Pithy Entries and Social Media

 I am again contemplating, as I have in the past, the abandonment of most social media. I've been asking myself, this time, what is it that draws me back to it, what causes the addiction? I've asked many other people who I know and respect the same question: Why do we have to keep coming back?

I'm not going to answer that question at this time. I need to meditate on it longer, possibly much longer, before I can come to a natural conclusion and do what I need to do. 

I swore in the past that I would NOT let this blog devolve into a long-form twitter/instagram/facebook/blusky/mammoth/fill-in-social-media-platform here. I am developing a strong dislike for the pithy. And yet, there are times when I feel the need to post something that is rather short and unprofound. Here I am doing just that right now. I suppose it's part of a transition.

My writing area is in the top floor of my house. My record player (well, my better record player, as opposed to the record player of my childhood) is in the basement. So, I've been slowly migrating records downstairs. Tonight, I brought down Hawthonn's wonderful Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) and played it before putting it away on the shelf.  Of course, I gave it a spin. It's one of the first pieces of vinyl I purchased, actually, I think it was the first I purchased since 1987. It really rekindled my love for vinyl. For those who have heard it and held it, you're probably saying "of course it did. How could it not?"

While listening (I am one of those people who can listen and read at the same time), I read David Tibet's essay"Why I Looked to the Southside of the Door," which is, as one would expect with his writing, elliptical, peeking around the corner, just out of sight, and absolutely enveloping in its charisma. From Coptic grammar to more nicknames than I can keep track of to, of course, Current 93 (don't all roads lead to Current 93 after all?), we journey with Tibet through vast halls of implication, intellect, and imagination. 

On top of this, after a clear, calm day, an incredible lightning storm rolled in. At first, being in the basement, I thought someone was moving furniture on the main floor, then I felt that telltale rumble that indicates that the gods are angry. I went upstairs (to the main floor) and turned out the lights, watching the lightning storm. A block away, on one of the city's main arterial roads, I watched car lights occasionally zip by while the sky became (quite literally) electric. Just beneath my living room windows, where we have a storied thorn bush growing (storied because we've had two families of children raised in it: three robins last year and a cardinal this year), fireflies glowed, as they do this time of year. I penned the following trite missive which I am including here because it was all part of a moment:

The lacerating chaotic violence of lightning shattering the Gates of Heaven

. . . between . . .

Car lights filing down a busy street,

Humans with

Thoughts,

Passions,

Aspirations

at the wheel

. . . between . . .

A stately procession of fireflies;

lift, light, drop

lift, light, drop

Mating awaits.

"It's the amps that kill"

- They say - 

There you are. A social media post outside of social media. Me, shouting at the social media storm, pissing in the virtual wind. Somehow, I'll find my way.

________________________

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!

The Complete Lyrics 1978-2022 by Nick Cave

 

The Complete Lyrics 1978–2022 by Nick Cave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've never read Delueze's Difference and Repetition (though it is on my list), but I am aching with curiosity to see if he has anything to say about song lyrics. Because, by and large, song lyrics suck. There are notable exceptions, but they are notable because they are exceptional. I'll restrain myself from quoting any, because that's not the point of my banal and overly jejune "observation". But really, when you rip lyrics from the context of the music in which they are couched, they most often come across as just plain stupid. I think this has something to do with repetition. Songs don't have to be repetitive, but it helps, especially if you're a music producer whose goal is to shove some catchy bit into the craw of as many brains as you can. Repetition sells when it's associated with a catchy tune. You don't have to think about such music, which is part of the joy of it all, singing inane lyrics at the top of your lungs: The easier, the better.

But this isn't about joy. Well, maybe a little. But we're talking about Nick Cave here. Talk about a man who has suffered. I'll spare the details, but go read about his life some time. Ugh. Yes, he's had fame and fortune and flamboyance, but, ugh, the things he's gone through, especially the death of two of his children - no thank you. It's odd, then, that many of his most poignantly sad lyrics were written before these losses. Or maybe it's not odd at all. Maybe Nick Cave is just good at putting to paper (and music) the inevitability of pain.

