tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-200785072024-03-24T17:40:21.636+10:30Medlar Comfitsanna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.comBlogger737125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-14751031292043882142023-10-06T12:27:00.015+10:302023-10-06T22:26:13.182+10:30Why Witches: an interview with Zig Zag Claybourne<p></p><p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;"><b>But first, the blogger's privilege of intrusion<br /></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;">You know that ennui of reading, when you think
<i>I’m past it. No fiction can work its magic on me again</i>? I was deep in
its grip when I noticed <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18206890-neon-lights"><b>Neon Lights.</b></a></i> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://zzclaybourne.com/books/neon-lights" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Neon Lights" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdglnNusJE1IyR9OIXSzWxbHUApPYRmTbodViClk5zcxwCb33O8QZmleiiJWZY7sXkF8jnZn9xyQIbAAYi2_vo8tgEHj3e18Op_W091G5ASO9VVHIJEbSYE97Y7A2wiDydrD6I0cwE48tzgw1Ld5LxKnxbZ4MXNvr-u0jfVcCa1kOkeCphAl9ntA/w129-h200/18206890.jpg" width="129" /></a></span></div><p><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;">There was something so deliciously <i>abnormal</i> about that cover. </span></p><p><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;">I roused myself enough to get into it, but still expected no more than a one-page stand. Instead,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt the same thrill that coursed
through me the first time I read Gogol's <i>Dead Souls</i> (the only diminishment since for both is the frisson of discovery). I still hope this brilliant satire gets
“discovered” but I was so intrigued by its unknown author (who could mop the floor with the works of Updike and Roth as well as that of most current <strike>satirists</strike> sneerists) that I swan-dived into <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25891253-the-brothers-jetstream"><b>The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan</b></a></i>. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-AU"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25891253-the-brothers-jetstream" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="312" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWUjEwSgxHRMBp96NJLXfg6eCAjea8KUD-Hj9p477CQKNIMLRN4lQJFJU3njr7umk4rMnGjrcMoIlMrGzNgRS2g3RQ0I36sSzO_UEsphfliu085u2JCCPu4wHyLDpt9BkkpZHokmd49KhRhGOif08l1L1fJNv1xd0UCL569mfzJhYKoPhBkctIkw/w189-h302/51Ip97a43HL.jpg" width="189" /></a></span></div></div><p><span lang="EN-AU"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Holy Hell. This one vied to knock my other favourite novel (Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov's <i>Little Golden Calf</i>) from its pedestal. </span></span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;">I wasn’t ready for it. <i>The Brothers</i> struck <i>me</i> like a bolt of
lightning rooted in a solar flare. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It didn’t take <i>The
Brothers Jetstream Book 2: Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe</i> to confirm: These were <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>written by one of those writers who is amongst
the half dozen in a century who deserve to last.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><a href="https://zzclaybourne.com/books/afro-puffs-are-the-antennae-of-the-universe" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="750" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGm_vfTH2Ou-o9Yo9dcBHuddMNWeYIzmJlAYgazzStRNqNT4lcRPnCwq6x4NQPl1mafrqs3tnn_E6tJtdhyIK9glIFoNynFHqyPh1FbBIlq2I9jwaue-LX5ZScoNlfQoXHOVplN4fQCmOxDwgQPgMYa17LM_FdN4Mut33nAHR1G-mU3vZrWHrrNg/w150-h240/puffs+cover+concept+D+9_9_2020.jpg" width="150" /></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And the characters. So many characters in others' fiction would walk the picket lines if they could. They all work for nothing, which they all expect. But so many don't get no respect. Claybourne's get more than that. Utter freedom. And they've got a mouth on them. Desiree Quicho, for instance, star of <i>Afro Puffs... </i>So their dialogue is as fresh as their attitudes. It doesn't matter what Claybourne's writing. Characters and stories are unflinching and inspiring in ways that are so uncommercial, they remind this reader why writing can be, not only still worth reading, but crucial in making life worthwhile.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">He never<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>plays the jester angle,
nor panders to wishes to ignore and self-indulgently escape. As for tragedy
voyeurs--they’d starve on his fiction. In every book and story, Zig Zag Claybourne celebrates the brashness
of bravery, kindness, and joy—and in doing so, wields the most effective
weapons of all. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><b>So, to the latest </b>I’ve been lucky enough to read (not because he asked me but because I
asked him) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his latest novel, <i>Breath,
Warmth, and Dream</i>, Book One of a trilogy that should have been fought over
by the biggies, but as I advised him when I read it: “People have had their
souls healed and have learnt from everything you've written. That isn't
considered valued, and instead, rancid relations paraded as if we love to be
dumped into cesspools or else we can't feel alive.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And so it came to pass. The rejections were <i>I love it but...</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><b>And so, dear reader, it’s up to us. </b>There’s a <b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidiansky/breath-warmth-and-dream-book-one-of-the-khumalo-trilogy">Kickstarter</a></b> he’s been
convinced to launch so we can get this book into our hands, screens, and hearts. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And because people love to know motivations, he's answered this grilling:<br /></span></p>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
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</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why Witches?</span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidiansky/breath-warmth-and-dream-book-one-of-the-khumalo-trilogy" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="1487" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKB-FjaGqK2Xb_Pw2J_zYH2eHrxiUiOToQV1SFasJ-Ik7dPO_xjcwDrBiapK5aMRPsrXh1V20D9UAEHr48QjnoXCTIWeIGCgYTIvkOK_frwbRlviGVpYZ1Q4qr546GYaRWuEr5wJTaU6Mktncl1Qc8758MLJ5tFmqJ_zhDLvOMnO2s52L-itYyaw/w448-h252/Luvvit.jpg" width="448" /> </a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Mother Khumalo herself says in <i>Breath,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warmth, and Dream</i>, “Magick doesn’t
require ignorance to be magick.” Do you know what she means by that? And how do
you know that you know what she thinks?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">There’s this puzzling attitude that
knowledge makes something less special, and that a feeling of specialness is
what’s wanted from magic. I think this follows from the ‘ignorance is bliss’
school or ‘it’s not magic if you know how it works,’ but the thing is, we can
never have total knowledge of anything--so why not increase knowledge in order
to work with what we’ve got? To me, that’s the whole nature of magic,
particularly with the kinds of witches <i>Breath, Warmth, and Dream</i>
imagines. Ignorance becomes a control mechanism for domination rather than
harmony. Mother Khumalo thinks entirely opposite of ignorance, especially since
magic itself is a tangle of learned skills. There was no way she would have
allowed me to write her any other way. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Have you seen instances of magic?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">So much of what we see and
experience remains unexplained to us, but I’ve definitely felt magic in the
trailing of fingertips along the skin of my inner arm, how it both energizes me
and simultaneously calms me. Things appear, disappear, and change around us all
the time. We have the feeling we’re surrounded by more magic than society tends
to admit. Magic is the understanding of LIFE pieced together. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Let me quote a passage to you:</span></b></span></p>
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<![endif]--><i>Bog’s hands went to tug his breeches. The lukewarm water of the tub would do him nicely. </i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>“Oh dear,” Tourmaline noted.</i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>"Aye, he’s always showing off his buttocks when the children aren’t around,” said Grucca. “Natural healing and whatnot.”</i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>She was taken with the play of his back muscles despite herself. Upper and much lower.</i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>He climbed into the tub, leaned back with his arms over the sides, and presented his face’s closed eyelids to the sky. He didn’t seem angry, so Tourmaline took this as an elaborate yes that he would talk with Khumalo.</i></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Warriors and witches were beyond dramatic.</i><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">You deftly use words, but like your
action scenes, this one is typical of you in its Balzackian realism (Honoré de
Balzac, considered one of the founders of believable characters in European
literature). Your dialogue, particularly, is so sparkling it could burn noses,
but it doesn’t read as forced, but as the logical outcome of conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You seem to be channeling yet you don’t live
in a cave, but both your The Brothers Jetstream series and your Mother Khumalo short
story and the Kickstarting novel have a peculiarly rich intensity to them, as
if the moving hand is your own, but worked by strings plied by each character
between the covers. Can you explain what’s happening? Aren’t your <i>characters</i>
supposed to be the puppets?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">In Kabuki theater, there’s a
contract between audience and production: see-but-don’t-see the kurogo
stagehands dressed in black who interact with the actors or stage elements, but
are not part of the story. That’s me, writing, especially with dialogue. Kurogo
leaves room for imaginative surprise. Characters need to move through the plot,
yes, but when a voice comes off as too aware of their story, it’s more spot-lit
marionette operator than immersive experience. My dialogue starts, stops, merges,
splits apart; same as in life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">How magical were literary influences
on you?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">My writing influences showed me
what was possible. They pushed me to <i>do more</i>. My greatest influences
came from authors who stepped outside constrictions to exhibit a sense of play!
Toni Morrison, Douglas Adams, Percival Everett, hell, even Shakespeare. Influences
are best when they excite imaginations. I saw writers doing unusual things and
I loved it! </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Your favorite literary fantasies?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">To go to dinner without checking my
bank account. Book-wise… <i>Dune</i>, which I always read as more fantasy than
science fiction. One of my favorite books ever,<i> The Alchemists of Kush</i>
by Minister Faust, blends Egyptian myths with modern immigrant life in Edmonton;
<i>The Twice-Drowned Saint</i> by C. S. E. Cooney is a recent fav, because any
book that blends biblically-terrifying angels with the feminine energy of Mad
Max: Fury Road is a permanent win. The beautiful short story <i>The Sweet in
the Empty</i> by Tade Thompson is an entire epic in less than 25 pages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">How does it feel to get “rejected”
by the big New York publishers, turn around and do a <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidiansky/breath-warmth-and-dream-book-one-of-the-khumalo-trilogy">Kickstarter</a>, and within
two days, out-earn a typical traditional publishing advance?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">It’s a wild, strange thing. The big
publishing houses tend to be Lords of Chaos. Thirty people within the editorial
departments will love something, one will say no, and that’s the end of that
thing. Crowdfunding is nearly a direct line from creator to audience. The whole
experience is less about product and more about the excitement of <i>potential</i>.
I’ve backed a number of projects simply because I wanted the energy behind a
campaign to reach as far into the world as possible, even without backing for a
reward (I’ll back because I want folks to succeed; I’ll buy afterward because I
want folks to thrive). This being my first Kickstarter, it’s done wonderfully!
Wonderful feels good.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">You've written in several genres,
from SF to fantasy to inspirational. Why do you like genre-jumping?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">It’s that same thrill I got from
watching Chadwick Boseman (all light to him) illuminate different aspects of
real life via his roles. Hero, villain, genius; action, drama, levity. I
suppose with writing/reading being such a mental endeavor, the claim that
readers will get confused discourages jumping, although genre-<i>blending</i>
is a huge thing. “You wrote sci-fi and now you’re doing comedy? Under the same
name?! Wait, wait, a fantasy about witches? Whaaaat?” Yet we know conventional
wisdom in publishing tends to be about as wise as wet socks. So for me, variety
<i>is</i> the spice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Writers have lots of pressures
these days, from writing to promoting, to being a "public figure."
But you often talk about the importance of joy. It always comes back to joy.
Why is this important to you?</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Without joy in what we do, there’s
no life or spark, and without a spark there’s no real connection. To me,
everything we do, from being in love to baking a helluva good pie to righting
the wrongs in life, is a means to connect ourselves to being<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>better together. We as individuals, we as a
species. Joy in what we do is that point-to-point connection. For me, joy is in
knowing there’s a real conversation to be had that only the writer and reader
can hear.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Please finish this sentence. In a
perfect world...</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">We would make sure people knew from
childhood on that absolutely nothing is more important than their joy and their
connections!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">_________________________________________________________</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_TX-JRrHNKhq-UjBEYj2UE5_hJpWs2zl4Zjg7p3Q-equv7OK-gtT_SL1BdaCkcyuNyMyhXjizkq5qr-l_DTjxTmH3db-quBWWQp6i9SHrUE4TtHOTN2gPERK0UYRe0fYxb1zpsB_n-fbSH5lmtrg8cDQHMCJnr78leYR9DS5NPOQb-fbvF7qpA/s640/11887995_10206629539430526_5235142873175545755_n.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_TX-JRrHNKhq-UjBEYj2UE5_hJpWs2zl4Zjg7p3Q-equv7OK-gtT_SL1BdaCkcyuNyMyhXjizkq5qr-l_DTjxTmH3db-quBWWQp6i9SHrUE4TtHOTN2gPERK0UYRe0fYxb1zpsB_n-fbSH5lmtrg8cDQHMCJnr78leYR9DS5NPOQb-fbvF7qpA/s320/11887995_10206629539430526_5235142873175545755_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Read <a href="https://giganotosaurus.org/2020/03/01/the-air-in-my-house-tastes-like-sugar/"><b>The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar</b></a>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">the Mother Khumalo short story that spawned the Khumalo Trilogy</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">See Jerome Steuart's painting and read his review,<a href="https://jeromestueart.com/2020/08/10/family-and-community-in-zz-claybournes-the-air-in-my-house-tastes-like-sugar-giganotosaurus-march-2020/"><b> "Family and Community in ZZ Claybourne's The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar"</b></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><a href="https://www.blackgate.com/2019/07/10/smashing-the-status-quo-to-pieces-the-brothers-jetstream-leviathan-by-zig-zag-claybourne/"><b>Jeffrey Ford's Review of The Brothers Jetstream Book 1: Leviathan</b></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><a href="https://www.miltonjdavis.com/post/book-review-afro-puffs-are-the-antennae-of-the-universe-by-zig-zag-claybourne"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Milton Davis' Review of The Brothers Jetstream Book 2: Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe</span></a></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Read and listen to<b> </b><a href="https://www.realm.fm/shows/silver-wing"><b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Silver Wing, a serial on Realm</span></b></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/arts/a-trip-through-the-imagination-of-zig-zag-claybourne-26004782">A Trip Through the Imagination of Zig Zag Claybourne, Detroit Metro Times</a></span></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/7176708.Zig_Zag_Claybourne"><b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Books by Zig Zag Claybourne listed on Goodreads </span></b></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.writeonrighton.com/index.html"><b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Zig's House--the motherlode<br /></span></b></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-32093872885764540702023-09-24T14:10:00.009+09:302023-09-25T11:20:32.483+09:30When the first draft is the last<p><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">As soon as the prolific fiction writer declared,
in effect, “I don’t revise because I write fast yet carefully the first time,”
this reader lost interest in anything more from that factory.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">When it comes to characters, the first
draft is (for authors who aren’t writing about those they've gotten to know over years of relationships) the version in which they still wear nametags and
the writer knows as much about them as a spreadsheet shows. Even the blood is scripted.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp2Nj95OKLxZxDTQlaEpZs_cyWE1d4A48R40Es0B78GK1RrGUGBmMh1kz18ng_fotjU9D_2YVIjThLOQAkEaLPmBHXQSjZNWcj9ywr-ZFQy8u--SI9PXmuB8IK6nttKRci2_KDsHFDTzWwfFZ4qbkuv303DGnn7vvLPUYZWxMlzpyIlE1slNeF6g/s3851/paper%20airplane.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1459" data-original-width="3851" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp2Nj95OKLxZxDTQlaEpZs_cyWE1d4A48R40Es0B78GK1RrGUGBmMh1kz18ng_fotjU9D_2YVIjThLOQAkEaLPmBHXQSjZNWcj9ywr-ZFQy8u--SI9PXmuB8IK6nttKRci2_KDsHFDTzWwfFZ4qbkuv303DGnn7vvLPUYZWxMlzpyIlE1slNeF6g/w400-h151/paper%20airplane.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">The writer who stops there doesn’t have the
time nor interest in becoming <i>involved</i>. To do that risks throwing a spanner in the works of productivity.
