the radios have stopped working
by uzwi
Storms move furtively along the horizon all morning. Then without warning a terrific stench of cowshit pours in through the open windows on a wave of moist air. Appallingly close flashes of lightning, whistling explosions of thunder. A few large splashes of rain on the hot dry concrete outside, then a torrent. The power fails. Through the brown darkness in the room the furniture looms–old, inert, of threatening but apathetic shape. Before each blast of thunder there’s the sputtering dry sound of the discharge, like the sound of water globules dancing on a hotplate; afterwards, a sense of pressure relieved from the ears & sinuses. In the houses on either side the radios have stopped working & the children are kneeling up on the window sills silently watching the air come down as water. The opposite side of the valley disappears in a soft grey haze. After ten or fifteen minutes the sky brightens a little & some chains of black birds appear against it as dots very high up. The thunder moves away. People run up & down outside in the abating rain, laughing & slamming car doors. They are glad to have escaped with nothing worse than wet hair. The children begin to shout & jump. From the farmyard someone can be heard shouting, “Goo on there! What’s the matter with you ? Get on!” to an unfortunate cow. The electricity comes back on. [Holmfirth 1980.]
the m john harrison blog 
I like this a little bit more than the contextless monologue I found on the bar floor while cleaning up this morning at 2:30 am which is to say I like it quite a lot.
P.260 “All expeditions…” I am writhing here; just how the hell do you know this stuff? The writing is like the understanding of the condition of death; the more you find it articulates something, creates a spell, the less you can shake it off , dismiss it as something merely suggestive, feared, or projected; no matter the density of imagination or invention, you know the naming of it will perform in the end the exact opposite of banishing. There’s always going to be an elegy at the end of the self-distraction. Fucking brilliant.
Entangle a meaning with the image, ie no image that isn’t a metaphor or part of a metaphor. Load every component that will carry an idea with as much as it will carry. Don’t be afraid it will fall over–even that will produce something interesting. Think with your emotions. Everyone, especially in genre, thinks that rationally causal logic is the only kind of logic. It isn’t, & it produces dreary, limited, dysfunctional fiction. Metaphors have their own logic.
I don’t know. I try to be in what I do. Anyway, thanks MikeM, I’m glad to have the chance to fail to explain it.