Now, Nick Cave is not innocent when it comes to rote repetition in lyrics. This is especially true in his more punk phase while he was with The Birthday Party. Yes, the seeds (pun intended) of brilliance were there, but, really, they were just a pretty good punk band full of, you guessed it, repetitive lyrics. Cave's outrageous energy carried the band's music, and there's something to be said for that, but if you're looking for poetry in his early lyrics, you're going to have to squint.

Now, I can't speak to this musically, but lyrically, the album The Bad Seed (1983) seems to be a watershed moment in Cave's writing. I don't know what exactly triggered this, but here Cave's poetics enter a new phase. From this point on, things are different, and noticeably so. In the past, sheer brute power carried the day, but now you can see that the work has been crafted more carefully. Yes, there is repetition (it's inevitable in music, I know), but that repetition only serves as punctuation marks to the poetry throughout, like lyrical exclamation points or, more often, lyrical question marks.

Song lyrics, like poems, are easy to read but not easy to process, especially if you are reading them. Without voice inflections and different points of emphasis, one must supply these variations oneself, whether audibly or just in one's head. Of course this can make the songs "yours," but you are bound to have to reinterpret upon hearing the singer's expression. And really, the music is an integral part of the lyrics. So, in some ways, The Complete Lyrics didn't resonate with me (no pun intended there, believe it or not). Again, that pesky repetition, when devoid of emotional context, was just plain irritating, at points. Every exception to this, for me as a reader, came because I had a close knowledge of the songs in which the repetitive lyrics were ensconced. Context is everything, in this case, and when I knew the context well enough, my irritation wore off, soothed by the melody (even if it was a raucous one).

I suppose every Nick Cave fan has a favorite album. Mine is No More Shall We Part. It's agonizingly beautiful. Let Love In marches a close second behind as less somber (but still morose) and more animated, sometimes cartoonishly so. There are songs intermingled in all the other albums that I greatly enjoy ("From Her to Eternity" - my introduction to Nick Cave's music back in the '80s by way of Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin , and "The Carny" both jump to mind), but these two are albums which, from start to finish, I can long and languish in.

Cave, along with the Bad Seeds, has like any good artist, evolved over the years. From punk to strange calliope rhythms to the blues, his music is nothing if not twisting along a path that is unpredictable. If I ever suspected a Nick Cave album to have been written under the influence of an epic dose of LSD, it would have to be DIG, LAZARUS, DIG. It's "way out there," as they say. Definitely the most experimental (whatever that means) album, lyrically speaking. And now, since the publication of this book in it's most recent incarnation, it appears that Cave and company have taken another turn, towards the ethereal and, dare I say it? Religious?

Wherever he goes, I'm along for the ride. While I can't count myself as a member of his cult of personality, I will say that I continue to be interested, even touched deeply, from time to time, as I was when I first read the lyrics to "Nature Boy," which I'll end with here:

Nature Boy

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don't look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said that in the end is a beauty
That is going to save the world, now

And she moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
She moves something deep inside of me

I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
You said, hey, nature boy, are you looking at me
With some unrighteous intention?
My knees went weak, I couldn't speak, I was having thoughts
That were not in my best interests to mention

And she moves among the flowers
And she floats upon the smoke
She moves among the shadows
She moves me with just one little look

You took me back to your place
And dressed me up in a deep-sea diver's suit
You played the patriot, you raised the flag
And I stood at full salute
Later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb
And made it impossible to speak
As you closed in, in slow motion
Quoting Sappho, in the original Greek

She moves among the shadows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among the candles
And we moved through the days and through the years

Years passed by, we were walking by the sea
Half delirious
You smiled at me and said, babe
I think this thing is getting kind of serious
You pointed at something and said
Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?
It was then that I broke down
It was then that you lifted me up again

She moves among the sparrows
And she walks across the sea
She moves among the flowers
And she moves something deep inside of me

She moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
And she moves right up close to me

View all my reviews

________________________

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!