It could change the course of history, force the writer to take a look at what
the characters have been committed to. And (horrors!) compel that
writer to liberate the script.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">Characters (real characters--not elements--characters
who don’t recognise a story arc, writing rules, and that invisible set of walls they
live betwixt, the “envelope”) who are allowed to be themselves can be shocking to prescriptive
writers and editors, a great deal of work, emotionally draining, and terrifying. Writers
can find real love, and readers can, too. Single-word definitions of characters
and situations are trampled. The story smells like earth after rain. The world of fiction
bursts into real, painful, beautiful, worrisome, confusing, maddeningly complex
yet clear as water: life.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">But, says the writer, the characters are meant to be ciphers. I'm not interested in them. It's the setup and denouement. That's very clever. It fits in the genre, Wank. I'm not talking about you, but these works should be clearly marked. <br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">That's not to say that there aren't masterpieces that come out in one inspired flow. There are times when it happens, that precious channeling. But the more prolific a writer is, the more danger there is that there's no real connection between writer and what's written about. A writer exists to serve the needs of a story, imo, not the other way around.<br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU">Now, there are readers who want that first
perfect draft only. They don’t wish to read anything that might make them feel, let alone think. They don’t want the involvement either. They just
want something soothing to pass the time between commitments or to help them sleep or to half-pretend
to be transported to. But not only is there more of that than they could ever
read already. <i><br />Why read when you can watch? <span> </span></i></span></span></p>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-68910529443616656892023-08-30T12:57:00.002+09:302023-08-30T22:56:20.004+09:30Pocurante, a short story by Anna Tambour<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The whole town
sucked in such a big breath, a fly would of clutched its throat gasping. Would
Pococurante raise a sweat to stay alive? We waved flies away with more effort. Yet
at a flick of his wrist, grown men ducked. Dad said a word he shouldn't of in
mixed company, but nobody cared. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Astride the town's great river red
gum on that blazing day in February, Pococurante didn't defy death. He
humiliated it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When finally he landed head up,
feet exploding dust, I cheered like I never did before, nor since. Dad made
strange sounds like rain hitting dry ground. He was <i>crying!</i> And he
wasn't alone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Smooth as a cold beer, Pococurante passed
through the crowd and down the street, the gold letters on his shirt-back slithering.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The next morning I asked Dad,
"What's Pococurante mean?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He must of been thinking for
breakfast, because he answered right off. "The god of thunder, I
reckon."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">That made sense to me. Before
Pococurante, a bullock whip was just a bullock whip. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As for the circus, I forget its
name, but it was a mangy thing. It didn't have a tent so it wasn't any more
than a man who rode a horse with his head in the saddle and his feet in the air.
We could do that before we were six. And a woman with a beard and hairy arms,
and a clown who was only funny when he pulled the red nose off his face to
sneeze, and a lion who wanted to sleep and a lion tamer who doubled as the
fancy-talk introducer, and Pococurante. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As for the town, it was mangy, too.
One of those unloved border towns that straddle two states, where the people on
both sides think life on the other side is better but it isn't, and before you
notice, everybody's slipped away including you, feeling guilty but bloody
relieved,<span> </span>like how you leave a funeral. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As for Pococurante, I had a theory
I carried around inside me till I saw my first action in war. I did think, you
see, till I really shouldn't of, that this Pococurante<i> was</i> some sort of
god. That my dad had nailed him good, but at the same time missed. My dad, you
see, thought Pococurante had named himself in imitation of. But Mrs Fletcher at
school said there weren't any gods named Pococurante, and she reeled off all
the ones there were. Plain God, who we knew. And to some, his son, so that took
care of two. And Zeus and Mars and Pluto the dog-god and Neptune with his hayfork,
and Tor the blond, and some more that I can't remember, but Pococurante? No.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>Pococurante</i>, I'd say each
night. I knew he wouldn't like frilly stuff, so I talked to him straight. <i>Be
a sport</i>, I'd say, all under my breath. <i>Toss me some of your bravery.
You've got bags of it to spare. Make my face as still as yours. You can do it,
but I can't on my own. </i>I certainly couldn't.<span> </span><i>Make me look like I don't give a cuss what
people think, like you. Tell me what you want from me and I'll do it. Anything.
</i>He never answered directly, but he was the last god on earth I'd of
expected to answer anyone like me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Before Pococurante, if you'd of
said that anyone in my town would ape a man with an embroidered shirt, spit
your teeth goodbye. I imitated his walk, which is funny looking back on it. But
every boy did and many men, so it wasn't funny with everybody and his dog doing
it. And even though two boys killed themselves trying to be Pococurante, no-one
wished otherwise any more than they wished that the good years didn't come
because of the bad. But there was a limit. When Ridgy Bray was heard whistling <i>Nobody
Cares for Me</i>, he was given a friendly punch-up for putting on airs. I
thought it was sacrilegious. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One day when a kick in the
stockyard punched my kneecap so my leg folded front to back, I bit a hunk off
my lower lip rather than scream. <i>Pococurante!</i> He gave me the strength to
be a man, but he was as mysterious as weather.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And then I went to war and saw
another Pococurante, and another. I saw four by the war's end. I felt shy
around them. Lots of men did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But to Pococurante. He'd gone to
that war my dad did. Dad never talked about his war. But when I saw Pococurante's
face again on other men, and I saw that walk--all that I copied but knew was
never me--I knew then, the original wasn't a god, but what a man could be. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When the war ended, I asked one of
the Pococurantes to be my business partner--the one who saved my life. I
thought I'd have to beg him, but he said okay. Just "Okay." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I was so taken aback, I couldn't answer
back, but he didn't seem to need that. I was honoured that he thought me good
enough. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He didn't have any plans so I made
up plans for us both.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We opened a dry
cleaning shop in Adelaide. I named the dry-cleaners <i>Pococurante</i>, after
he said he didn't care what it was called. It had a classy ring to it, the
young girl at the business registry said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"About time we had some tone
here," she declared. "Adelaide's such a sleepy place."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I didn't know what she was talking
about so I shut up. My partner leant over the counter and looked at her, and I
thought she'd die right there. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Poco," she said.
"Little! and cur-ahhn-tay." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She clicked her fingers and cocked
her head. "Greased lightnin! pronto, current, see? I might work here but .
. . say!" she said to my partner (I was a flyspeck on the wall). "You
haven't by chance, seen the film at the Odeon?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yar," he said, giving
her a ghost of a smile.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So <i>Pococurante</i> the window
said, in swirly gold script, close but not quite the same as I remembered. </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It wasn't as if my
partner didn't work. He did. But the business didn't thrive. He was so
attractive that the counter got mobbed, but he was hopeless with ticketing
clothes. So, though we lost some love-struck women who'd been coming in bearing
clean twin-sets just to see him, I took over the counter and he worked in the
back. But he didn't seem to get the knack of cleaning and pressing, either.
Pleats came out cock-eyed, buttons were torn off, and if I'd of wanted a
wedding dress to look like the next morning after a night at the pub, I'd only
have to give it to my partner, Po. Yes, I'd named him that in the war, and it
stuck. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Faithful, many of our customers
were. They tried so hard to stay with us. "Jiffy's open closer to my
busstop," one said to me. "But you're the only ones who treat us like
intelligent beings." She was the girl from the business registry, our most
fervent customer. And she had one helluva big mouth. <span> </span>Everybody thought of us as some classy Jiffy,
though a dog could of slept on our jobs and done a better job than Po, and I
couldn't do everything. I used to come in during the night and redo Po's work,
so's he wouldn't know. He never caught on, though thinking back, he should of. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But Po never noticed. He pitched up
every morning on the dot, never took sickies, never loitered at the counter
with his many admirers who came in to catch a glimpse of him. I'd say,
"Just a tick, Miss Timble," and ring a bell. "Po!" I'd have
to yell, to get my voice past the muffle of clothes, and through the racket of
the tumble machines. "Look who's here." Po would push his head
between the cello'd garments and give the customer his ghost-smile,
"Yar," he'd say and disappear again. "Hard at work, poor
boy," Miss Timble would say, "Just give him this," and she'd
leave a little package of lamingtons she'd made, and flee. Or Miss Crumb, or
old Mrs Methuine. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Even the old birds weren't immune to
him, though he was immune to all. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I married during the first year,
and my wife was a mystery as big as Po. I asked her early on why she wasn't
stuck on him instead of me and she asked me back: "What's there to be
stuck on?"</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sylvia helped in
the shop the first few months, trying to teach Po how to press, but he never
learned, and then she couldn't help because the Stoddard Solvent made her sick,
and she was sick enough anyway. And then Po, our first, came. And then of
course she couldn't help any more, except for bookkeeping, something that Po
and I'd been hopeless at.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Syl liked Po, too, but "He's a
sadsack, isn't he?" she asked one night after I got home at midnight from
my moonlight fixup job at my own place of business, "You're nuts,"
she said. She was peevish, Po being such a teether and her with a bun in the
oven ready to come out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Sadsack!?" I regret I
snarled. I opened the fridge and found only a chicken and a bottle of milk. Not
one damn beer. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"And where's my bloody--"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Pull your head out, Mal!"
Syl wasn't a simperer. "You don't even listen to the radio in that
place."'</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I didn't. It slowed me down and
there was so much work. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">But her voice did something to me
now. I was never one for a fight, but she could knock me out with a word.
"Sorry, Syl," I said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"That's alright," she
said. "Hey, let's not wake Po. But really, love, any man who doesn't know
a beer strike's on is a man with a problem to solve."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Beer?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Four days now," she
said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Strewth!" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Turn around," she said,
and when I did, she stuck her big stomach into the small of my back and
massaged my shoulders. "They're stiff as coat hangers." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"The books look worse than
you," she said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Hmm," I said, knowing
she was right and wanting her hands to stay doing that, and not wanting
tomorrow to come. <i>Please don't say another word</i>, I silently implored
her.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"He's not--" she said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I can't."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"No, you can't." </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We couldn't, you
see. We couldn't split the partnership. I couldn't imagine Po, Big Po, being on
his own, out in the cold. Sure, there was a billion women who'd of liked to
spirit Po away, but even if one succeeded, then what?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I owe him," I said, and
that was that, certainly since Little Po. For though Po wasn't god,
("That's for sure," Sylvia laughed, and though it was irreverent to
him, I had to laugh, thinking of how I often I'd say <i>You bloody gorilla!</i>
while I fixed his jobs at night)--though he wasn't god in the dry cleaners, he
was godly in the ways that count. Me being alive proved that. And certainly Po
as a failed god would damn our newborn to something<span> </span>. . . </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"It's not like we're superstitious,"
Sylvia said, "but."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sylvia always could put words in
the right place.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So we had to do something, but
what? <span> </span>We couldn't abandon Po, but we
couldn't keep the shop going like it was. "Is he good at anything?"
she asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It was already two in the morning,
so she ignored my "Lotsa things" and went for the kill.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"What, precisely?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Little Po woke for his twosies. I'd
slept through them before, but this time I watched her feed him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When she got him to sleep it was
almost three a.m., and I had nothing to say except "Nothing particular,"
thinking of something very particular.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I suspected that." She
sighed and shifted her stomach. "You're soft as a cream bun, Mal. He still
living in that working men's hotel?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Where else would he bunk,
except with us?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Horrid places, those."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"No they aren't."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You hated them."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yeah," I admitted,
snuggling up to her. "But I like my comforts. I guess he doesn't
care."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yar." She did him
perfectly! I laughed till she hit me. "Wake Little Po at your peril!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At that, it was impossible not to
wake him, and we did, right and proper. </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Syl had the idea of
branching out instead of giving up. "There's a ton of new migrants we can
choose from. Let's find us a nice little tailoress. We'll add dressmaking and fashion
advisory to the window, and get little cards printed up."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So we did. Mrs Kamensky even spoke
a bit of English, and she certainly could sew. She had a very Parisian air to
her, the customers thought. Unlike lots of Adelaide men who didn't talk about
it, the women and girls had never been over there, so any Pole could of fooled
them. Every Tuesday night was a free-to-all fashion advice evening, and it sure
was attended. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I asked Po to come to the nights
and sit in as security, but Syl had her own devious reasons and they worked a
treat. When fashions were modelled before tea and cake was served, the natural
thing was to look to the man in the room. When Mrs Kamensky said "This is
the way to do so-and-so" eyes would always turn to Po. He brought a great
deal of juh nuhsay quah, as Gloria, the girl from the registry office (now Mrs
Braverman) said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Shortly after the fashion nights
began, a group of brickies' labourers came in one Friday lunch hour, their
beery breath making me miss my bachelor days. "Where's this Po
bloke?" said the guy in front, plonking a fist the size of a pumpkin on
the counter. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"What you want him for?"
