in the background. I wondered, as my father was dying, if he regretted so much time spent in front of the TV. He couldn’t communicate at that point, yet I wondered. I don’t watch much TV at all. Haven’t since I moved out of the house decades ago. I don’t know much about actors and TV shows – a little here and there from shows that I’ve watched, but nowhere near as much as almost everyone I interact with. I just don’t want to waste my time and brain space on that much TV. Again: Life is too short. Way too short. That has been hammered home to me in a big way this past year. Hammered right down into my heart with a sharp spike of grief. Twice.

And yet, I will get roped into surfing the internet and, in particular, social media, quite regularly. I probably waste nearly as much time on that as my parents did on TV. Not quite, but close.

A month or so ago, Google announced that it would no longer be supporting Google Plus outside of business use. I was big into G+, since the roleplaying game community there is a Big Deal. Artists use Instagram, authors and actors use twitter, bored housewives use facebook, and gamers use G+. And now, G+ is going to go the way of all flesh.

So, there was a mass scramble for “where to go” in the gaming community. Many of us ended up, for a number of reasons, on MeWe. It seems to be a happy medium between FB and G+, with some of the features of both and, of course, missing stuff from both. But it seems adequate to the task. And I don’t want to lose contact with my many gamer friends. At least not most of them.

In the process of all this, author Michael Curtis (known for his work for Goodman Games, primarily) wrote a post about something he had been thinking about for a long time, a physical newsletter, in which people would mail him (yes, with physical mail, not Email) a note and an SASE (that’s Self-addressed Stamped Envelope for those who don’t know) and he would, in return, send the newsletter and, if you wished, include your name and physical address in the newsletter as one who would desire to be contacted by others.

Michael also pointed out the very interesting RPG “DeProfundis,” which is based on, you guessed it, letter writing. I've just purchased it, in fact, after reading Michael's writeup about it in his newsletter. While they recommend writing in the medium that is “of the era” (so Email and texts for modern games, letters for older games), I would think letters all the time might be very cool, if it was limited to a small number of people who you are profoundly connected with in terms of gaming. I can think of a handful of people like that very easily! Back when I first started gaming, if you didn’t game face to face, you either did “play by mail” or you didn’t game at all! I’d LOVE to see “play by mail” resurrected. Seriously, handwriting the story that you exchange with each other, anticipating that letter arriving in the mail, opening it to discover what creative additions your other players have included – now THAT is exciting stuff!

As a teenager, in the days before Email, we used to (gasp!) write letters to each other all the time. Real, physical letters that oftentimes bared our souls to the recipient. You think it’s tough doing long-distance relationships now? Hah! Hahahahahaha! Anyway, when Email came along, I embraced it wholeheartedly. It was so much easier (and cheaper) to send an Email than to send a letter. Then along came social media, making connections with old friends as simple as a click.

But some things were lost. A lot was lost, in fact. Not a lot of information. In fact, I have access to far more information than I even thought existed back then. I can easily and conveniently look up information on any number of subjects, so long as I’m willing to winnow through the chaff of misinformation that exists on the internet now. Books that I had thought would be lost forever are easily found scanned into electronic nooks and crannies everywhere. The encyclopedias of my youth are entirely worthless at this point. Almost all he music in the world is at the tip of my fingers. I can look up and contact many old friends at will, or for a small fee.

The ubiquity of information is, overall, a good thing, if one is wise. Lost, though, is a lot of the heart and soul, the human-ness that went into establishing and maintaining connections and in creating new information and art to add to that which already exists. We have been digitized and de-humanized, to some extent. Futurist will argue that this is the next step in evolution, but when the tool becomes the user and the user becomes the tool (I’m looking straight at you, Facebook), are we evolving or are we surrendering growth to and becoming subjected to those who are wielding the tools, that is, wielding us. Your information online is not your own. You are fooling yourself if you don’t think you’re being fed information and influenced every time you start up a web-browser.

Again, though, I’m not a luddite. I’m not here to convince you that you should give up technology. I love it.

Still, something has been lost. And I feel it. I feel it in my soul. Just before Michael Curtis announced his initiative, I had sent a couple of snail mail letters out to friends of mine – good friends, close friends who I initially “met” online, but have since met in person several times. Friends that I leaned on when my parents died, even. These are not cursory relationships.

Yet so many of my online relationships are cursory. This is just a question of statistics – I get it. I’ve got almost 5,000 followers on Twitter. I can’t follow all of them every day. I’d have no life at all. So I cull my “must check on” list to 150 people. Still, that’s 150 people, the so-called “Dunbar’snumber” – the number of people that one can realistically maintain stable social relationships. And that’s just on Twitter. Add in Facebook, Instagram, and now MeWe (acknowledging that there is some overlap) and it’s still just . . . too . . . much.