Waiting for the Dog to Sleep

 

Waiting for the Dog to Sleep by Jerzy Ficowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It should come as no surprise that Jerzy Ficowski is possibly the world's leading biographer of the great Bruno Schulz. Not only did Ficowski write the definitive Schulz biography, Regions of the Great Heresy, but one can hear echoes of Schulz's distinctive voice bordering the edges of Ficowski's short fiction, collected here in Waiting for the Dog to Sleep. Throughout my reading of the 28(!) stories in this volume, I found myself drawing frequent comparisons to Schulz, Kafka, and Calvino, and some of these stories should be spoken in the same breath as these greats.

That is not to say that Ficowski does not have his own voice; he does. But in order to entice readers to this book, I can't avoid the comparison. This work will sit comfortably - on its own - amidst works by the authors heretofore mentioned. Alas, this comprises all of the short fiction Ficowski ever wrote. He is much more well-known as a poet, and his poetic stance is reflected quite strongly in a few of these stories. At other times, his work is extremely straightforward and unadorned, which suits the stories in which ornamentation was not only un-necessary, but inimical to the goals of the narrative. Ficowski allows the form to follow the story, not allowing his own predilections to smother the necessary work that his words perform.

There is a wide variety here ("Something for everyone to hate," as Stepan Chapman used to say), and a lot to love. These pieces are all short and easily digestible, but some of them leave a long-lasting aftereffect, a lingering literary flavor that "sits well on the tongue," as they say. Here are my thoughts on each of the morsels:

The first story, "The Artificial Hen, or the Gravedigger's Lover" hovers somewhere between magic realism and surrealism. It's a strange, uncomfortable space. Most of the stories in this volume, I've found, fall into this strange liminal space between strange liminal spaces. Sometimes hewing toward more stark surrealism and at other times toward a warm magic realism a'la Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"The Passing Settlement" is about what's right there in the title. But what's there is not quite what you think. A charming little bit about one of those "blink and you'll miss it" places in the middle of nowhere (which may well be the middle of everywhere).

"Old-World Entomology" is a short, concise gut-punch about moths, ancestors, memory, and futility. A three page long existential masterstroke.

Daydream? Ghost story? Liminal magic realism? It doesn't matter. "Recreation with the Paralytics" is a numinous tale, in any case. It will lull you into its own sacral reality, chestnuts, wheelchairs, and all.

"Proof of the Existence of Saint Eulalia" is, as the academics are wont to say "transgressive". Equal parts wicked and clever, this tiny tale packs a lot. Almost a prose poem, though without so much filigree. The sort of story about which a writer (this writer in particular) would say "I wish I had written it myself". And I do.

"The Pink House, or the Desert Sentries" is the sort of story that sends literature majors scrambling for hidden meanings and symbolism when maybe, just maybe, the author was simply telling a story with no meaning . . . which, of course, carries hidden meanings. It is, in this way, a tricksterish story. Ficowski channels Kafka herein, and the academics start sprinting for their podiums . . .

It's funny, when I read the next tale, I had just had a conversation with my wife about the traces we do and don't leave behind when we die. This story, "Chorzeluk," is about making a memory mountain out of a molehill and the proposition that it's sometimes best to let silence speak for itself.

"Before the Wall Collapses" is a small slice of a small slice of the world, an urban trap, of sorts, as much psychological as physical, inhabited by the narrator's grandfather.

Ever wonder what it might feel like to be a victim of the Dungeons & Dragons spell "Otto's Irresistible Dance"? I have. The answer might be found in "Tango Milonga," a tale of magic realism that evokes Italy Calvino in all the best ways. That really is the highest praise I can give to a story. I am hoping there are more like this in Ficowski's collection, but this could carry the whole book! The price of admission is worth it for this story alone.

"Window to the World" is a window on frozen hope and the helplessness one faces in the face of cold, strong winters, and the inevitability of death. This could easily be a short Brothers Quay film. I might add that the Quays (my favorite directors) are, not surprisingly, mentioned in the translator's notes.

"The Sweet Smell of Wild Animals" is magical realism par excellence. This story would rank up among Millhauser and Calvino's best. A fantastic fantastical story (replete with obligatory clown) of an unexpected train ride to a zone of liminality between city and circus, mechanics and magic. An amazing tale of tails.