I asked a bit too loud. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">To my relief, Po suddenly appeared
at my side. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You Po?" the head bloke
asked, looking a bit shaken.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yar," said Po. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You got a ball and chain o'
yur own?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po just looked at them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"He's single, matey," I
said, "but what's it to you? He pinch your sheilas?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Not likely!" said
someone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"What's your gripe then?"
I demanded, Po lending me bluster I didn't own. I felt good defending him
against whatever they wanted to accuse him of. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"He go to these ladies'
nights?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Would you want to?" I
asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The room exploded in laughter. Even
Po smiled at that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"What a man's gotta do for a
quid," someone muttered. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You're alright, mate," said
the lead brickie, and they walked out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The sessions brought us so much
business that I could finally hire a girl to do the cleaning and pressing. She
didn't speak much English, but she could put a knife pleat in a bowl of
custard, that girl. She was so good that Po didn't need to do anything. He took
to doing only the ug-type work, lifting dirty loads and such, and otherwise sitting
on a stool in the back, unless some customer wanted to say hello or ask his
advice. His advice was always the same, it seemed to me. He gave them what they
wanted, as far as confidence-building went, his smile letting them know that
they knew best. But the women who liked him never noticed that. I won't say I
understand women. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Then he'd go back to his stool. He
wasn't a reader, so him sitting on that stool most of the time bothered me. He
looked lost. I thought back to the war and remembered his spoons, so the next
day I pinched two from home and gave them to him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Are these right?" I
asked. "We could use some music." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He started out rusty, but it only
took about a day for him to loosen up, and then those spoons clacked out all
kinds of songs, and he played better than I remembered. It was okay, seeing him
slouched over the stool, banging those spoons against his knee. The girl,
Majka, liked his playing, though it was hard for me to hear with all the
moaning and hissing and tumbling of the machines.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Those were good days. I slept so
well that even the twosies of little Beatrice didn't get me up. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Pococurante fashion evenings
became so popular that we got a half page write-up in the <i>Adelaide Telegraph</i>
as the place to be if you want to be in mode, with a big photo of the window: </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Pococurante Cleaners</i></b></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Dressmaking & Fashion Advisory Service</i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The article was feisty: "A
poke in the eye to all those who think of Adelaide as not able to hold its head
up with the major cities, as far as style is concerned."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I framed the page and hung it in
the window.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The next week Jiffy
Cleaners closed., and within days, I told Majka to bring in an offsider, we had
so much business, so she brought in her younger sister. Now there were two
girls working in the back of the shop, and Po mainly playing his spoons.<span> </span>It would of been odd if it were anyone but Po.
And his songs were so full of life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">About a month later, I heard two
screams and fought my way through a crush of cello'd suits to find Po holding
up a red-bellied black snake with one hand and picking up a wedding veil with
the other.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"It want kill me," Majka
said, her hands on her heart. Her sister half hid behind her--their eyes big as
oil stains.<span style="color: red;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po dropped the snake into the
middle of the wedding veil, pulled up the edges and knotted them. The snake
squiggled but it couldn't get out. Po had bagged that snake so smooth, you'd of
thought he bagged a snake a day before breakfast. I'd wondered before where Po
came from. He never said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He looked to me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Take it away!" begged
Majka. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Her sister pointed. "No that."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I agreed. I pulled a set of Alfred
Hotel drapes from their laundry bag and handed Po the bag.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He dropped his improvised sack into
the laundry bag, gave the girls one of his ghost-smiles, and left out the back
door. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The front door bell had tinkled
several times and the counter bell was berserk, so I left the girls with a
"You okay?" and their uncertain nods. As soon as I could, I joined
them in the back and they told me the story. The redbelly had come out from a
pile of musty woollens that looked like they hadn't been worn for years.
"It want kill me!" Majka kept saying, and her sister acted like one
of those jerk dolls where you pull the elastic to make its head nod. I didn't
laugh. They wouldn't know that the snake just wanted to get away. I did say I'd
never seen another snake in Adelaide, and then showed them from the style of
clothes in that pile and their sheepy smell, that the customer was a cockie,
and since they didn't know that word either, I had to say<i> farmer</i>, but
they didn't understand till I said <i>Baaah!</i> And then they smiled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Then I said so that they
understood, regardless of whether they believed the rest of what I'd said:
"You tell. No work." They both understood that. We couldn't have our
lady customers thinking snakes were lurking in the Pococurante, eyeing their
high heels.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po didn't come back that day, but
was security at the fashion night that night, reliable as ever. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The next morning when Majka and her
sister arrived, they carried between them a huge old case made of something
that looked like leather. They ducked to get it in the front door, and took it
to the back. Po was already there, playing his spoons. The shop wasn't OPEN
yet, thank goodness, or I would of had to close, I was so curious.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po stopped playing. We watched as
Majka undid the buckles while her sister held the case upright. They opened the
hinged lid together and Majka brought out what looked like a taxidermied snake
from some Land of Giants, but instead of fangs, it had a little brass cup for a
mouth. Majka's sister laid the case down and stood beside her in front of Po.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You take," Majka said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"From us Papa," said her
sister. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Wahzsh" or something
like that, Majka said, "Snake." She pointed to the thing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po nodded to them, no smile at all.
He got off the stool and took it from their hands like it was a baby. He
inspected it as thoroughly as I've seen him check a gun. It proved to be some
weird musical instrument. Black, thick as an anaconda, and in the shape of an S
that then snaked down into another S. He found finger holes in the horizontal
places of the snake, and put his mouth to the mouthpiece. He moved his lips
around experimenting like you do with a new girl . . . and blew. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">At first nothing happened, so he
wet his lips again and stood up straighter. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He got a gurgle out of it like a
toilet in an apartment house. His eyes crossed, looking at the mouthpiece. He
shut his eyes and took a big breath and settled his lips again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><i>"Bwaaaah!" </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I hadn't heard that since I left the
place where I grew up. Take a six-month-old calf away from its mum, and if it
doesn't make that bellow right off, give it time and it'll blast you to the
next shire with that sound, and if it doesn't, you're deaf, guaranteed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Pococurante is a small place. I
stumbled back, holding my ears and would of fallen but for the press of hanging
clothes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The girls were prepared. They
giggled but didn't take their hands from their ears. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po grinned. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He took a breath and tried again,
producing a more civilised sound. I looked at my watch. I had to open the shop.
The girls tore their eyes from Po and the great snake, and turned their
equipment on. </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The day was
punctuated with the call of the hungry calf. And it was funny, the reaction.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You got a bull back
there?" asked most. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I had a great time instructing city
people on the particulars of bull calls compared to calf calls. "That's
one hundred percent calf," I said. "You think a bull's got a great
deep voice like that, don't you Mrs O'Brien? Mrs James? Mrs Braverman? No, a
bull's got a soprano, beautiful and thin and high as a lady's. Like yours!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Get away with you," said
Mrs Braverman, waving her hand with its flashy wedding ring. "You're
pulling my leg." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Po," I yelled, but he
couldn't hear so I had to step back and beckon him through. His eyes were
closed so I had to get Majka to put her hand on his shoulder.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He didn't come immediately but when
he did, "I was telling Mrs Braverman here," I said, "that a
bull's got a high voice, nothing like that calf-call you're making, isn't that
true?" Ever since that redbelly, I reckoned he must of come from a place
like me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yar," Po said. His lips were
curiously red and swollen and he had a faraway look in his eyes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A little pleat formed between Mrs
Braverman's eyes as she regarded Po.<span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Let's see you play," she
said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I bowed to her and turned to Po.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">He went back and returned,
struggling through the clothes racks with the instrument in his arms. At the
look of it, Gloria Braverman's pleat deepened but Po's eyes were closed by
then, his lips pressed to the mouthpiece.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Bwaaaah!" yelled the
giant snake with the voice of a hungry calf.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Mrs Braverman fled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It was so funny, I laughed till I
cried. But I didn't tell Syl.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">From that day on,
Po played only the snake instrument. All day. After a while, he could play like
the wind in the grass, so soft that the equipment overpowered him, but the
girls didn't like that. They liked him to make the calf sound. "Bwaah! Bwaah!"
they'd urge, and <span> </span>"Bookat!" or
something like that. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So he made up songs that sounded
like they were yelled by a hungry calf. They loved them and they accomplished
so much work that they were oftentimes standing around with their hands on their
hips, waiting. By the end of a month, I think he could of made that snake whisper,
but he didn't. It only yelled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The first intimation that I had of
anything wrong was when I noticed that women had stopped asking for Po. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Then one day when I opened the
door, I found an envelope that someone had shoved under the door. It was an
article clipped from the <i>Melbourne Daily Courier</i>.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Adelaide
Culture Taken to the Cleaners In a <span> </span>Word</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.5in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.5in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"In
the mushroom culture that is Adelaide, your correspondent has come upon a
delicious morsel of farce in the centre of town: The Pococurante, where those
with fashion at heart come every week, and the crème of Adelaide have their
clothes created and cleaned to a T. This centre of culture is run by two
strange blokes, who must be laughing up their sleeves at the cognoscenti who
don't know their pococurante from their frankly-Scarlett,-I-don't-give-a-damn.
They serenade the beauties that flock to this denizen, with Mozart. Not quite.
Follow the sound of the angry bull, and you'll hit the bullseye."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">All day I drove
myself insane. What was the article on about? Some nasty anti-Adelaide bit of
snideness? That's something that Melbourne and Sydney do, but I was trying all
day to figure out what to do about Po, who really had to stop playing that snake
thing, at least like that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I'd never read the <i>Melbourne
Daily Courier</i> before, and don't imagine that any of our customers did. But
that article could of been slipped with the ink still damp under the pillow of
every Adelaidian, such was the response we got. We hadn't been this slow since
the old days, and the people who did come in, came in with silly questions, not
things to clean. I could<i> feel</i> the city's anger.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the back of the Pococurante, Po
played his snake for the girls, who were getting through the work faster than
it was coming in today. Po hadn't mentioned that I didn't call him to the front
any more, but then Po never mentioned anything. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My one comfort that day was that Po
didn't know about the newspaper article.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I didn't want
Sylvia to find out about it either, but when I got home, she met me with
"What's the bull? And what's this all about?" And she shoved an open
book at me and pointed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The dictionary. I didn't need her
to point. On the left hand page, something was circled in angry red crayon.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I read it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Why didn't you just punch me
in the eye?" I asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Why didn't you look it
up?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"It was a name, not a word,"
I said. "He was <i>Pococurante!</i> I told you. Would you of looked up a
name embroidered in gold on a bloke like that's shirt?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Huh!" she said and
without taking her eyes off me, yelled "Beatrice! Get your teaset off the
hallway floor this second or--" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I heard a scuttle and a whimper, while
I looked at the thing in my arms and wondered what to do with it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I don't know," she said
to me. "But honestly . . . perhaps not."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sylvia and I were just inside the
front door. I walked past her and dropped into my chair. I couldn't decently
strangle the dictionary, so it sat in my lap. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Syl walked over to me, picked it up
and flung it against the wall. "There," she said, "You can put
it in the bookcase later." She rested her hands on her hips. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Now," she said, "I
asked you about that bull."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"It's a calf," I said. Syl
was born and bred in Adelaide. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Get on with it."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"It's only an instrument that
Po practices in slack times," I said. "Sometimes it sounds like a
calf . . .<span> </span>only a calf."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">After a while she said "Mmm,"
and then, "Must feed the kids."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She put them to bed as soon as
they'd eaten. Then she fixed two tall, stiff drinks: brandy and water without
the ice and without the water. She put the glasses on the table by my easy
chair, shoved me into it, and sat on my lap. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You can't change the name
now," she said, "or everyone'll think they've got you. You must tough
it out." Then she kissed me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I don't deserve that," I
said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Too right you don't,"
she said, and kissed me again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She talked, and we drank on empty
stomachs, and I felt after another of her drinks, that I could tough it out.
But then there was Po.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You must face Po," she
said. "Buy him out."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Yar," I said, but we
didn't laugh. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I knew I couldn't do it.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The next day we
might as well of been closed as far as customers giving us jobs went. The ones
who picked up jobs were cold as a witch's tit, excuse my French. But in the
late afternoon, a reporter came in from the <i>Adelaide Telegraph</i>, just as
Syl had told me to expect.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"They've picked a fight,"
she'd said. "And they'll get it." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So I was ready, I hoped. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I laughed at the Melburnians' <i>snideness</i>
as Syl told me to call it, and shrugged my shoulders at <i>Pococurante</i>,
saying that if Melbourne people didn't think that Adelaide people don't know what
it means, that just shows Melbourne's unworldliness. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"We can snap our fingers to
what they're obsessed with," I said (something else memorised from Syl).
"We've got juh nuhsay quah." I added. That, I'd remembered from
Gloria Braverman, who had said it alot once, and Syl said that I should repeat
that, too. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I bet the reporter will ask
you to say that twice," she said. And she was right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"And about those sounds of an angry
bull?" the reporter asked.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You ever been to an opera?"
I asked the reporter, and he laughed out loud as he wrote that down.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I laughed with him, but didn't feel
any too good inside. Po hadn't come in, and didn't pitch up all day.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The article in the <i>Adelaide
Telegraph</i> came out the next morning, and it was a triumph. Melburnians were
<i>"jealous sourpusses, as anyone would be with their weather . . .
According to Oxford professor W. K. Lister from the Royal Academy of Music, who
is visiting his sister here in Adelaide, from descriptions of the instrument
being played by Mr Pococurante"</i> (I distinctly told the reporter: <i>Clarence
Braithwaite</i>, so I don't know how this mistake occurred) <i>"the
instrument is a Schlangenrohr, otherwise known as a Serpent, invented hundreds
of years ago to be played in churches as a choir enhancement. It is a credit to
our city, and possibly of quite venerable age. It is extremely difficult to
play. The professor said he would be honoured to meet . . ."</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span>Customers came in all day waving the <i>Telegraph</i> like a flag.