When I sent those letters and when I received Michael’s little newsletter, I felt CONNECTED. And that’s what I long for, feeling really, truly connected in meaningful ways to interesting people whom I love. I also want to feel connected with myself! So often, I lose myself in social media, and I mean that in all the worst ways. I lose time, I lose focus on my existential being here and now, I get distracted from those with whom I want to build the strongest relationships, and I don’t take the critical, soul-feeding time I need to be creative and let my mind wander and expand on its own, away from the noise of social media.

In time, I’m going to probably abandon Facebook. I need to be on there now, because of the church responsibilities I mentioned above. But I will only be in my current position for two more years, after which I plan on really ramping down on FB usage and maybe just leaving it altogether. As it is, I really only go on to wish someone happy birthday or to see pictures of my grandson that my daughter has posted. Even then, though, the distraction, the hook, is waiting there, just off to the side, to drag me down into a fugue of wasted time and empty conversations, away from my creative energies, away from my analog self.

Twitter seems to be about my speed, and I don't see myself leaving it for a while. But I am careful to cull those who I follow, but who don’t follow me, unless I feel really compelled to do so. There are certain artists and thinkers and book publishers who I will follow that will never follow me (Nick Cave, Useke Ueno, I’m looking at you two), and I’m fine with that. But by and large, I am purging Twitter of those who just want to advertise to me or who don’t provide me something meaningful to me.

MeWe is a work in progress. I’m connected to far fewer people than I was on G+, and this is a bit of a disappointment, because gamers are my crew, so to speak. But I’m okay with thinning the herd a bit, too. That let’s me concentrate on those who fill my heart, head, and soul.

Instagram is a clean interface, but I've gone into it really limiting who I follow, for reasons that should be apparent by now, if not by the end of this post. 

Pinterest is a great place for collecting images. But definitely not a good social media platform. I consider it more of an idea dumping ground than anything. 

Tumblr I hardly use specifically because it is way too easy to become enwrapped there. I pretty much just don't go there anymore, and I'm happier and more fulfilled for it.

For a time, I was really, really into Goodreads as my preferred method of social media. I don't quite know why I got away from that. How cool is it to be able to connect with people about books. You'll always have something to talk about there, and I've developed some great, real life relationships via Goodreads. Goodreads stays! In fact, if I were to cut down my social media list dramatically, Goodreads would be the last thing to go.

I'm hoping that clearing a bit more space in my analog life by cutting out some virtual life will also free me up to do what I love most: writing and gaming and reading and hiking and learning to play that darned guitar, as well as spending time with my wife, kids, and grandson, as well as those friends who are in proximity (or travelling to bring me in proximity with those friends). I need to interact directly with the world. And the internet is not the world. It's a mask. I'm ready to begin clawing off the mask.

What lies ahead? I’m not sure. Changes, definitely. But not all at once. Consider this post a declaration of intent and a beginning. I’m not abandoning the internet, no, far, far from it. I’ve developed many real and lasting friendships there. But the internet is a starting point for me, now. Not an end in and of itself. It’s a place to test the waters, but not a place to dive to the bottom. I want to see who is out there and what they have to offer, but you’ll find me concentrating on far fewer people, far more deeply than before. If you feel like maybe I’ve been inattentive to you online, maybe it’s time for you to reach out a bit, too, huh? Leave me a message here with your Email address, for starts. Then let’s exchange snail mail addresses. Of course, I won’t be able to take up correspondences with everyone, but we might just strike it rich and be rewarded with getting to know each other better than the virtual masks we both wear online. I’ll start. Here’s my snail mail (which I will keep up until some doofus does something stupid, but I’m willing to take that chance), coded to screw with bots:

9_3_0_ E_i_s_e_n_h_o_w_e_r_ A_v_e_

J_a_n_e_s_v_i_l_l_e_, W_I_ 5_3_5_4_5

U^S^A

Send me a letter. Or a postcard. Or knickknacks. Whatever you like (so long as it’s legal and not obscene, please). I’ll get something back in the mail to you until I can’t afford the time or postage anymore.

And, of course, feel free to ping me at all the usual social media. Just remember that you’re up against thousands of other people and all their potential distractions. Your chances of getting my attention are infinitely larger via snail mail. Now, I’m off to send another SASE to Michael!

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Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia

Est: Collected Reports from East Anglia by Wendy Mulford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Place possesses us. Place colonises us. It is a dirt simple, soil simple truth that we so often deny.