I keep using referents to magic realists most readers know. It can't be helped. "An Escape" brushes against Kafka's territory or that of a very, very restrained Solzhenitsyn. I wasn't as enamored of this story as others, but it is still well-realized, with a Rod Serling-esque cliffhanger ending.

Existentialism by way of an attempt to fade into non-existence is the theme of "Mimesis". Where best to hide? Or, rather, best to hide as what? What happens when one disappears into . . . a piece of architecture, for example? And what of the pull of such an act on others. One must be strong or dissolve.

"An Attempt at a Dialogue" is a psychogeographical dreamscape of a story with a strange hauntological twist that teases the edges of time-travel, questioning both past and present and the (false?) notion of selfhood. It leaves philosophical quandaries far beyond the limits of the ink on the page and even beyond the strangeness that the story infers.

To call "The Joy of Dead Things" a "nice" story gives the wrong connotation. Maybe "comfortable" is the word I'm looking for, but only to those of us who love to walk through sleepy, dilapidated towns, unkempt ruins, dirty side streets, and ancient overgrown cemeteries, physically-realized dreamscapes. If that's you, then you, like me, will feel comfortable with this story, "soothed" even.

In "Outskirts on the Sands," we find a narrator who constantly, stubbornly, thrusts himself into the past, intentionally avoiding the present until a girl, an amalgam of all his pasts, gently compels him into the present. But the pull of nostalgia is too powerful, and he loses his present, ironically, to a new future. Another strongly psychogeographic work.

A weirdly- beautiful story, the imagery of "My Forest" is going to stay in my head for a long, long time, particularly the fantastically gorgeous apocalyptic closing scene. I would love to quote it, but I don't want to spoil the dark beauty of it all, one of the most simultaneously moving and disturbing images I've seen painted with words. So many hints and implications . . . I can't get over how "ripe" this little tale is. I think I'm in love with it.

"Aunt Fruzia" can be killed off by a salacious story involving a nun, we learn. A domestic dinner story gone wrong (because the narrator just can't help himself from provoking his aunt). The analogies of dinner were so good, I'd prefer to take them literally. But that's cannibalism, and cannibalism is a no-no, kids.

The one disappointing story in the collection for me was "An Alliance". Is the alliance in "An Alliance" really an alliance at all? Or is it just spousal spitefulness? There's probably an analogy in this story, but I'm not seeing it.

"Gorissia" (as the Romans named it) is a village in which the people embrace the final embrace, that of the grave. It's a story as old as time, as discovered by the narrator, an archeologist noted for his previous Neolithic discoveries. And the story will continue on in perpetuity. The archeologist is, in essence, robbed of the fruits of his profession.

"Intermission" is a story of war, during which the line demarcation living and dead is all but erased and only fear can save you. It is an autobiographical tale of Ficowski's participation in the Warsaw uprising.

By the end of "They Don't Ring at the Bernadines'," Ficowski slips into, or rather ascends into full surrealist mode. This story of religious figures versus their adherents approaches, but doesn't quite cross the threshold into all-out absurdity. The restraint is apropos, given the story itself.

I was waiting for a story that would touch directly on the holocaust, and in "'Cause He's Stupid and 'Cause He's Abram," I begrudgingly found it. As you can imagine, it doesn't end well. In this sad case, ignorance truly is bliss. The story begins with the following paragraph, just to give you a taste of Ficowski's writing ability:

He had a molting beard the color of hempen harl, his frayed canvas clothes were made up of holes and cracks painstakingly sewn together. Niemira from Lesne claimed that Abram had stolen those rags from his field scarecrow and was now parading about in them. Possible, but if so, Stupid Abram hadn't taken them to make himself frightening only so that he would have something to wear: without them he was already fairly frightening, though more naked.

You can probably gather that Ficowski shows a wry humor, even in his portrayal of the most horrific of circumstances. I thought of the masks of comedy and tragedy strapped to each other often as I read this book. Sometimes the wires get crossed, and it makes for a heady mixture of emotions.