"Hooray for us!" they crowed. "Where's Po?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Po didn't come in all day. And
what's more, the snake-serpent-whateveryoucallit had disappeared. I'd been too
preoccupied to pay any attention to Majka when she'd asked about both the day
before. Po had always packed it in its case and left it in the shop before.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When I got home
Sylvia was there to meet me at the door, a frothy glass in her hand and a smile
as big as a house on her face.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I pasted a smile on my face, but
couldn't face the drink.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The next day the girls were frantic.
Still no Po. I served the crowd of customers at the counter and then told the
girls I'd go find him, and to take the day off. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I closed the shop and walked the
three blocks to the rooming house where we'd both lived till I got married. The
manager went to Po's room at my request, but Po didn't answer the door. He was
paid up to the end of the week so it was like pulling nails from ironwood to
get the manager to open up his room, but finally he did when I said I'd leave
and come back with the coppers. <span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Inside, a neat room greeted us,
with nothing personal in it except what he left in the wastebasket: a magazine
of physical culture--something of a surprise. A powder-blue envelope with no
writing on it, but it had once been sealed. A balled-up clipping from, you
guessed it before I did: The <i>Melbourne Courier</i>. And a dried-up
applecore. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I felt sick.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">While I scouted round the room, I
remembered what it was like living in the one next door. Alone in your room,
you'd hear other men breathing, turning the pages of magazines, and the rest.
The back of each door had a sign on it that said, "NO women" topping
a lot of other NO's. The view from the window was a brick wall with a painted
ad: <b>Bonds</b>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I went home to Sylvia, not knowing
what to do. We put the kids in the old Morris and drove all over Adelaide, even
out to Snake Gully, looking, like lost farts in a haunted shithouse. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"He's gone," I said after
two hours of this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Where would he go?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"How should I know?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We took the kids back. They were
crying. I left her and them in the house, and went out again. I didn't know
where, but I had to go out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I walked till my feet were blistered.
I hadn't walked this much for years. He could walk, I remembered. He never
groused like the rest of us at the length of those tramps in mud. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When I felt so lost that my eyes
were getting misty, I made my way back to my own house, and Sylvia.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Our stereo ran hot that evening so
that music took the place of talk. We didn't have too many records, so she had
to play her Benny Goodman twice. That was fine by me. Any noise would do,
because nothing would do.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We went to bed early and I looked
at the ceiling for hours. I wanted to strangle whoever those people were--the
nasty ones. He had protected me, and what had I done for him? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"You need your sleep,
Mal," came Syl's voice through the darkness. She'd been pretending to
sleep, too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I'll be right," I said
to Syl. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Shh!" she said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"I was," I said, miffed.
It was Syl who had spoken, not me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Shut up, Mal. Listen!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I heard it. A voice--high and thin
as the night. One long note. It swelled . . . and then died away.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"How beautiful!" whispered
Sylvia. "Shh!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She didn't need to shush me. I felt
my ears stretch, I was straining so hard to hear.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Again and again--that voice, and
each time, further away.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"There's no words," she
whispered, "but then there aren't really in opera, are there?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">She wasn't wanting an answer, so I
didn't give her one. She shut up again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"If only I could sing like
that," Sylvia finally sighed when the voice was too faint to catch any
more. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When dawn came, I heard her
ladylike snores. </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">* *
* </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When I opened the
door of the Pococurante only a few hours later, Majka and her sister came in as
usual, but we each had our jobs to do, so we nodded to each other and got on
with it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A crowd of customers was already
waiting, sounding like a flock of galahs: "Did you hear her too? My word!
I wonder who . . ." <span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">And they must of breakfasted on
radio waves to come up with <i>Call of the Soprano</i>, <i>Phantom Lady of the
Night</i>, <i>Dame Melba's Ghost</i>, <i>Heavenly Disturber of our Peace</i>
and such rot.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Well, Sylvia had been taken in
completely, but I couldn't let it stand. All the customers got an earful of my
correction, as I explained that the <i>lady</i> was a bull. After about an hour
of this, an old guy who was quietly waiting, holding a hoary jacket, backed me
up. "A bull's call is unmistakable," he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Finally, at that slack time just
before noon, I was alone in the front, so I went to the back and told the girls
that I was sorry they'd been too far away to hear that bull, living in their
migrant camp, but they said that just around dawn the whole camp heard it, too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">"Papa say no bull," Maj
said. And just then, a ghost tweaked three sets of lips.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> ___________________________</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/925808.Logorrhea?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_9" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="283" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh82Wr0e5286UN_6ScUKn3gQ9YU_NUnrLrtBPEV_2PVFWPqWQBg21mUNBZCUUTvRZqT3cSUp85m6rolr-3M1jeh40U3Vfl7yXqWFJPpi-jhyFgcxIHzZHuOfi8mM6nCd71r_tbCjPFhZF6FhWjrmCRdHRWXhJqYlD2eCVkrY8Y4XfqyQuhjA_pU7Q/s320/Logorrhea%20Good%20Words.jpg" width="194" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU">First published in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/925808.Logorrhea?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_9"><i>Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good
Stories</i></a> edited by John Klima, Spectra Books, NY, 2007. </span><span lang="EN-AU"> <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28926117-the-finest-ass-in-the-universe" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBux7vVEVbuGRphGnbRiUPt_0aCmwAWL6TJvZ6_MlZemnP3lujd5FQFXu-3cbe5gqNCXi6rkp23sh4z3MiIhaymZHDOFnJf8fOZoaASn3nTskOoPthWu_jdkbVqH0deRgTpe7I_L3mAfVtfrOe9KYkJJO6PkQ0YIgOJ5wC1Y64fBsky8JDefTIMQ/s320/TFA.jpg" width="213" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU">Reprinted in <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28926117-the-finest-ass-in-the-universe">The Finest Ass in the Universe</a></i>, Ticonderoga </span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU">Publications, WA, Australia, 2015.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU">Of course, copyright. <br /></span></span></div><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-71015676763632129712023-08-29T11:58:00.003+09:302023-08-29T11:58:49.512+09:30Free reads from Death Goes the Dogs--stories by Anna Tambour, art by Mike Dubisch<p>Published by <a href="https://forbiddenfuturesmagazine.com/catalog/forbiddenfuturesmagazine"><b>Oddness/Forbidden Futures</b></a></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzCHYcdZ-ThFPBWbQTzrhhfH1fCBZ8hMTJxbV_BsjOt8uBtSrhJUltS6lxCQQdgfs4h7pxpmAPMnWS3xYbnOj_WfKy0tkjxzu7x9zBIDi5qThxNhuMX8v2RVY-vASbQUTWNCej7s58bqYLV35-pEWea-B4b_MU8Luo1M0Z-hVMnJKXTZfqefzwzg/s262/Death%20Goes%20to%20the%20Dogs%20book%20pile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="192" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzCHYcdZ-ThFPBWbQTzrhhfH1fCBZ8hMTJxbV_BsjOt8uBtSrhJUltS6lxCQQdgfs4h7pxpmAPMnWS3xYbnOj_WfKy0tkjxzu7x9zBIDi5qThxNhuMX8v2RVY-vASbQUTWNCej7s58bqYLV35-pEWea-B4b_MU8Luo1M0Z-hVMnJKXTZfqefzwzg/w235-h320/Death%20Goes%20to%20the%20Dogs%20book%20pile.jpg" width="235" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>With more than 70 illustrations by <a href="https://mikedubischart.webs.com/"><b>Mike Dubisch</b></a><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Go <a href="https://forbiddenfuturesmagazine.com/catalog/death-goes-to-the-dogs">here</a></b></span><br /></p><p><br /></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-762813575558435412023-06-05T11:01:00.000+09:302023-06-05T11:01:17.153+09:30review of The Gogamagog Circus by Garry Kilworth<div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r1qt:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not <i>another</i> Kilworth book</span><span style="font-size: large;">‽</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></h3><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaHvBQ4zmrpQHXV5a5vRn0bZ7rainX5MK5mzho4AJOblXfEWTsuFxohJtrzzjPgTxrfx54YViOUjT5Df5P-5NM19pZVyKLM6wVCuMpOKhRdAhATc9F9bP_AJ80DpvZwvJVYWGONwzn7uIkzENwOnM1b7qv_sPKbcNitwGMYi9h4PtxMG7xd0/s812/The%20Gogamagog%20Circus%20by%20Garry%20Kilworth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="812" data-original-width="531" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuaHvBQ4zmrpQHXV5a5vRn0bZ7rainX5MK5mzho4AJOblXfEWTsuFxohJtrzzjPgTxrfx54YViOUjT5Df5P-5NM19pZVyKLM6wVCuMpOKhRdAhATc9F9bP_AJ80DpvZwvJVYWGONwzn7uIkzENwOnM1b7qv_sPKbcNitwGMYi9h4PtxMG7xd0/w261-h400/The%20Gogamagog%20Circus%20by%20Garry%20Kilworth.jpg" width="261" /></a></div></span></h2></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto">I've
already reviewed some, and never expected to say
anything about any more, but he's too reliably surprising. I couldn't shut the
book and shut up, too. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">First, I did the foul deed and posted a review on Amazon because this circus might otherwise be as unseen in the infinity of offerings as a star down the infinity a piece from HD 131496. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I hate star ratings, but you can't say unless you play their game. So I rated this, but with a 4-star instead of five because I think five should be reserved for the small handful of books I would mentally run into a burning building for. I would throw this one out the window to pack with my favourite bones and dried leaves and other treasures, but not risk my life on it like I would with my depression-era English translation of Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov's<i> The Little Golden Calf</i> and the 1983 Raduga Publishers, Moscow edition of Chandler's <i>Farewell, My Lovely</i> with its glossary that attempts to explain such inscrutables as "I'd show you my etching", "a Johnnie Walker nose", and "Cut out the Pig Latin".</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That said, this is one magnificent collection. This author is consistent in producing fiction that has so <span></span>much integrity based on his personal knowledge and experience, that I found myself looking up, say, a place in South Africa after asking a South African if he knew the place (he didn't) because I knew that Kilworth did. And he did. A description of a certain kind of desert is as spot on as others' recall of a John Wick killfest or a scene in today's I Love Lucy: the middle-aged sitcom Seinfeld.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The thing with Kilworth, however, is he doesn't take his inspiration from the screen, nor does he use it for reference. He's done so much and been around to so many places that when he, for instance, writes about being on a small boat in the middle of a vast ocean, and it coming adrift on the razor-reef of a coral atoll, the scene he describes and a reader feels, is more real than any reality show.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><blockquote><i>Silvia would sometimes ask me whether this or that would make me happy. 'Once we get the new house, will that make you happy?' I didn't believe in happiness as something you bought and kept, like a flash car. Happiness is fleeting, ephemeral, will-o'-the-wisp. It touches you with light fingers, then it's gone up into the ether. I rarely got that feeling while on land, but out here, with the vast vault of the blue sky above and seemingly borderless ocean stretching to infinity all around, happiness came as passing birds on wings of joy. </i> --from "The Head"</blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The moral dilemmas (if indeed, a character feels any) are explored in the ways I love the most--with no narrative couching to position the reader's sympathy or condemnation. A first-person POV, for instance, is able to be read by an adult with a knowledge that the reader can make up their own mind about what's happening and the morality of it. This might upset many of today's readers who like to be told who's bad and good, as they have less time than Santa Claus.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not that this author waffles. He's not a stylist, so each story is told with no self-indulgent puffery, just the tone and POV called for by the story itself. So the book is a "fast read", if you just want to read everything once and race to the next book. I liked this one too much for that.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I particularly loved the stories that slice up society's mores so swiftly, with such a sharp blade, that it's lying there with all parts exposed and quivering before it could evade and scurry away.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Two stories that are prime examples are "The Sleeping Giant" and "The World's Smallest Giant". Both are told as fairy tales, in the best tradition of subterfuge. Here's a scrap from "The World's Smallest Giant" (a previously unpublished story):</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><blockquote><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Jill went to bed feeling very miserable, but the next morning she was amazed to find a skyscraper in their back garden. Delighted, she went in. It appeared to be all ready for tenants, both residential and office space.</i></span> <br /></div></blockquote><blockquote><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">[She then runs into a small, bald, weaselly-looking guy, the owner who introduces himself as a "Giant of Industry"]</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The only thing Kilworth gets wrong in this story is the chequebook this little giant pulls out. But by the time you read this review (next week?), his mention of bitcoin could be as outdated as cowrie cash.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Military nous is another trustworthy aspect of this collection as well as other Kilworth fiction. He's written several military series, and had enough experience that nothing he writes reads like he's riffing off flicks or books. So his personal experience combined with his knowledge of and interest in ancient history and world mythology add much to stories placed all over the world and times.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lastly, one of the features of Kilworth's fiction that he's kept up here is his way with endings. Not for him, the clever twist that is as false as a set of castanetable teeth. His endings are always the product of what has built up in the tension of the story. His last story in the book, "Giant", with its perfect last line, actually made me draw breath.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Quite a read. Not a book to just read once.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is <span><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1qq9wsj xo1l8bm" href="http://www.garry-kilworth.co.uk/" role="link" tabindex="0"><span class="xt0psk2"><span><b>Garry Kilworth</b></span></span></a></span>'s latest collection, published by Alchemy Press, who hasn't updated the page for this book (grrr) to reflect that it is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gogamagog-Circus.../dp/1911034162/"><b>now out and about</b>. </a></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">An e-edition is also available now, but I can only find a <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gogamagog-Circus-Garry-Kilworth-ebook/dp/B0BXYCF7MQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9PR1U0YF4Y4X&keywords=the+gogamagog+circus&qid=1685927970&sprefix=the+gogamagog+circus%2Caps%2C341&sr=8-1">kindle</a></b>. </span></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-20866010554021450552023-03-25T10:51:00.004+10:302023-03-25T11:00:32.302+10:30review of The Wild Hunt by Garry Kilworth<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=217&referer=Hp"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiymV-WTbyuPkWqFDRnPmryIL77t4IwJQJ8YRfHPLKpEGdohQhRYnmuJQfpQP0-Yb_vGZIca7VAtQIt3tJ1rPDDVEZZpt7ys5cgwtwYssCZFdma_jIHaT8zdNrTrATvSG6rKDFdusdasrAxF1NcABm4j-1hDxIl9GxuCWhhdzQTlYPfw-BTYZQ/w283-h400/book_wild_hunt_cover_4_red.jpg" width="283" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=217&referer=Hp">The Wild Hunt; An Anglo-Saxon Saga </a></b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b> </b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b> </b></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Normally, I’d rather drown myself than
approach a story perched on the proposition of “I must avenge my father’s
death. I must wrest the kingship from a usurper and rule a people who need me.”