I lived a tough, yet charmed life as a child. Tough because I was raised by a military man, with all that implies. Charmed because, as a military brat, I lived in more places around the world than most people even see in their lifetime. People often ask "what was it like moving around so much"? To which I reply "It's all I ever knew. It was just how we lived." To recap, I was born in Germany and lived in The Philippines, Italy, England, and all over the US. And I mean lived, not "visited," not "touristed," not "vacated"; Lived. Yes, we saw the sights, but I was much more likely, for example, to intentionally find my way to the seedy parts of London, get propositioned by hookers, watch bums fighting, drop into a game store and play a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and drink at the local pub than to visit the Tower of London (never been there) or Madame Tussauds (never been there, either). Each country and each section of each country had their own je ne sais qua. But of all the places I lived, I loved England most. I lived on RAF Chicksands, near Bedford, Beds, in the "midlands" as they call it. I gathered, during my time there, that Bedford was considered one of those towns - so big that you had to acknowledge it was there, but with so little to do that no one went there for anything in particular. With London less than an hour train ride south, why would you go to Bedford? Well, suffice it to say that me and my mates found ourselves off-base, in Bedford, often enough. Getting off-base was always a good thing (those who have lived behind the barbed wire know why I say this).

We didn't always head straight for Bedford, or London, for that matter. My favorite city was actually Oxford. And my favorite area to "get away" from people was the Cotswolds. My wife and I are hoping to make it over there next year, in fact. We'll see what circumstances and finances allow.

Very occasionally, thrice, I think, I went to the area known as East Anglia. Frankly, there wasn't much there to do. We went to the coast there to pick up our car when it shipped from the States. I went to a Model United Nations Human Rights day at RAF Bentwaters (which is the subject of one of the essays in this book) and had a one night stand with another student there (I happened to be assigned to room at her house, which we both . . . like very much). And the third time, I can't remember why I was out there, just that I was out that direction.

As much as people ignored Bedford, they downright looked down their nose at East Anglia. For American readers, East Anglia is sort of the equivalent of the plains of North Dakota. People live there, but few of them really want to live there. It was considered a waste-space, to be honest.

So, what did I want out of this book? Maybe it's gritty nostalgia. Or my fascination with the cast-off corners of all places, the liminal zones between desireable and undesireable places. Maybe I wanted to recapture the feeling of living near there. I don't know. But, in the end, I felt satisfied, possibly because of the immersiveness of this book. This is a broad range of essays and poetry, but not so broad that it loses all semblance of structure. It's eclectic in both style and subject matter, just the sort of quirky, undefinable sort of book that I love most.

It feels like there's a touch of pride nestled into the self-deprecation of the introduction, and an appreciation for the hidden glory of the banal. Maybe that's what I seek: justification for the "small guy" living in the undesirable spaces. I might just have a chip on my shoulder. While I most miss the hills of the Cotswolds and the bustle of London, East Anglia was very near my home for an important time in my life, my "coming of age" in my late teen years (15 - 18). I do recall hiking out that way over what seemed like a lot of sand dunes, or at least sandy-soiled hillocks. There was a certain ruggedness that held appeal, like the way some people love the desert (though not me!) or the bayou. And the scent of the ocean was always just over the . . . well, not hill, um . . . horizon. Though the horizons there were vast. One felt, at times, like one could fall into the sky.

But it wasn't just the land itself. People lived here. One thing Americans just do NOT understand is the vast old-ness of Europe. Sure, there were people in the Americas thousands of years ago, but there's no tangible sense of inheritance or continuity from those times. In Europe, there is that sense. For example, when I was a teenager, we used to sneak into a priory that had originally been established in 1150 - eight hundred and thirty five years before I arrived in England - to hold seances, frighten girls (they cuddled more that way, when they weren't punching you for being a jerk) and drink, mostly. There were actual secret passages in the walls and a couple of underground tunnels, though one of them had been bricked up by the police years before and the other led to an old stone wine cellar. And it was supposedly haunted. I have so many good, spooky memories of that place!

David Southwell hints at what we were on about in his essay "The Empty Quarter:

Fossil spaces - buildings that outlived their original purpose - still sing songs of their former lives. We march to them not to find shelter nor succour, but something of ourselves. Something lost. What was forgotten in the static of the city, now waiting on the horizon as derelict memories. Ready to be walked to, ready for conversation with us. Ready to live in our imagination.

As you can see, there is some great writing in this collection. One of my favorite segments is this haunting historical anecdote by Edmund Blakeny:

Our travels begin where all my journeys ind, in the fishing town of Cromer, which bravely faces the iron sea. She is a strange sloping town forming an 'L' shape from the four pinnacles of the church tower to the fantastic limb of the pier stretching out beyond the coast. The town and the sea coexist with relative ease, though this has not always [been - sic] the case. Indeed, at one time Cromer was far removed from the abyss and relatively inland, for beneath the frowning arch of the horizon, beneath the swelling waves, lies the memory of Cromer's older brother, the town of Shipden.