"Post-patrimony" is a deep dive into psychogeography, how the inhabitant is tied to the habitation and the fragile relationship between the two. When one dies, the other decays, and yet there is something irreducable at the heart of place, a kernel of immortal being that persists, a Genius loci that may take a familiar form.

"Stumps" is one of those strange stories whose strangeness resides, coiled up like a snake waiting to strike, in its utter banality. An ordinary day with one out of the ordinary element (in this case a beggar) that sends everything sideways, forcing the narrator to look at the world in an even more strange way: loaded with meaning amidst the ordinariness of living.

"Signs of the Times, or Diction" is too slight. While I can appreciate stories that only hint and infer, I'd like at least a thread to follow. Yes, this narrator has no thread, that's the point of it all. So, while clever, this story only pans out as average because it's too brief to take full hold.

"Spinning Circles" may be close to perfect, the fabled perfect circle sought after by the Greeks. A wanderer who hopes to reach The City, despite the entries awaiting him, follows his spinning hoop, the last holdover from his distant childhood, only to learn that the circle, which has a mind of its own, will never take him back to where he wants to go. Or will it? Where does the circle end, if it ends at all?

And here the collection ends. I must note that Twisted Spoon Press is starting to impress me. I only have two data points at this time, but what I see is very promising, indeed. I strongly recommend picking up this collection as a start, especially if you are partial to Central and Eastern European authors in translation. I am becoming more and more enamored of this niche, and Ficowski's collection is a very strong example of the sort of writing I've been finding from that corner of the world. Go get yourself a copy!



View all my reviews

________________________

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!

The Trickster Goddess of Family Cervidae

[Trigger Warning: Dead animal mention and photo]

 I'm going to get a little personal here. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. Take me as I am, as they say. Here I am:

Back in 2019, the company I worked for was bought out. Now, one of the companies I had worked for previous to that job went through three different buy-outs in five years. Yeah, not a great track record. I left that company before it sank, and oh, did it sink. It's gone. Dead to the business world. A has-been. Even the IP has been flushed down the toilet. I watched as the investors made mistake after mistake, had the heartbreaking task of handing out nearly 40 pink slips to people, some of them good friends, because the investors made some really poor business decisions, and when the third buyout happened and I saw the company culture that was being imposed there, I took off. On my last day, when I walked out (and I literally walked home the five or so miles, because I knew I'd need that long walk to clear my head), I felt like I was sitting on a cliffside overlooking the ocean, and seeing a cruise ship, on fire, slowly sinking beneath the waves. I was right. That's about how it went down. So fast-forward a few years, and I find I'm in the middle of yet another buy-out. Only with this one, I was assured that my job was not in any danger, that while there were now two buyers, where there had been one previously, that my position was safe as houses, as they say. 

They lied.

I found myself, at fifty years old, unemployed for the first time in my life. I diligently looked for, and found, a good job doing purchasing for a major player in the food industry (why not? I had just been "let go" by the water industry). This was in late 2019. Covid happened, and I found myself working from home, which was a good thing, because unlike many of my friends who were out of work, I found myself waking up at around 7, rolling out of bed to get started at 7:30, working through to 5:00 or so (I may or may not have taken a 15 minute lunch during that time - some days I did so, most I didn't), eating dinner, then getting back on for another 2-4 hours, depending on how crazy the day was. This went on for many months. Every day, I checked in with my boss for a call, maybe 20 minutes or so, to report on what I was doing. This was fine, as we needed to communicate regularly, given how absolutely insane the food industry was during Covid. People discovered they could actually cook burgers at home, and our customer base (the meat industry) went stark raving mad with production. One of our customers, also the world's single largest producer of beef, was running at 400% capacity. So anything that required preventative maintenance, like motors, for example, which I bought, was wearing out four times more quickly than usual. And I'm here to tell you that the meat industry doesn't like the idea of buying spares until their machines are down and they are suddenly losing $10K an hour - then, and only then, they'd think "we should have bought a spare". Duh. 