Not that these stories scare me. Rather, they make me unkind. I just want to
turn the lot of them on the spit of history till their dripping fat causes the
flames to leap the fireplace and burn the castle down. Too bolshie to be
reliably bolshie, I can’t cry<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for anyone
who’s born to the heights of privilege whose tragic loss is to suddenly become
like the rest of us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">So what of a novel that starts out with that
classic injustice of a prince wronged by the murder of his father at the hands
of nobles <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pledged to them both but
framing him, the son, for the vile patricide of this (assumed to be loved)
king?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"><i>No way</i>, I would have said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">But.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">The <i>but</i> is Garry Kilworth, who is
not only no royal watcher/lickspittle of elites, but whose whole life has been devoted
to the study of and travel amongst the lowlife of the world, us plebes, serfs,
or in current mediaspeak, <i>everyday people</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And <a href="http://medlarcomfits.blogspot.com/2018/01/on-sometimes-spurious-travels-through.html">as I’ve written before</a>, a number of times,
Kilworth’s storytelling is so alive, it does seem as if he’s been everywhere
and done everything. Much of this is because he has, not as a tourist or
dilettante, but in the course of a life. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">So I picked up <a href="http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=217&referer=Hp"><i>The Wild Hunt</i></a> with a lump in
me thwoat, not wanting to hate it but having to leave that possibility open. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Nothing in this novel plays as I
expected. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">First, this sneaks in to murder
expectations as swiftly as the Bolshies dispatched the last tsar and his family
at </span><span class="hgkelc"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Yekaterinburg:</span></span><span lang="EN"> </span><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p><blockquote>“Who were they fighting for but a man with
a personal grievance?”</blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Next, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this writer of many historical novels throws <i>us</i>
into a different time and place, one rich with (though there’s a handy guide in the
back) unpopular terminology such as a hare’s form (not a shape nor <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a burrow but a depression where the hares
spend their days), a badger’s holt, a thurse, Sleipnir, hornbeam trees, churls
(where we get ‘churlish’ from), the thegns, a morgengifu, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and a host of gods who people had to please
but who were themselves, as unreliable as humans. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p><blockquote>“It was not enough to be the favourite of
one god.” </blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And this world is so real, people are
walking on the roof of it now in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/05/metal-heads-the-thriving-detectorist-scene-digging-up-britains-past">modern quests</a>, using modern wands. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p><blockquote>“The young prince paused on the ridge above
the river, turning in his saddle to look around him. Which way to take?
Directly south were the East Saxons. Not particularly friendly neighbours. Then
the Jutes below the big river, who seemed to go quietly about the business of
living . . . Neighbouring the Mercians was the border with the wild Celts,
whose princes had been displaced by Osric’s people. The Saxons, Frisians,
Jutes, Franks and Angles had arrived in shiploads and slowly but surely had
taken over the land for farming. They had driven out, enslaved or absorbed any
Celts who opposed them. It was a big boiling pot of new peoples who were now
trying to get a foothold in this land.”</blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">So it isn’t just a revenge/avenge story in
some made-up world, but one in which, other than their gods being classified as
myths by our society devoted to the One True God, it could be a non-fiction
history, a fraud, but who cares nowadays when something is done with such
charm. The tone is deadpan, the perfect method for capture, such as the time
when Osric comes upon two rotting corpses swinging in a breeze, and “heard the
two dead men arguing about who was responsible for the murder they had
committed together”. The prince, still a prissy young shit, says:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why
don’t you just accept what the Wyrd have designed for you?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“Hah!” cried one of the men whose feet had
been pared to the bone, “what next, world? We can see the monster Hellmouth and
he waits impatiently to swallow us into his gut. I think I prefer hanging here,
thank you very much.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“And who are you, moaned the other man, “to
criticise us -- you having murdered your father.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Osric tugged Magic’s mane to halt him. “And
who told you that?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“It’s common knowledge, “chorused the hanged
men, clearly delighted to have another person to quarrel with, “every thegn and
churl knows that.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Osric decided to spend the night near the
gallows, in case the dead men had more to tell.</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">I don’t know about you, but I just <i>love</i>
this scene, as I do the quite underwhelming kill of a dragon that's such a tiddler, any hero would have thrown the thing back.<br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">As for our hero, Osric, and his story, if I
were to tell you the whole thing, the individual elements sound cornier than Doritos
to me. He comes upon elves, and in particular, a startlingly beautiful contemporary
who is of course, a platinum blonde. He accidentally kisses her and of course,
being as handsome as he is and so uncouth, she not only doesn’t charge him with sexual
harassment, but announces that by his act, they are betrothed (furthermore, [grrrr] she’s as
over the moon as he is confused). But that doesn’t stop a torrid night, his
first action with a real girl even if she isn’t human. She isn’t his hand, his
heretofore only experience. But soon enough, he wants to leave because other
than this, there’s nothing to do in Elfworld. He’s forever hungry because they’re
vegan, and worse than that, non-farmers and non-traders, so they forage in the forest, living on the ultimate diet to keep their model-thin appearance. Frustratingly, they're great archers
but for a game that is kill and release to life. His dirty habit of eating kills
disgusts them but they tolerate him--a damn sight more than he would if he ruled
and the habits were reversed, but he’d have his own woods anyway, and any
poachers would end up like those talkative swingers. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And another trope. The thief companion. I <i>know</i>.
But it <i>works</i> here. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And the gods. They proffer asides here. It
should annoy the shit out of at least this reader. But they’re like flowers
dropped on my head as I traveled through this tale.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And they get so <i>involved</i>. As
involved as the God of America is expected to be in high school games. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">Undermining every trope, every tried and
tired cliche, is Kilworth the storyteller, the man who is so in love with the
story that he won’t tell it as it’s always been done. And he won’t ignore what
he’s supposed to.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“I do not love her. I once thought I did,
but now it has come to marriage I see the folly of my feelings. They were
shallow ones, interested only in the coupling and not in the living-with. I’m
sure it would be a disastrous marriage of two quite different souls.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“Indeed,” said the astute Thief. “she would
rule the roost.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“There is that to take into consideration,”
as if he had not already thought about this aspect of the affair and
acknowledged the importance of it. “Also the fact that I would have to spend a
great deal of time with her father.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“The gods save you from that!” Kenric said
emphatically. “The man eats like a pig and flies off into a temper at the least
imagined slight.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">“It’s all part and parcel of being a king,”
agreed the Thief. . . .</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">[Later]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">[the king] loved being seen as the
generous, benevolent lord who rewarded his people for their services. And, to
be fair, those who were rewarded loved it too.</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And so it came to pass that I, the reader,
was rewarded too. For the writer never fell out of love with the story he tells
here. It is surprisingly political, often so funny that I snorted, and told
with an interest that never flagged. Although Kilworth has written over 70
novels, he’s clearly still enchanted by the quest to find and do a great story’s
bidding. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU">And unusually for most novels, this novel doesn’t sag in the middle like
an old nag, nor drop off like a hyena’s bum at the end. It’s quite obvious
throughout that this is not a writer who thinks “I’ve written x-number of words
today.” Rather, I expect he dreams the story when he can no longer write it,
eager to leap onto its back come morning. I finished this one (for the first
time) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as dawn poked its fingers through
the slats in my blinds. But I’ll be back. </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU"><a href="http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=217&referer=Hp"><b>The Wild Hunt;An Anglo-Saxon Saga</b></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU">by <a href="http://www.garry-kilworth.co.uk/">Garry Kilworth</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU">290 pp.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU">published by
<a href="http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=217&referer=Hp">NewCon Press</a> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU">Cover artist: Chris
G.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></p>
<p></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-11912658259307077362023-02-23T10:04:00.001+10:302023-02-23T11:00:31.475+10:30"If you like" — the inevitability of AI<div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id="jsc_c_6u" style="padding: 4px 16px;"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u" style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px;"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" color="var(--primary-text)" dir="auto" style="display: block; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Although I pity innocent editors and publishers who are sincere in fostering original work with soul, the trade as a whole has created the AI monster without the skill to fuck to fruition, so it has had to do with human imitators so far. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Now AI can do the job much better of fulfilling "If you like ___________, you'll like <br />____________." It’s even got a name: Read alike. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Public libraries give out bookmarks with these guides. </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhrkyatSw7jjBLKlqOYsibrCGiVKREoATz8vSJNI47X6HZQNGmwzZPDmsY8Bn0dNiloEr0FgcLqOlAXlj44LxSVw3ohPhCPoNOqulHov1OUESvx0LSDXk3Qx7NrpfpNhsj4eOD1GbEkt1UivOQZ4Vvc8VjTfclKDAMoQet6knq1eDE2wwpXg/s680/read-alike-bookmarks-feature-680x680.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="680" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhrkyatSw7jjBLKlqOYsibrCGiVKREoATz8vSJNI47X6HZQNGmwzZPDmsY8Bn0dNiloEr0FgcLqOlAXlj44LxSVw3ohPhCPoNOqulHov1OUESvx0LSDXk3Qx7NrpfpNhsj4eOD1GbEkt1UivOQZ4Vvc8VjTfclKDAMoQet6knq1eDE2wwpXg/s320/read-alike-bookmarks-feature-680x680.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: "Palatino Linotype", "Book Antiqua", Palatino, serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.05em; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://bedfordnhlibrary.org/blog/emily/2016/08/01/read-alike-bookmarks-bedford-library-books-you-love-and-want-more"><span style="font-size: large;">Read Alike Bookmarks at Bedford Library (For the books you like, love and want more of!)</span></a></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> "There’s a whole industry pushing it on kids.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><blockquote> <i><a href="https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/read-alike-bookmarks/">"A good bookmark–the perfect bookmark–tells you what to read next! That's why parents, librarians, teachers, as well as kids will love these read-alike bookmarks!"</a> </i></blockquote><i></i></span></div><br /></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Publishers and editors urge writers to be original, as long as they can stop being original. As one agent who'd asked for it said about my novel that was eventually published and shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, "</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It's brilliant, of course, but can't you write something normal?"</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Too many editors and judges to count have told me privately that they have been dismayed by the sameness they see, the indistinguishability, a trait they say is most common amongst those writers who've had it honed by the MFA process. They might say that. I couldn't possibly comment except to say that there were too many who kvetched at me with these complaints to chalk them up to a couple of dyspeptics who were trying to make me feel better at my almost total lack of readers.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Dead authors must turn in their graves, not at having their embarrassing prejudices corrected, but at having hacks take over the characters and worlds they loved to create and are loved for. From Modesty Blaise to James Bond, to all those in the Wodehouse world, new versions have proliferated from publishers all too willing to dupe readers who want more from an author who has shuffled off, and in the some cases, killed off their beloveds so as to not have them suffer the fate far worse than death--that of being forced to "entertain" by impresarios whose love of lucre is all that love means. Oh, to live in perpetuity, enslaved by estates.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There are live writers who don't want to wait for their death to hand over their reigns, as long as the money comes in. For them and for their publishers, AI is manna--why cut the profits with hired human hacks? </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But why indeed, do we need publishers and art dealers at all in a world where anyone can order what they want? Get rid of all the middle-companies and corporations that created AI. They've done their jobs and are only rent-takers. The stock market valuations of AI pushers have gone ballistic so, as every writer's taught, "kill off your darlings"--Why use them? Soon each dear consumer will be able to hack any rehash they desire, for why pay thieves if you can do it yourself? </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">So here we are, with as many read-alikes and look-alikes as anyone could possibly desire. As long as consumers don't want anything with thought and heart, it'll only cost them money and however much of their life they're willing to kill.</span></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; overflow: hidden;"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6" style="position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="background-color: white; color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; width: 7px;"></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-29443006673141963472022-09-19T11:31:00.000+09:302022-09-19T11:31:30.112+09:30The sigh-producing Lucky Girl by M. Rickert<p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just finished <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56300737-lucky-girl-how-i-became-a-horror-writer">Lucky Girl</a> with such a complex sigh, analysts aplenty would have salivated.</span></span></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250817334/luckygirl.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6AGWPIlUfm0zB53aG3MqurRKegEzwtONuVymYyLFlLjEaarSVB8vl_D8uklWFWAm2ktsXO5muARJ7064-3rP60jPrqu_rTKqbpGrNqtdL2ulQL5n1Fqd-Delq_bGTK4JaVx2USIiKmKVm1vvK_W4g8mZKqswe7F-txqoao1kazQ7n_dkNDV4" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6AGWPIlUfm0zB53aG3MqurRKegEzwtONuVymYyLFlLjEaarSVB8vl_D8uklWFWAm2ktsXO5muARJ7064-3rP60jPrqu_rTKqbpGrNqtdL2ulQL5n1Fqd-Delq_bGTK4JaVx2USIiKmKVm1vvK_W4g8mZKqswe7F-txqoao1kazQ7n_dkNDV4=w300-h400" width="300" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">For, although I’ve enjoyed many an <a class="qi72231t nu7423ey n3hqoq4p r86q59rh b3qcqh3k fq87ekyn bdao358l fsf7x5fv rse6dlih s5oniofx m8h3af8h l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk srn514ro oxkhqvkx rl78xhln nch0832m cr00lzj9 rn8ck1ys s3jn8y49 icdlwmnq cxfqmxzd d1w2l3lo tes86rjd" href="https://www.https://us.macmillan.com/author/mrickert.com/profile.php?id=100010279985898&__cft__[0]=AZWoM5GAvsn_He305Fe1nqAvhFLG86vUzv0iunz9kr9RY-FmKll6LIthtSbNjDOCUAY0G6EaYr9xrPaKKet3CFsZn8ycmTvNvQfYFxB_ZJXzkd6jbzsYpQeAhakzFuIDRVpLZbApAvvAXTypINWFWtctKamjeQ7a4PX2eDytAruTBA&__tn__=-]K-R" role="link" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="rse6dlih" style="display: inline;">M. Rickert</span></a> tale and feasted and will again, fighting the worms, that whale, <a href="https://undertowpublications.com/shop/the-shipbuilder-of-bellfairie">The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie</a>, I had a tinge of trepidation over the subtitle: How I Became a Horror Writer—for (horrors!) I vastly prefer writers to be writing about anything other than themselves. My favourite writers abhorred this too, studiously being great bores in <a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>public, so no one would want to biographicise them, or seek out their watering holes and childhood bathtubs.