It was a cold Medieval night, as the Angelus rang out over the rising gale, imploring the townsfolk to prayer, when a devilish storm was riding out at sea. it lashed the charging waves with its lightening whip and roared with malevolent glee. Terrified by the hollow crash of air against the cliffs, not a single man, woman nor child dared answer the Church's call fr fear of being struck down without mercy, and so the village hid in terror. But the storm was too cruel to accept their submission. The galloping waves smashed into the weak shield of the cliff; rain and hail, like stones from a sling, were hurled against the earth; the wind tore trees and gorse up out from the ground; and the jetties and houses were swept away as the angelus continued to ring out over the chaos. The next day, Cromer awoke to a sky of remorseful pink hanging over the sea's flat and mournful expanse, like a satin cloth covering the tomb of Shipden.

Five centuries later, in 1888, the steamer Victoria was travelling en route from Cromer to Yarmouth when it struck an unknown object and rapidly began to take on water. The local fisherman rushed to rescue the passengers as the ship was consumed by the sea. When it was discovered that the vessel had collided with a church steeple rising above the waves, Shipden emerged from the mists of history and tales rapidly began to circulate.

But the lost town had long since been a present reality for the people of Cromer before the Victoria disaster: on frozen nights when the sea strikes out at the cliffs, a toll can be heard resounding under the storm; a sorrowful chime, again and again, like an Angelus bell calling the fearful to prayer.

This is some exquisite writing. This is the sort of non-fiction that can carry one away into the numinous without any reliance on the supernatural. It's rare to find non-fiction prose this good, especially on such a banal subject as the landscape. Yet, here it is.

As I mentioned, I've been to RAF Bentwaters, back when it was an active US Air Force base. Funny that they don't mention the well-known UFO incident that happened there in the '80s, which is still, even now, causing controversy. They do mention the fact that the runway, the longest in Europe (to accommodate the Space Shuttle, should it have needed to land there) is paved over the central village of the East Angles, who ruled the region for 400 years. There has to be a symbol there

Speaking of strange happenings, through this book, I discovered "Seahenge," an ancient stone circle that seemed to emerge from the waves (shades of Lovecraft) long after I had left England.

As most of my Goodreads friends know, I like to read more than one book at a time (life's too short not to). I've been reading Robert Aickman's Sub Rosa in between the chapter breaks for Est. I went from reading Aickman to reading Lander Hawes' short piece without skipping a beat. This is a huge complement to Hawes, whose atmospheric piece here, "His Winter View," is an evocation of the relationship between man and land.

Elaine Ewart's essay on the archaeology of Sutton Hoo and the deaths of her loved ones, "Digging," resonated deeply with me, since my parents both passed away this past Spring. That was a hard read for me, but cleansing for the soul in some ways. Books do that to you, sometimes, baptize your soul with fire, as it were. I needed that read.

On the less pathos-driven, but no less compelling front, there is a bookstore story in here! And a wonderful one, at that, about a bookstore being opened in an abandoned chapel in the heart of an East Anglian village. Robert jacksons "the Chapel" is a delightful read!

"Living Landscape," by Darren Tansley, is a fascinating natural history of the Essex/Suffolk border region of the Stour Valley that reminds me that Britain is, after all, very small, an island where changes in climate and human practices have immediate effects on the land. In very few pages, Tansley gives the reader a strong sense of the earth-spirit of the area, a short glimpse that provides a great deal of "knowing" in its few words. Nature writers should strive to emulate this sort of "unfolding" writing that allows the reader to peek under the covers without shoving his face into the sometimes crassness of academic science. The essay feels, well, natural.

"Deep Traces" goes underground. Here archaeologist Philip Crummy outlines the evidence of Roman inhabitants and, strikingly, the Boudicann destruction of the invaders. In the matter of five pages one is immersed (almost literally) into the pre-Christian history of Britain, learning the human stories behind the artifactual remains. Wonderfully insightful and even evocative. This is how archaeology should be written!

MW Bewick pens a delightful skip through East Anglia by way of Ian Fleming and his famous character in "00". Bond bonds it all together. An interesting contrivance for pulling disparate thoughts together. A neat piece of literary sleight-of-hand. What would you expect from an essay whose touchpoints are spy novels?

There is good poetry interspersed throughout this volume, but none rises to the level of Wendy Mulford's gothic "The Doppelganger II," a dark, melancholy poem of loss brought on by The Great War happening within earshot of the shores of East Anglia.

Across the channel, the guns. That's all she hears.

I won't quote it in full, out of respect for the author. But it is one of the more compelling poems I've read in an age or two. A wonderful way to cap off this excellent volume!

Whether or not you've been to or live in England, you would do well, especially on a drizzly autumn day, to immerse yourself in Est. Though it didn't bring me "all the way back" to England (that's what next year's trip is for!), it did provide enough glimpses to remind me of my time there and the wonderful place it is, even in its most undesirable, empty spaces.

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