Covid came and went. But the stressors didn't. Long story short, I found myself, last winter, burned out and extremely sensitive to criticism. I was putting in "all the hours". I was pushing to get everything done that needed to get done. I made some mistakes, as one does when one is over-worked and burned out, but nothing critical. In fact, in the last year, I saved my company upwards of three times my yearly salary in one year of purchasing negotiations. I paid for myself and then a lot more. The numbers were clear as day. I received praise from the plant manager and international director of sourcing for my work. And yet, the pressure never let up. 

It was in the midst of this pressure cooker that I was driving home from work one night on a stretch of country road, and I saw a deer jump out onto the county highway. I was going at about the speed limit when I slammed the brakes and the deer jumped off the road, but I thought - and I was right - there's got to be other deer nearby.

Then, there she was. She bounded out and in a split second, I knew I was going to hit here. I knew also, that when hitting a deer, it's a bad idea to have your brakes clamped down, as the deer is then more likely to go under your car and tear up everything on the underside. So, I let off the brake and hit her at about 40 MPH.

As I saw her body fly up over my hood and fill my windshield, I thought "this is it, I'm going to die". Then, miraculously (for me, at least), she kept going up. I think my car met her rump just as she was bounding upward, as deer do, and she simply flew over the top of my car - completely over the top - and landed in a ditch behind me. 

I didn't have the wherewithal to do anything but glance back. I didn't see her. I had no idea if she had survived or not. My car was crumpled and I was shaking like a leaf. My airbags did not go off, for which I am very grateful, and any whiplash I suffered was minimal. After a panicked call to my wife ("I just hit a deer. I have no idea what to do. I've never hit a deer before.") and my wife's calming response that I should call the insurance company, I did that. Then I called 911. The Walworth County Sheriff's department arrived, and the deputies were awesome. They checked on how I was doing, asked what happened, of course asked if I had my seat belt on at the time of the accident ("I was raised in the military. You ALWAYS have your seatbelt on when you're raised in the military!" - they laughed at that), then checked my car. It was munched on the front, but drivable, and there weren't any fluids leaking. 

The police gave me a card with a case number and told me "if you get pulled over for only having one headlight, just give them this card and you'll be fine". Then they got in their SUV and backed up behind me, maybe fifty feet or so, shone their spotlight into the field to check for the deer, I presume, then drove off. I made it home, of course, took the car in and eventually it was totalled.

To say this was a stressor I didn't need is an understatement. But I kept coming back, in my mind, to that moment that deer rose up and filled my windshield. I was strangely calm when I thought "I'm going to die". I wasn't panicked at all. Endorphines are wonderful gifts! But I kept coming back to that thought. "I'm going to die."

Of course, I've thought that before. My deepest philosophical explorations (if they can be called "deep" at all) have been my delves into Existentialism. I've faced the possibility of death a couple of times before (once having narrowly avoided being in a fatal airplane accident - the plane taxiing behind me ended up being hit by a microburst on the tail of the plane on takeoff, flipping upside down, and killing all 16 people on board, I learned upon landing at my destination - and I've been shot at at close range once, as well). But this one was weird. I was so calm. Almost like I was just receiving a message: "I'm going to die".

Needless to say, this got me thinking a LOT (and driving much more slowly and cautiously at night in the country - yeah, I've become "that guy" at night. So, go around me if you're in such a hurry) about my then-current situation with work. I was not happy. In fact, I was much more unhappy and not mentally-well than I could have admitted to myself before the accident. And I had been putting up with a lot of stress and what in a later conversation I figured out was extreme micro-managing, and I had had enough. So I started sending out job applications. I had been approached by head-hunters before, but had told them I wasn't interested at that time. Now I was interested. I needed a change and I needed it bad. After sending out eight applications, I had two offers. in comparison, when I was "let go" at the job previous to my last, I sent out 65 applications and ended up with two offers.