</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The other worry I had was Laird Barron’s quote, “M. Rickert at her ice-cold best.” For ice, I take little bouts of Parker, but otherwise, I really don’t warm to it. Instead, to my relief, there’s a dessert in the book that fits this tale: Baked Alaska. </span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It’s ice in the middle, but surrounded by a toasted froth that has a wryness to it, a sense of humour to it, a self-deprecation at the very character that the protagonist horror writer must turn into to present to society, and a sense of distrust at her own self that doesn’t interfere with her passions.</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Indeed, she is as engaging a character as I’ve ever fallen into interest and frustration/sympathy at. She being the storyteller is done so well, that M. Rickert is some unknown, invisible, not putting her big authorial stamping feet on the words flowing from “Ro”.</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I love M. Rickert’s insistence on telling each story in its own voice. She does so here, and that voice in its wryness, reminds me of Margery Allingham’s in The Case of the Late Pig, another fave of mine. The pace is perfect, the tension never feeling artificially stretched. In this, Lucky Girl reminds me of another love of mine, the short story “Valentine’s Night” by Nancy Pickard.</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">I would certainly read this writer's works, for the telling, just as I do, M. Rickert's. Phrases such as "a slithering whisper of congeniality". In other ways, this is a character who knows too much, more than she wants to and ultimately, less than she needs. I don't know if we'll hear more from her, but if so, I doubt it will be from anyplace cold unless that is the point.</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As for scary, I didn’t think it scary any more than the “news”--it was all so viably true. So yeah, it’s scary as hell, but in a good way. Great with chocolate or a lovely bit of regression in a thumb-suck. </span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I forgot to note how superb a study it is of loneliness and loneness.</span></span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-33029398670361747562022-07-21T10:52:00.013+09:302022-07-25T13:30:48.023+09:30Vedma Had a Little Cat<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Her name got lost, absconded, at some
unrecorded time--ever since it<br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">offended the Rhyming Dictionary by<br /></span><span style="color: black;">rejecting
for no reason, each, every, and all perfectly suitable and appropriate
professionally proffered partners in rhyme.<br /></span></span><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So Vedma we shall call her--witch--a generic
but it must do<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">to tell the tale of Rasputin, her little
Russian blue,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">the cat she thought she had<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">though Rasputin knew as all “owned” cats do, “O, you poor deluded one. I, of course, have you.”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkVaRlSrzUsVZ5W0vtMFuVCiiLcnjVvBzBY1qv_4DmXYI3CiBfTqYKQkT5WRbbQIPDElLdag8rabiYAQJ7_KZxkGL4vZzfrTa161XTWJFrTfWt2qAFyfQR3CDaQlReBgn9upz8AYKTGyA4WBn3kzhLWpC9CGVfa9jd6zU7aiEfdWpMZK6bQ8/s384/Vedma's%20window.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="256" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkVaRlSrzUsVZ5W0vtMFuVCiiLcnjVvBzBY1qv_4DmXYI3CiBfTqYKQkT5WRbbQIPDElLdag8rabiYAQJ7_KZxkGL4vZzfrTa161XTWJFrTfWt2qAFyfQR3CDaQlReBgn9upz8AYKTGyA4WBn3kzhLWpC9CGVfa9jd6zU7aiEfdWpMZK6bQ8/s320/Vedma's%20window.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Now, Vedma loved tomatoes as much as anyone
else in Siberia;<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">she craved them with a passion that bordered on
deliria.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">They gazed out at the snow from their pots on
the window sill<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">and treated her to blushing treats because they loved her exciting insides, never wishing her the least of ill.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Rasputin, on the other hand,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">hated her distraction, her straying from waiting
for his every little twitch of tail or whisker--<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">her unprofessional lack of attention to He, the
A-plus lister;<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">her hunting and exterminating every tomato
enemy though single or in a roving band.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So one night he swiped left and right, and
shattered every pot of them.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The cold outdoors was monstrous, but inside was
hell-warm and dry, a setting made by Velma’s spell.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(She also took her tea with dried raspberries, who, of course, would never tell.)</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So when morning broke, and Vedma woke,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">the tomatoes were almost dead,</span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">a fate most undeserved considering the life they'd led.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Their roots, exposed, gone stiff and dry as the twigs in her graduation broom.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Their fruits wept but they couldn't die because of all the love she'd given them in that haven of a hellroom.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Love kept them alive just long enough for her to
dive into<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">her jars of potions.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">She dumped and washed and scraped and dug and
scooped<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">and coddled and mumbled and wondered and asked,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">but they acted as if they hadn’t notions not to
mention<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">notion </span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">of the identity of the dastard.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> <br /></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">They knew. </span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Of course they knew, </span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">but tomatoes don't cast aspersions, </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">so they didn’t tell. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Instead they cast a
spell.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvQHliePzNxtCx-wwpTIlC7BUwZsmrUdlwSvfNz1Xi-9mPBiU5gNBog825CMeOuqArrz7CU-FOZ9jYrRqkHOklfDGYg3nz8BeFS0Whc6n1slpHp14YySkcYjvq6amxO4Mz__ry-I-vm9U9TR-nCMUPQ9KCDIKqEePZskuy0PGYm_BHE3_P_4I/s2205/Tomato-cursed%20cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2199" data-original-width="2205" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvQHliePzNxtCx-wwpTIlC7BUwZsmrUdlwSvfNz1Xi-9mPBiU5gNBog825CMeOuqArrz7CU-FOZ9jYrRqkHOklfDGYg3nz8BeFS0Whc6n1slpHp14YySkcYjvq6amxO4Mz__ry-I-vm9U9TR-nCMUPQ9KCDIKqEePZskuy0PGYm_BHE3_P_4I/s320/Tomato-cursed%20cat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: medium; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<br /></div></div></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-24531004001544943462022-06-16T12:17:00.002+09:302022-06-16T16:55:24.022+09:30Lab Dancer<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>This story first appeared in my collection <a href="https://ticonderogapublications.com/web/index.php/our-books/188-the-finest-ass-in-the-universe">The Finest Ass in the Universe</a>, Ticonderoga Publications, 2015.</i><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz54lNcUhMvbe_BDMdv9_qkc1Af_dzgNo-DreRl2jnA-FaHN6HrfHmKbQRpMlx7bGTSkrsLV9Q6rNtmV0KLXrGMIW9Bt1HAputbUPUDndj6aUC1qn_udZOt4nmH-v1QUDhUAFm03hafHlnqS92eqBMvoKQBD7VOmqARp9KithDCug1nHidOKU/s240/the-finest-ass-in-the-universe-slide.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz54lNcUhMvbe_BDMdv9_qkc1Af_dzgNo-DreRl2jnA-FaHN6HrfHmKbQRpMlx7bGTSkrsLV9Q6rNtmV0KLXrGMIW9Bt1HAputbUPUDndj6aUC1qn_udZOt4nmH-v1QUDhUAFm03hafHlnqS92eqBMvoKQBD7VOmqARp9KithDCug1nHidOKU/s1600/the-finest-ass-in-the-universe-slide.jpg" width="160" /></a></div><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">That loser suckup lab assistant Eugene
something had begged Libby Purfouy to watch how she worked. Sure, he’d been a
bit creepy with all his obsequiousness, and so unambitious-acting that she’d
had suspicions; but he had proved himself to be so careful to label
scrupulously, store everything in its proper place, and keep out of her way
that she had given in and let him know that she did her real work late at
night, really late, “so if you’re willing to watch and keep out of my way, you
can come.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It was the watching that she hadn’t properly thought out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He was so attentive to her that he could have been a guide dog. It was
unnatural and a bit nauseating. But this silent undemanding waiting-upon her
every need was so damn useful and hell, both flattering and unthreatening. He
couldn’t have learned anything much from watching her. And washing up after her
wasn’t anything any other lab assistant saw as a path to glory. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She was working with a type of bacteriophage that had played a key role
in a tubeworm’s digestion mechanism when the phone in her pocket rang. At 3am,
there could only be one reason. She fumbled for it, feeling scooped out in her
gut. If only she had convinced her parents to move into her apartment. He could
have been resting here now on a couch by the wall where she could keep an eye
on him, pop a nitro under his tongue when he turned grey. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Mom?” she said, to some reply she couldn’t make out. Maybe from her
mom’s most celebrated on-stage self, the ostrich-tailed Lady Carlotta LaRou.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Lady LR?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Doctor Purfouy?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Las Vegas General? Intensive Care?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“We are sorry if this is a wrong number. We are looking for Doctor Libby
Purfouy.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I’m Doctor Purfouy. He’s not . . .” She couldn’t say it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Doctor Purfouy, we are sorry to disturb you at this hour.” The foreign
accent and manner would have been charming at another time, maybe a palace
ball, but now the formality infuriated her as much as hospitals and their
euphemisms always had.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Disturb! He’s my dad, fuck it.
You’ve got him stabilised?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">“Doctor Purfouy, I am sorry to hear that your father is unwell, but </span>we
are calling you from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. My name is . .
.”<span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">* * *<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The solemn Swedish man, she didn’t catch his
name, must have been used to inane reactions, and had been very gracious about
ignoring her crudeness when she thought he was a hospital drone. But she used
all her roused skill in repressing her real thoughts once she realised that the
call wasn’t a prank and that in hours the world would know her (and Kadambini
Bhattacharya) as the newest Nobel Laureate(s). The Nobel Prize in Medicine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Freedom and respect. She would no longer have to pretend that the scorn
of other scientists didn’t hurt. After all, it’s only so long you can pose as
someone who doesn’t give a shit when people sneer at your work, call it
pseudoscience--when they damn you by your associate. Now she could walk the
halls with her shoulders back, and throw herself into research that might be
loopy as anything Hawkins would spout, and she would never again have to worry
that her work might be considered not worth considering for funding. Hell, she
could start her own institute, but what to study next? <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Of course she had hoped. What scientist doesn’t? And though she knew
that her and Bini’s discovery could, <i>would</i> change millions, hundreds of
millions of lives, this Nobel had to have been singularly argued. She couldn’t
help thinking of the headlines. She would have to be the youngest recipient
ever at 31, but then that worldly board that made the decision might have had a
wry chuckle at her joke in that interview in <i>Science</i>, “amoebic dysentery
isn’t anything that a body can ignore, any body.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">All this flashed through her mind as on another level, she maintained a
short and dignifiedly friendly chat with the man in Stockholm. It seemed like
she’d been covering for her whirling brain for an hour but it was only three
minutes later that she thanked him politely, expressing again her surprise and
humbleness, and then ended the call by saying that she must get back to work.
“I usually work now when I can be least disturbed, though you can disturb me
this way any time, hah hah.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He apologised again for disturbing her in the midst of an experiment,
saying “I always seem to interrupt scientists in the middle of the night, and
the middle of an experiment.” Then he said he’d look forward to meeting her
plane when she arrived for the December ceremony, that he liked to meet all the
laureates personally, and then hung up to save her the awkwardness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She thought for a moment about Bini in Mumbai, who was probably now
having a party surrounded by her department at the institute, and would later
be stuffed with sweets by her extensive family.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Maybe I should ring her. No, if she wants, she
can ring me. <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She dropped the phone in her lab coat and took her feet off the desk,
jumped out of her chair, dumped her coat over its back, and danced--eyes
closed, arms close to her sides so they didn’t hit equipment, but otherwise her
whole body in play.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Her ass wasn’t just bossily leading her dance as it tended to. It was a
real mutt of a dance in its swishes, sways, rolls and bounce--a cross between a
deliriously happy dog and Las Vegas showgirl.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She sang as she danced, used stirrers as drumsticks against the
glassware.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">When Security called through the door, she stopped.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“It’s okay, Charles.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Roger, Doctor.” He was her favourite, and as she told him, might have
been a scientist if brought up in another family. “Discover something?” he
asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“No such luck tonight.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Can’t have that every night,” he said reassuringly. “Still, I’m glad to
hear you keepin’ up your spirits.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She left the lab and walked out into the balmy Santa Barbara night.
Charles walked out with her and watched her unlock her bike. He was unhappy
that she didn’t let him call her a cab. “Can’t have anyone followin’ you,” he
always said. He was sweet, but old.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She answered back with “Who you kiddin’? I’m a lady scientist,” which he
accepted without further comment. It had become a routine between them. Anyway,
Santa Barbara is such a village of a place that she would have jogged home if
it didn’t make him way too nervous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The moment she got under the covers, she remembered Eugene, and
shrugged. He’d heard other phone calls from her, reminding her dad to take his
pills. Other phone calls with hospitals. He must have left as soon as the phone
rang.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Sleep was impossible and it was too early to ring her dad and sister.
Her stomach felt like a filled and tumbling washing machine <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She made herself a cup of coffee and dumped in, after a hunt, a dash of
vodka that someone had given her. It was--interesting. As interesting as any of
her own cooking. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">So she got on the web, to distract herself with something mindless and
silly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">And wow, this should be good. Something that from the headlines looked
to be more viral than H5N1:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b>Who Says Scientists Don’t Have Big Brains?</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b>Do This To My Test Tubes, Baby!</b></span></span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">By the time she got to <b>Lab Laureate Shakes it Up</b>, she was gasping for
air.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">That little shit! His name was there in the brh corner, copyright. Sure,
he’d been pirated probably a million times by now, and America hadn’t even
woken up, but he’d sold the first rights to someone, or tried to. She tried
not, but couldn’t help but read an interview with him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“She’s a really nice lady, you know . . . Yes, she IS kinda weird . . .
