I’ll post details when I know more…

This week I finished a story about a voodoo (or voudon?) doll, and one with a simple game showing the trap my character is stuck in.  Then I stumbled upon two separate stories online that, in very different ways, consider these same themes.  Sometimes I feel like, when I’m writing something I’m really absorbed in, I draw things with the same energy into my field. 

Today I wrote a new story called “Elements Rearranged in the Manner of a Compass,” after reading Joseph Williams’ story in the Atlantic.

i finished ‘the king in yellow’.  yes, for unsound reasons.  obviously this is dated enough it’s going to annoy a lot of people.  luckily i don’t mind artifacts.  i’ve even had cause to jot down notes to myself that i must find this book, before the unsound reasons (back in the days of reading lovecraft, who also loved using carcosa as inspiration).  but yeah, i only actually read it last week.  first two stories:  gold.  you’ve got the first one, with the community suicide chamber and the Repairer of Reputations.  think devil equals god and the problems when ego gets involved.  the second one features a pool that the artists throw alive things in to turn them into marble.   this guy loves sculptors and painters, and they’re fun characters to be around.  doesn’t really hold up through the rest of the collection, but i love seeing how this guy thinks (thought).   his feline descriptions reminded me of Colette’s The Cat, a story about a boy who loves his cat far more than his wife.  as far as being based around a play that will drive one mad, whoever reads it, the actual play is only referred to but never given in its full text, great theme threads or ribbons mr. chambers.  also, i already read antonin artaud a decade ago, so it’s too late for me anyway.

babbling on like some sorta babylonian babel in the brain.  a good place for mining the metaphors inside stories.

reading ‘six memos for the next millenium’, so i can revisit and reconsider some of the musings i made on the lightness of being, when beginning this blog however many years ago. 

need to read ‘de rerum natura’ by lucretius.

refreshing my memory of rilke’s elegies as i feel the theme concerns the flash i am currently workshopping, and came across this quote discussing the poet:

‘at each stage now and again the miracle occurs, his delicate, hesitant, anxiety-prone person withdraws, and through him resounds the music of the universe; like the basin of a fountain he becomes at once instrument and ear’  hesse on rilke

now i’m tempted to dig up the short story ‘basin’ i wrote when staying in paris with my sister taryn, but i should probably stay on task.

i will study the science of imaginary solutions.

Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. According to these, qualia are:

ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.
intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience’s relation to other things.
private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness; that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.

i read a book from this guy awhile ago; i can’t remember the name but i know i liked it. consciousness explained? i should try to find my old notes on it.

 

i generally really dislike science fiction, but roger zelazny is an other-ordinary sci fi writer. i  took ‘the doors of his face, the lamps of his mouth’ from a pile s was giving away.  i picked it solely for the name (though the cover pic is compelling too), which it totally lived up to.  a couple of my favorites so far:

‘a museum piece,’ where artists slip into the artwork and hang out in the museum after closing.  this sounds like fun, and i’d like to try it, especially the late night food raids.  also, kissing can suspend lions while mid-pounce, (which makes sense to me) and mobiles are admittedly alien life forms who eat albino lions when necessary. 

‘devil car’ is still my favorite so far, though, the protagonist’s car jenny being one of the most human characters i’ve come across ever.  like she makes me cry, not kidding.  she’s so badass, and so freaking weak.  i love myself a contradictory character.  also, rebel car gangs are pretty cool to picture.

so, to repent for my thinking all science fiction sucks, i’ve been workshopping an at least supernatural piece i started awhile ago, then put down, ‘alien in the airport.’  hopefully this will come into its own and i can submit it somewhere soon.  the only science fiction thing i ever tried submitting was ‘moonlighting,’ a story set in a health food store (hey, write what you know).  they suggested i edit it, but i never did, suggestible as i am.  maybe i’ll see if i didn’t lose it in the move.