Since I left my job and took the current job I am in, I've spoken with a few employees at the place I left and have discovered that others felt the same way about their experience there. I won't go into details, but the culture there is . . . languishing, shall we say? Two nights ago, I was sitting on the couch just staring at the closet door, feeling at peace. My wife asked what I was thinking about, and I said "I'm thinking about how I'm not panicked about going back to work after this long weekend. And how I didn't have to work on my days off, like the last job." I realized that, for the first time in a long time, I was at peace. No, this job isn't perfect - no job is. But it's much better than my last place, MUCH less stressful, and, frankly, just as rewarding. A side note - this job is a ten minute drive from my house. We're now a one-car family, which, while it requires some juggling, actually makes life feel a lot simpler, in some ways. And I'm close enough that I've been able to walk home a couple of times, when my wife needed the car. It's actually helping me be more fit. Four mile walks will do that for you. 

And the weird thing is, I have this dead deer to thank for these, dare I say it? Blessings. This might sound morbid and perhaps a touch cruel, but I feel like she sacrificed herself for me, in some ways. Yes, I feel badly about hitting her and killing her. I'm not mad at her, though. In fact, I'm extremely grateful, truly, honestly thankful. I think of the old myths of trickster gods that would sometimes lead people to the edge of danger, where they then found some sort of reward for their endangerment, narrowly escaping the potential for that Final failure. I've seen the pit of doom, and picked up a gold coin on its edge.

The next day, after the accident, I drove my wife's vehicle in to work. On my way home, I made sure I drove home that SAME way I drove when I hit the deer. I considered it a sort of banishing ritual, undoing what had been done the night before, closing the circle. Besides, I needed to get some confidence back about driving at night! In fact, I drove past there many times, as I drove home to tune up my resume, get applications in, and do phone interviews. 

I looked for the deer each time, but didn't see her carcass. We had had some nasty snowstorms, and if the deer was indeed killed, it was in a steep-ish ditch off the side of the road, covered in snow. 

Strange that late on February 18th, I submitted my application to the place I eventually ended up working for. On February 21st I was called by them and had my first phone interview. On February 22nd, the snow had temporarily melted, and on my way home I saw something I had been looking for since January 4th, the night of the accident. I took the following picture:

Coincidence? I don't think so. The older I get, the less I think there is such a thing as coincidence. Meaning is where it's at. And maybe it's all we've got.

________________________

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!

Vouchsafe Incarnadine

 Subtitles in a book are often, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, misleading. But the subtitle of Douglas Thompson's Vouchsafe Carnadine, "A Metaphysical Thriller" hits the nail on the head. Leaving the genre identity aside, I will vouch for Thompson's ability to craft believable dialogue that leads the reader to understand the depths of his well-defined characters. The three-headed protagonist of the story, Raymond Tierny, a brilliant scientist recently deceased, Maria, his lover who receives his letters in spite of his death, as if beyond the grave, and Helen Tierny, Raymond's jilted, but beautiful and brilliant wife, is . . . are . . . a sort of organism of complex connections, as one can imagine from a bizarre love triangle. 

Thompson's writing is "clean". There's no purple prose, no alliteration, no fanciness. And, though I do normally prefer some poeticism in my prose, this works out just fine. The story itself is strange enough that the clarity of writing here helps things along, allowing the reader to focus on the action and, more importantly, the philosophical implications of of the ongoing epistolary exchanges between Maria and the dead Raymond. 

At it's heart, Vouchsafe Carnadine is a love story, but an incredibly strange love story wrapped on the bones of a thriller. The heard of the story, however, has to do with the metaphysical propositions of what is possible with quantum physics. So, as I hinted at earlier, this story is anything but straightforward. But it is, after all of its emotional and investigative twists and turns, rewarding. 

Of course, the artwork is gorgeous. This is, after all, a Mount Abraxas book! Spendy? Yes. Worth it? Also yes.

________________________

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!