No, in regular work hours she doesn’t wear shorts to the lab . . . No,
honestly, I haven’t noticed that about her . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">All the stories had the same quotes, so she gave them a break and looked
instead, at that thing that you couldn’t avoid. It streamed now into the room
from her laptop, phone, and pad. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She felt sicker than when she thought her father had just died.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The screens were filled with her wagging butt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It was apparently being sent around (when do people sleep?) stirring up
a storm of words. Tweets were turning into headlines, posts, the stories that
spread because they spread, turning more virulent the more they infect,
changing strains to keep infection lively.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>The Bump and Grind of Science</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Book a Laureate-o-gram for your Bucks Night!</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b>Chickflick makes Nobel the butt of jokes</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Crap queen drags Nobel into muck</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b>High honor, low morals</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Too Young to Know Better</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>The Tail that Wags Science</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>What can you expect from a copraphiliac?</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>Class Ass</b></span></span></span></p></blockquote>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Gen Why Makes Alfie Nobel Roll in Grave</b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;"><b>This Nobel Laureate will take her Prize money in 20s, in her G-String</b></span></span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She forced herself to pick up a scalpel, plunge it into her arm, and
strip out her veins. Actually, she forced herself to go offline. It felt like
all the pain of a torturous death without the result one should expect: the
peace of oblivion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She hid in bed, even from devices that she couldn’t cut off. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">People rang to be let up. She put cotton in her ears. Tried to read a
biography of Madame Curie, a stupid idea; then a collection of Judy Horacek
cartoons, which didn’t work. Then had such a long shower that her skin pruned
but still didn’t feel clean. Slept, woke, took a lot of food to bed, ate till
she felt worse, tossed cartons and wrappers to the floor, curled up and passed
out again. Had another shower, got in bed and tried to sleep again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">At 3pm she gave in and peeked. Some pollster sleaze “news agency” that
would make the most of it, was making headlines with its snap poll.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Not only had 78 percent of women said that they would rather be known
for having the “finest ass in the universe” but that they’d prefer that to
getting a Nobel in Medicine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The top headline in Google News.</span></span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><b>Experts debate latest laureate’s
lack of visible pantyline</b></span></span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">At six she rang her parents in Las Vegas. He answered the phone. “How’s
tricks?” same as he always did, making his little joke at the expense of
science. He’d been an electrician and off-season magician in the casinos, and
had come out of retirement to work himself to a heart attack, so proud he’d
been of his daughter going into science, and not only that, but performing
“tricks” that could maybe make real magic, as antibiotics had. He had followed
as well as he could, the scientific basis of her work, as well as the social
side; her lead role in the development of what one report called erroneously,
“beautiful poo.” He had always believed her brilliant. “My little rabbit,” he’d
called her, and she would wiggle her imaginary puff of a tail.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She was only wiggling now with shame. “I’m so sorry, Dad,” she blubbered.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“What’s that, Bunbun?” he said. “You can do it. If that experiment
failed, you’ve got to . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He didn’t know. He didn’t look at trash.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Dad, shut up before the waterworks come again. Mom, are you on the
other phone?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Of course, Libby. What is the problem? You can always come home if
everything’s bad there. Horrible place, California.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Geez, Mom. I wonder what you’ll say when you go to Sweden. And Dad . .
. Dad,” She stifled a hacking sob. “You’re forbidden to have another heart
attack until at least next year. You’ve got to see me on stage, picking up my
Nobel Prize.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">One phone dropped, and Libby heard her father whooping up a storm,
stamping on the linoleum floor. She could only imagine his saggy butt flopping
in its trousers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The other phone went dead after a quick “Love you, Libby, Gotta make
sure Dad doesn’t overdo.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby laughed till she cried. The most unreal thing in her life had just
pulled her mom, for the first time in years, out of unreality.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Her mom had never understood why she wanted to work at what were often
lower wages than a hotel maid in Las Vegas, let alone with “even more dangerous
filth.” And Libby’s father had been so proud of her wanting to be a real
scientist, but never understood how she could “do experiments with someone in another
building,” so she hadn’t mentioned to them now, had never mentioned Kadambini
Bhattacharya. She could just imagine her mother’s reaction: “How can anyone
live with a name like that?” Anyway, Libby didn’t know what even her father
would think of her working with someone in India, especially after she brought
back at 18, not that boyfriend he had warned her about (Todd dumped her the
first time she couldn’t hold her shit), but a case of the runs that almost
killed her, and certainly changed her life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She and Todd had been on the Grand Trunk Road, in a bus that was so
crowded that she was sitting on her pack on the floor in the back, when it
happened. She’d been trying not to vomit from the heat, the diesel fumes coming
in the open windows, the jerky way the bus driver sped, </span>swerved<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and hit his
horn; the miasma of India--crushed-together humanity, an intimacy of natural
body odours and spices; and on this bus which must have carried three times the
stated passenger limit,</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">one passenger
limit at least (and most of the floor) filled by huge bags of onions that many
of the passengers were carrying to market.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Suddenly she forgot her nausea. She desperately needed the bus to stop.
She had to get out. Todd was jammed in beside her, sitting on his own pack, his
face streaming sweat but his head bobbing to what was streaming through his
earphones. She grabbed his arm and he looked at her with annoyance--not that he
could have done anything with that mass of people, goods, and those hundreds of
kilos of onions between them and the door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">With a slight grumble that only she would have been able to hear, her
bowels didn’t wait. Like a silent fart, the air was blasted with stench. But
this hadn’t been a fart, and the smell wasn’t rich. It was unbelievably acrid,
poisonous. And it was wet. People turned to look accusingly at Libby and Todd.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby’s seat felt horribly warmed. Before she had a chance to think
about whether the shit had gone through her underpants and into her khaki cargo
pants, her bowels spurted out another liquid explosion. She clenched her
sphincter, but that was as effective in stopping the flow as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>trying to shove a cork back in a bottle of
champagne.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She squirmed but couldn’t really move, and neither could anyone else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Someone nearby yelled a few urgent or angry words, and they were passed
up along the passengers till they must have reached the driver. He beeped his
horn even more wildly than he had before, and slewed to a stop cutting in
between a camel caravan and a lorry. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">All around her, people shifted. Bags of onions were pulled aside, and
she saw that the bottom of one of them was soaked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The bus door opened up front with a rusty sigh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Todd jumped up and space was somehow made for him. “I’ll get you
something,” he said, rushing out. She couldn’t see him but heard him say
“Excuse me” a few times, and then a bunch of other people got up, more and more
of them in the front. She couldn’t get up. Anything she could clean up with,
cover herself--it was all in the pack, the pack which was now soggy with stuff
that had run down its sides and wet the backs of her legs. She’d moved her legs
away from the pack though that moved more stench out into the air, and now some
short hairs on the back of her calves were being lightly pulled, as from a drying
facepack.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">People were saying things to her, but no one spoke English so she did
all she could think to do--smile shamefacedly at them and motion an apology.
She had to wait till Todd came back with a sarong or something, something to
cover her and her pack so she could get off the bus and somehow, clean up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Her gut cramped again, and her bowels let go again, this time with a
long hiss and series of pops.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She almost slipped off her pack, and couldn’t look at anyone, but the
whole bus erupted in yells. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Someone poked her in the kidneys. Another pulled her arm. People pressed
away as she was poked and shoved to a standing position. They gave even more
space for her pack that she had to pick up and carry, dripping, toward the
door. Someone pushed her out, and she fell to the dust beside the road, her
shit-frosted pack hitting her head.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Todd was nowhere to be seen. His pack! <i>The bus took off with his pack
while he’s looking for something he can buy, something to help me off the bus</i>,
but then she remembered a detail of him leaving--he’d casually slung his pack
over his back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Oh yes, Todd and shit were inseparable--and they certainly had changed
her life. As had the kind doctor out with his family in his funky old Indian
car that had been cared for with love but that he poo poohed with an Indian
headshake, saying, “</span><span class="st">Increase of material comforts, madam,
does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.”</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">For a few more minutes, she forgot about her current disaster. But she
had to call her sister in New York.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Calm down, Juliette,” she said, which only opened up a fresh onslaught
of accusation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Juliette Adorina, an opera singer in the chorus at the Met, had been
having her late breakfast, with headlines. She was livid. “Do you remember that
tomorrow is Saturday and you promised to take Clare for a week while I tour?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby had forgotten. Clare was due in LA airport at 11 pm. “I’ve not
forgotten at all,” she snapped. “Don’t worry about her, and have a good tour.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She hung up cutting her sister off in the middle of something that
sounded nasty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">* * *<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The stewardess met Libby, Clare in tow. “Such a
beautiful child,” she said. “She was such a pleasure.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare smiled shyly at the stewardess and took Libby’s hand. In Clare’s
other hand a theatrical mask dangled from a cord. She was wearing a cloak that
matched the mask, thick green velvet with an elaborate gold toggle. She might
have stepped straight from the stage at the Met.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby snorted when they were out of earshot. “You should be illegal,
you’re so enchanting.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She stopped and blew up a red balloon, handing it to the child. It was
really something she had done for herself, thinking it might make her feel more
festive. But she’d forgot to bring string, so it looked more than anything,
like something biological.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare took hold of the balloon. “D’you bring anything decent I could
change into?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Sorry,” Libby said. “C’mon. You’ll just have to suffer the looks till
we get to my car.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“You should know, sweet cheeks.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby swung round. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“You’ve seen?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Who hasn’t?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Has your mom--uh,” She tried not to badmouth her sister even though
Juliette obviously felt no such scruples.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Mom wouldn’t have known. I saw it first and showed her. I didn’t know
she’d go ballistic. It’s a hoot.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">They were walking fast, and had almost made it to the car park. Libby
looked down at her ten-year old niece, a strange one, that. The halogen lights
were so strong now at midnight that they made human skin take on the sick gleam
of hot dogs in a gas station. Yet the girl was, even in this setting, almost
impossibly beautiful, as innocent looking as a day-old chick. Her talk,
however. She could have posed online as a thirty-something with too much
experience to remember. Libby could almost believe in reincarnation, listening
to this child. Clare had the rather bored mien of a 19th century courtesan who
wore her victims like a train. Her wit was channelled through a 21st century
Mae West. Libby hated thinking what the girl would grow up to be. Life was so
full of falseness that Clare couldn’t help but have a face creased by total
cynicism before she was 17. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">At 10, however, she gleaned from the meanest nastiness, the most
sophisticatedly innocent fun. She was a hoot to be with. She broke from Libby’s
side and pulled the mask on. “What level’s it on?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“C3. Be careful.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I’m a nutcracker.” Clare tripped ahead, leaping and twirling as she
ran. With that mask over her eyes, her glossy hair streaming over the snap and
flow of her cape, she could have been a prima ballerina on Mars, so misplaced
was she in this mundanity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">* * *<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“You mean you’ve just hibernated? Like, been
literally in the dark? Not communicated?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Would you?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">They were sprawled on pillows, polishing off a package of oatmeal
cookies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Give me a break,” Libby said. “Tomorrow I’ll catch up. Work my whole
life for what? To be turned from a fool who disgraces science by my crackpot
ideas, to now, a chick with an ass.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Will you grow up already?” Clare rolled over, her child’s bottom
covered in faded flannel. With her thrift shop pyjamas she looked like some
Christmas appeal poster. It was one of her affectations, a fad that Libby
catered for, their little secret. In New York Clare was always dressed in the
most theatrical getups. She was already a fashion chameleon in the pages of <i>Vogue</i>,
and not in children’s clothes. Libby was her escape in so many ways.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby changed the subject. “Want to do microscopy now, or sleep?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I’ve got some disgusting stuff to look at, yeah. But that’s for later
in the week, if there’s a chance. But I don’t think there will be.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I’ve got enough food for us to stay here till you leave.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“But you won’t have the time.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Don’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Too late. Nah nah nah nah NAH!” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby waved her iphone in Clare’s face. On it was a headline:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">India explodes in rapture<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby grabbed for the phone but Clare was too fast. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“From the <i>Times of India</i>,” she said. “Hundreds of thousands of
Indians celebrated in the streets today as they cheered the first Indian woman
to win a Nobel prize; and not only that, but the prestigious Award for
Medicine. Many view this as the first time in living history that an Indian who
is proud to be an Indian, in India, has become a Nobel Laureate. Today
Kadambini Bhattacharya was announced to be the latest Laureate along with her
co-winner who also worked on the discovery, American Libby Purfouy. Dr
Bhattacharya has dedicated the past thirty years of her life to fighting the
scourge of amoebic dysentery and now thanks to her, not only will the poor
millions in India (and in many other countries) no longer lose their lives let
alone their work from this debilitating infection, but, she adds pointedly, ‘so
will many tourists.’“<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare looked up. “Should I read on?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby nodded.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">“We found the modest woman, who looks like a simple grandmother, at her
pocket-sized office in the venerable Institute of Sciences in Mumbai. She said
that she was pleased and humbled by the Prize. She also said modestly that she
couldn’t have achieved the breakthrough without the help of the brilliant young
scientist who shares the Award, Dr Libby Purfouy, who Bhattacharya considers a
‘daughter of Lila</span>vati’ and affectionately thinks of as the ‘child I
never had’. For this dedicated professional had to forsake the joys of having
her own children in the quest to do good for the nation and the world. She was
instrumental, however, in helping other women to work in sciences in this
country. And she is almost militant in her insistence that India is a place to
stay in to make discoveries. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“When asked if she would move to,
say, Harvard, like other Indian Nobel winners who had moved abroad years before
they won, she answered with a touch of anger. ‘Why? If Indians hadn’t saved
their bacon, both American IT and biological sciences would have dried up like
a smear of yesterday’s dal. And any cursory glance at science papers in America
would tell you that our unpronounceable names are everywhere, not just the USA
but the world. We must have been doing something right, or they would not have
wanted these exports of ours.’ Your reporter thought that this little woman had
subsided, but Dr Bhattacharya had only paused for breath. ‘Many people have
said that Harvard is heaven,’ she said, ‘but you’ve got be dead to be in
heaven. Besides,’ she said, adjusting her mango-and-lime sari, ‘Heaven’s got
too many rules. I’d hate to have to dress in widow white.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare stopped because of a sound
that her aunt made, but Libby waved her hand to continue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Dr Bhattacharya is a fine mixture
of fiery-eyed militant and jolly joker. Every morning she can be found amongst
the devotees of laughter, making seriously raucous noise for thirty minutes
under the gaze of the Taj Hotel. Of her choice to not marry, she referred quite
irreverently to Gandhi, by saying, ‘He devoted himself to a cause and made his
own children and spouse suffer. I make no one suffer when I work through the
night, nor have I needed to learn how to make good lime pickle. I’m afraid that
I even burn chapattis. But as Auntie, my family gets the best from me and I can
give to them, and the nation.’“<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Does it end there?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“No, but don’t you want me to find
what everyone’s saying about you now?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby made a grab but Clare
slithered away and continued.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“This reporter asked Dr <span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Bhattacharya what her reaction is to</span>
the erroneous conviction of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>millions of
Indians, that she is the ‘first Indian woman’ to win the Nobel, when in fact,
as we reminded her: Mother Teresa of Indian citizenship won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1979 for what the Nobel committee called her<i> ‘work in bringing help
to suffering humanity.’ </i>The good doctor raised an eyebrow. This seemed to
be her comment but then she delivered what might have been a mini lecture. ‘The
discovery that Dr Purfouy and I have made is only a pixel in the bigger
picture. India’s problems are really no different to those of every nation’s,
indeed, of the world. Clean water and sanitation can only be achieved by civil
action, just as you can’t clean up corruption by scientific discovery. Did you
know that France’s water was a source of disease and result of corruption until
really quite current times? There is no reason why wealthy Parisians shouldn’t
be yearning to drink, say, bottles of Mother Ganges water instead of wealthy
Indians guzzling Perrier.’ Her eyes flash when she talks, and she has an
especial scorn for bottled water, which she says only keeps an inadequate
system propped up in its inadequacy while making crores of ruppees for
big-business bottlers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Her work has been supported by
grants from the National Science Academy. When asked about how much she has
received in contrast to her colleague in the USA, she said that she didn’t
know, but that she had done much better than the American scientist, receiving
perhaps a tenth of the funds that the American would have been able to get.
