Journey Across Breath/Tragitto Nel Respiro

 

Journey Across Breath/Tragitto Nel Respiro by Stephen Watts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Watts prose-poem straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction, much as the mountain environs that serve as both a setting and character are an interstitial zone, suspended between nations. Time is not only fluid here; it is a swirling, mangled time"line" tied up in itself at odd angles, where chronology is dictated by the mind of the observer. Here, one can see family members as they were long before the observer was born, or as they will become after the subject has died. It is a dance, not of Chronos, but of Kairos, with the participants and the music ever-changing, but all of a theme. This pseudo-memoir is the perfect coffee table book, if your coffee table is a half-rusted folding table next to a ratty wooden bar stool in a concrete building with a rough-hewn door and without glass in the window-panes in the Italian alps. But this little cottage must be warm with family and laughter and tears, all stirred together by Watt's exquisite penmanship.

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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

 

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This may be my favorite Philip K. Dick novel to date. It's got all the "typical" trappings of a Dick novel: Dystopian setting, drugs that really do alter reality, flying cars, synthetic humans - but the sappy title isn't just treacle. There is some real emotional depth to this story. Even more so than The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. This is one of his later novels and one wonders, after this foray, what emotional depths he might have plumbed had he lived longer.

This work is, as one would expect from Dick, complicated, mystifying, even misleading, at times. But here, I'm not just referring to the plot, I'm referring more specifically to the characters. All of them evoke sympathy, pity, and annoyance, at the least, downright loathing, at worst. There really is not one "stock" character here; even the most "vanilla" of the bunch, Herb Maime, shows an underlying depth of psychological complexity burbling under his seeming obsequiousness. And though the action largely follows along with the actions (and inactions and reactions) of Jason Taverner, one might argue that the real central character is Police General Felix Buckman. Or perhaps it is Buckman's sister-wife, Alys, who we learn has perhaps inadvertently caused the reality-shift that Taverner suffers. Honestly, it's difficult to tell who the "main" characters are, as all have a level of complexity and plot-involvement that might argue for their position as protagonist.

If this seems like a hopelessly-twisted story of hopelessly-twisted people . . . it is! And the strangest thing of all: Dick claimed that most of this book was non-fiction. Yes, you read that correctly. Now, Dick's psychosis is well-known, as is his chronic drug use. So, you might just blow this statement off as crazy-talk. And maybe it is. But if you are one of the many people who suspect that there just might be something to the Mandela Effect, well, you can see how the author could have viewed this book as largely non-fiction. Of course, the Mandela Effect had not been named as such when Dick wrote the book (Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island at the time the book was written), but the idea of multiple universes laying one on top of the other, or side by side, with the possibility of a cosmic slip in-between realities and timelines, is one of the foremost features of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. In essence, it is the plot.

Furthermore, the emotional depth and complexity of these characters were not created at an intellectual remove from the pen. They seem to emerge as organic, living beings, people, or at least reflective of people, who Dick knew and loved (and lost). Really, the science fiction here is merely a (multidimensional) doorway into a world of love, pain, guilt, self-doubt, and forgiveness, with spaces of emotional numbness in-between. Here, the inner world is what matters, and the outer world, or, more appropriately, outer worlds (and the slippages between them) is merely a catalyst for human emotion, a window into the soul.

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Gravensteen's Weapons

 I love to travel. The Wanderlust is a core part of who I am. I was born "overseas," as a child, I moved every three years or so, and when "overseas" my family travelled for vacation as often as possible. 

One natural consequence of travel is to come home with photos to remind us of the good times we had and the interesting places we saw. Technology makes it easy to take as many pictures as we want. However, I've found that looking through a screen at the things that are immediately around me forces a one-step remove from the actual experience. I intentionally try to limit my screen time while on vacation; after all, why would I travel halfway across the planet just to be online? But, despite my best efforts to analogize, I'm often sucked into the camera eye and miss the saturation of experience that can occur while I am immersed in a new place. So, I've made efforts to limit how many pictures I take while travelling. Of course, I'll take some photos, but whereas I might have taken a hundred photos a day in the past, I've tried to limit myself to something more like half of that. Even then, I have a lot of photos to "dump".

This last April, I was able to travel to Germany for work. After this, my wife and I took a week-long stay in Belgium. We were "stationed" in Antwerp - our Air BnB was literally 100 feet from the train station - and travelled out to Ghent, Bruges, and up to The Hague, Netherlands. I took a lot of pictures that week, as Belgium has some of the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen. When I look at the photos on my phone, I'm overwhelmed. So, I am trying to parse out these photographs into batches that are a little more digestible in order to blog a bit more clearly about my trips.

We'll start with Castle Gravensteen, AKA Castle of the Counts in Ghent. I'll include pictures of the castle itself in another post (or posts). 

Being a dutiful D&D nerd, of course I toured the castle! And, of course, I took photos of some of the weapons displayed there. This shows maybe half of the weapons there (again, I tried to limit pictures so I could actually enjoy the experience in the moment). For you other D&D nerds, hopefully this will provide some inspiration for your own games. Or, perhaps you might just enjoy the beauty of these killing tools. 

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!