 

Blood and Sun: Love & Ashes

 When the opening strains of "Resurrection Charm" pummeled my ears with the same majestic brooding that evokes every folk-horror movie you've ever seen about the continuation of life beyond life and all its incumbent sacrifices (Read: Wakewood, The Wicker Man, and Robin Redbreast), I knew I needed more. Blood and Sun (aka Luke Tromiczak and a bevy of temporary musicians) are not, however, horrific. I used the term "majestic brooding" and I think that's fairly accurate. There are emotional highs and lows throughout, with wistfulness, longing, and triumph melted together like the stench of whiskey and pipe smoke in a far-off pub. This is heady stuff, at times beautiful, at times bruising, but always buoyed up from below by Tromiczak's outstanding baritone. If you're a fan of Nick Cave (as I am) or Johnny Cash (also a fan), you will find a warm, dry, dark place in these vocals. But if I were to describe the attitude, I would not say this was "folksy," but, rather, "metal" or even "punk". Not because of any iconoclastic fist-shaking toward society, but because of it's decidedly individualistic stance, feet firmly planted, fists on hips, assured, but with a core of vulnerability that will be shared with those who are considered worthy of it, and only those fellow-souls who have weathered the maelstrom of life's vicissitudes. It's the ground held between law and chaos, a firm neutrality proteced by a storm-cloud of experience. 

Besides the firm attitude, resonant vocals, and musical adeptness, one must reverence the near-sacred poetics of the work. The plaintive, yet (hopelessy?) hopeful lyrics of "By What Road," evokes an inner story that many of us, myself included, have felt deeply but been unable to express. The sense of loss and adventure in "Madrone" fill one with wanderlust, even if  (or especially because?) the path is one that is forced upon oneself. There's a sense of being carried aloft atop a storm that reveals an incredible sunset in one direction and a simultaneous sunrise in another. 

My mention of Nick Cave earlier is not an accident. Imagine Nick Cave, but instead of wearing a tailored suit on a metropolitan stage, imagine him dressed in worn tin-cloth clothing hiking through a brambles in the Carpathian mountains, and you'll get a taste of the Blood and Sun ethos. 

________________________

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!

The Frost Crabs of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 Mount Abraxas Press again astounds with a novella from the heretofore-unknown-to-me Michael Uhall, The Frost Crabs of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, subtitled "A Novella of the Wierd". I've expressed my admiration for the selection and beauty of Mount Abraxas books (some of them having been written by yours truly) many times. I have, in one of my earliest entries ever on this blog, lauded the novella form. I've read and loved my share of books with arctic themes or set in the arctic.  And though the depth of my studies in philosophy is extremely limited (though I have read more than what I've posted about here on this blog - notably Deleuze, Kant, and the Existentialists, including Sartre), I do enjoy hovering around the edges of philosophical works. 

Here, Uhall presses all the right buttons. Like he's mashing the control board of the paragraph above. This has come as a veryvery pleasant surprise. Even the physical object is a notch above the extremely high quality of production I expect from Mount Abraxas. The cover is heavier than previous covers and with sort of a waxy finish that I absolutely love. 

But it's between the covers (or the layers of the Weltseele, as Nietzsche might say) that the magic happens. Maximillian Talcott, a Bostonian seafarer, of sorts, is ship-wrecked on tiny island and rescued by a strange submersible craft piloted by no less than the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who has replaced himself "back home" with a body double, an man plucked from the asylums, who has died, given the illusion of the famous philosopher's demise. At this point, I was more than a little worried that the novella would devolve into a pastiche of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with Nietzsche replacing Nemo. And for a few pages, this is exactly what seemed to be happening. 

Then the story . . . turned. And I wondered if Nietzsche had indeed died and the madman he spoke of was actually the man who stood before Maximillian. The book never explicitly rules this possibility out, and I thought it a brillian masterstroke, if only in my own mind. It might explain a lot, because this tale descends into madness bordering on horror, but with enough restraint that the Dionysian elements are tempered by an Apollonian restraint . . . but just barely. A "new" sun-god of a sort emerges, just as a molting crab emerges from itself. But this molting, this transormation, this growth is something much deeper than the mere physical shedding of an old form for a new one. There is an element of the numinous in all of this, which shocked and surprised me, which is something that is tough to do to this jaded reader. I am waiting to see what Uhall creates next. This is an auspicious start that shows some writerly "chops" that are to be admired. Highly recommended. But don't ever think about eating crab again. Ever. Forever.

________________________

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!