Monthly Archives: August 2009
dead lives
I enjoyed very much Mario the Epicurean’s engagement with The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen. It’s so nice to wake up in the morning to a thoughtful piece on a novelist you love. Thanks, Mario, especially for that … Continue reading
Filed under writing
acts of enclosure
Though not much of a swimmer, I was interested in this until I saw their caps, which reminded me of this. More Acts of Enclosure in the new style, in which an activity open to any human being–going for a … Continue reading
Filed under outright politics, the postmodernised landscape
notebook entry, 1993
A Ghost Story– Ghosts, or fragments of ghosts, phantoms of partial vanished events, appear to have piled up in an old house until its new occupant, A, becomes sensitive to them. She is upset by a particular manifestation. She begins … Continue reading
Filed under ghosts
gardens
I like gardens, but I suspect them too. Gardens pretend to be outside, but their secret is that they are not. A garden is a place you can’t have, a state that doesn’t exist. It’s a door that won’t open. … Continue reading
Filed under the postmodernised landscape
blasim & mckie
Hassan Blasim’s savagely comic stories of Iraq, The Madman of Freedom Square. It’s a short volume, 90-odd pages. At first you receive it with the kind of shocked applause you’d award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You’re quite elated. Then you … Continue reading
Filed under books & reviews, the horror, writing
fucked off from you
Someone arrived here yesterday by typing, “I am just fucked off from you” into a search engine. What a great last line that would make.
a single stupid phrase
From a blog conversation last year: I get [writer's] block but I don’t mind because I figure it’s nature’s way of telling me I’m doing something wrong. Therefore I don’t call it that, either. I’m not going to learn anything … Continue reading
Filed under lost & found, the horror
staycation
What a grotesque coinage that is. I suspect Hilary Mantel made it up for her satire of faux trade-languages (or faux-trade languages) in Beyond Black. Listening to: My Aim Is True. Re-reading: Goodbye to Berlin. Eagerly anticipating: Inherent Vice.
Filed under the postmodernised landscape
creationist day out
Ken MacLeod illustrates this blog entry on creationism with a picture of some people out for a day’s coasteering & DWS-lite somewhere in Pembroke. It’s a pity the photographer has made them seem so wooden. But they’re clearly having a … Continue reading
the voice of reason
After all this time I should know the score. I should know who you are. I should know what we want from one another. I’m sitting here airside, thinking about that. I’m listening to the turbofans the other side of … Continue reading
Filed under the horror