‘But we cost so much less here so we can do so much more with less’ is how she
explained the discrepancy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“When asked again if she would
consider going to the United States, she said that she is not interested in
trying to find cures for mortality in the wealthy over-eighties or cures for
wrinkles in the under-forties. When asked if she considers herself a radical
economist, as some have labelled her for fighting all attempts to patent her
and Purfouy’s breakthrough cure, that eyebrow rises again, like Shiva’s
trident. Then she delivers a big belly-shaking laugh. This is one Auntie you
don’t want to cross.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare looked up as smoothly as a
newsreader. “I always wondered why you never told me much about her before. Now
I know. She’s pretty awesome. Let’s see what else--”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“At 3am? It’s way past your
beddybyes.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare bounced onto her feet. “How
about ice cream?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby blushed. She had bought a
carton of Clare’s favorite, but it vanished between her bouts of escapist
sleep. She picked up her keys. “Let’s have an early breakfast.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare stuck her feet into a pair of
slippers with a bad case of mange and pulled a hoody on over her pyjamas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Stop,” she said as Libby opened
the apartment door. Clare tweaked the curtain. “As I suspected.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby slammed the door so fast that
Clare giggled. “They’re just douches out there with cameras, not a disease.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I can make eggs.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“With what you make them do,” said
Clare with a shudder, “I’m not surprised persuasion hasn’t worked.” She tossed
her pack to Libby. “Lucky one of us plans well. Open it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare always travelled light to her
aunt’s place, since Libby was entrusted with keeping all the clothes that Clare
loved wearing. This time, however, Clare’s little carry-on pack was stuffed
with drab used men’s clothes, a Budweiser baseball cap, a half-tube of glue and
a scruffy beard-and-mustache.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“You don’t look half bad,” she said
after she’d stuck the facial hair on her aunt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“How?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I sorta divined. Lucky I saw the
stuff while I was still at school. First time I’ve ever got anything worthwhile
from going to the School of the Performing Tarts.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">They made their escape with Clare
bent over under a blanket--a groaning sick child being taken to the hospital by
her loving sleep-deprived dad.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The paparazzi and “news teams” were
on wait, not watch at this hour; but didn’t pay the two more than a glance, not
even considering the man as someone who might know the woman.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby drove to a 24-hour donut
place on Carrillo Street, and then to Clare’s favorite picnic place. Resting
the cups of hot chocolate and coffee on the stones, and dipping into the big
paper bag, they sat in the cemetery, taking their time working their way
through cinnamon-sugar, jelly-filled, Boston cremes, and Long Johns. They ate
and drank to the sound of waves, till their presence had been noted by the
seagulls, who got three donuts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby folded up the trash. “Do you
want to walk on the beach?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Why would I?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby wondered how Clare could bear
to be out here so--naked. Clare had left her phone at the apartment, and didn’t
even act jumpy. She must have left it purposely, a state of being that Libby
had never reached, though when Libby thought about what she got from the thing,
a new state of sick panic took over her stomach again. Clare said nothing now,
seemed oddly self-sufficient. Again, Libby thought it both weird and natural
that this child could possibly be her best, probably her only friend.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Libby,” said Clare. “Have you ever
been to India?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“A long time ago. I got very sick.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“That’s a no-brainer.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Hey, young lady. What’s all this
about?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Go to a place like that, and what
do you expect?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Eat a school lunch and get sick
from FDA-approved pink slime, and what can you expect?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But what
happened?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“I got sick, is all. And it made me
think of how we need to do something to stop this kind of thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Oh.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Good we cleared that up.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“No we didn’t. You’re harder to
open than a giant clam.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby flushed. Sometimes it seemed
that life was one long series of embarrassments. The doctor--she never did
catch his last name, and his first couldn’t have been Sandy, but that’s how she
remembered him--the doctor must have been tortured by his quandary, where to
take this foreign visitor to whom he had apologised so profusely for his
country having “poisoned” her with its “unsanitaries”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Our hospital is having a shameful
state of unrepair,” he said over the poisonous blurts of Libby into the back
seat of the car. Libby groaned at the image of some hellish hospital, and the
thought of being abandoned there terrified her. “Can’t you just take me to your
place?” It was either there or dying, she almost didn’t care anymore. Her
stomach hurt so much that she put herself to sleep, an ability she had always
had when she needed to escape.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Whereever the family had set out
for on their drive, Libby had never known. She was installed in a high, airy,
room darkened by the huge mango tree that hung over the old house and the
dense, flower-filled front garden. The walls inside and out reminded Libby of
sweated-into shirts. They all had rough, ugly lines of stain where no paint
would adhere, but mould and mildew congregated. The smells inside the house
were such a mixture of decomposition and flowering, spice and rot, scented
talcum powders and powdered sandalwood and incense, ripening fruits, mice,
sewers, and warm hot bread. The whole family smelt quite deliciously edible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">He was extremely worried about her
diarrhoea, but when she refused to let a stool sample be analysed, he then
carefully explained that there were two kinds of this “discomfort, one of which
is most serious because the little creatures, parasites that you cannot see but
drink your moisture can be the undoing of you. We must keep your insides
moisturised.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Anything, just get me well,” Libby
said, mumbling “so I can get out of this shithole country.” He went out and
brought back sachets of rehydrators that tasted vile but looked legitimate,
emblazoned with the names of international drug firms. And he prescribed and
his wife made, drinks that they begged Libby to take even though she cried into
her hard pillow that she couldn’t stand the stuff: gingery, peppery salty
buttermilk, some weird pulped fruit stirred into boiled water; ground
pomegranate rind in milk, something so yuk that she demanded to know what it
was. Rice porridge that smelled like Christmas cookies but was essentially,
thin, cool hot cereal. Three days later, the doctor asked if she would like him
to take her to a hospital.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“God, no.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Would you like me to take you anywhere
else?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Home.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She was a sullen patient, silent
when she wasn’t weeping. She felt gypped by pretty much everyone and
everything. Todd had dumped her. Her dad had been right. She had no business
going off with the jerk, to some dump of a country where she was probably gonna
die, too sick to go off by herself to the American consulate to get help and a
ticket home. Not that she knew how to do it anyway. Everything was just too
hard.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The family must have bent over
backwards for her. She had to be taught how to use the squat toilet correctly
so as not to dirty it, and doctor and his wife had been particularly fluttery
about their arrangements. “You will be so happy when you again have recourse to
your sparkling American commodes.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Everyone in the family, and the two </span>desiccated<span style="font-family: inherit;"> servants, were always washing, themselves and everything else. Libby
could hear the splash of water on floors, rain of water-can on paths and
garden. The ambient sound in the air was a mix of birdcalls, crush of people
and traffic frighteningly close on the road outside the gate, but close, inside
the environs of the humble home, a constant sweep of brooms that looked like
movie props for a fantasy. The doctor’s wife woke before dawn and set out fresh
flowers and food gifts on the little shrines in various places in the house.
One morning, Libby padded out to the kitchen and saw her praying to the
elephant god. In a corner, a mouse was nibbling on a flower petal. That was
when Libby realised how hard it must have been for the woman (Libby never did
get her name) to gently explain so many times that Libby should be careful with
her food, not to let any lay around. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby was getting stronger, almost
able to keep food in long enough to properly digest it. One morning she
squatted over the toilet and finally felt a civilised movement coming out when
her buttock was lightly brushed by a giant rat leaping up and out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The doctor drove her all the way to
the American consulate in Mumbai. He didn’t let her out of his sight until the
US Marines had opened the gate for her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She couldn’t get away from him fast
enough. That last look of his, a smile that showed most of his big white teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The consulate had seen too many
dumped teen-age girls who were also disgustingly sick to be anything but coldly
efficient, not bothering to veil their disgust. A reassuringly American member
of the staff got hold of her dad and advised him how to send money for Libby’s
ticket home. Somehow, that added another dimension to the experience. “You come
from Las Vegas?” the staff member asked, though he already knew. Then he copped
such a clever and fast feel that she knew it was a game of his, one that he
couldn’t lose. She was fixed up with enough Lomatils (“They won’t cure you, but
will make it easier to get home. We advise you not to eat anything but bread or
rice and to drink lots the water on the plane, and wear sanitary napkins. And
definitely, no alcohol!”) to stop up a diarrheic horse before being got rid of
on a nightmare of a flight back to the States. But the nightmare continued when
she landed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American
hospitalisation-admittance, a bout of hospital “care”, and then “treatment”.
She never did know if she got well finally, from exasperation. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She went back to college, not
aimlessly but with a passion. She felt possessed--both better and worse than
boy-fever, she had never guessed how emotionally draining science would be. Her
highs and lows she kept to herself, but it came out in fidgeting at school and
work; and when she got home, dancing till she dropped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The doctor began to appear in her
dreams, begging her to forgive his country, himself. One night she woke up, her
pillow soaked with tears. She’d seen his smile again, was just as furious as
when she’d fled from it, but this time she looked upwards from his lips, and
she saw his eyes, his broken eyebrows. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">That face, the lying mouth, the
truthful eyes and brows--it was the same as that of a student from India who
was attending the same lecture she was. He had asked a question, one that she
had wanted to ask but hadn’t had the gumption to. “I just explained that,”<br />
said the professor, “but maybe you don’t understand English.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">A few titters could be heard, and
the eyes of the room were on the student. He broke into a smile was almost as
wide as the doctor’s. Libby felt like yelling at the professor, but didn’t do
anything. Instead, this smile of the student’s made her spine crawl. The lying
mouth, the honest eyes: pure shame. Not shame that she had felt in her life,
but a shame on behalf of someone else, someone who needs it but is lacking. A
shame that should make the other person suffer agonies of embarrassment, but
it’s not meant that way, anyway. It’s a smile of almost Christian charity--<i>I’m
dying for your boorishness</i>--without the superiority. The professor was
smiling too, perhaps in relief. He’d certainly avoided answering a tough
question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">But the doctor’s smile had an added
dimension, Libby saw in the aftermath of her dream. Fear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The doctor. She didn’t even know
his name. She hadn’t even asked for his address, let alone his telephone
number. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Sometimes she wished that she had
been able to tell Bini, but she couldn’t. How could he be found again. Even if
he could be, what if he was dead? What if he had died--of shame?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Ah, well. Strange how things work
out. India--the whole country--had become a place of blanked-out thought to
Libby, till Bini contacted her because of that “unscientific” paper that Libby
had written. Libby and Bini had joked in emails that Bini had Indian foresight
that she applied every morning with her finger. Bini had offered to send Libby
a pot of instant foresight. Bini was, in fact, so understanding about so many
things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“You’re such a great sigher,” said
Clare. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Dawn had broken. They walked hand
in hand to the car. The traffic was almost nonexistent this early Saturday
morning, but Libby’s street was now parked out with cars and vans. She could
only find a spot two blocks away. They entered the building as unnoticed as
they had left.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Back to work,” said Clare, as if
they were co-workers and this a normal day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">They searched on Libby’s laptop. <i>The
Hindu</i> ran an interview in which the journalist praised Dr <span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Bhattacharya for her nationalism, only to be
lectured at about nationalism, a sentiment that she called “the diversion of a
government that sits on its nitamb”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“See?” said Clare. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would never had learned
a new word for ass. But shit, look at this!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">India was now the top story in all
media, with new stories coming in by the second. Twitter was a cacophony. The place
was indeed exploding. Literally millions had taken to the streets in
spontaneous demonstrations. Night must had fallen there, and the sky was alight
with not just lights of many colors, but exploding fireworks. They showered
millions and boomed like armies of joy--set off by civil servants, fathers,
mothers, children. Libby thought it must be just like that festival she had
wanted to see, but hadn’t been able to stay for, way back when. And everywhere
there was dancing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Someone buzzed the apartment, yet
again. “Aunt Lib,” whined Clare, who had jumped up, only to be grabbed by the
ankle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“They can all wait.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Coward.” Clare pulled what she though of as
an ugly face. “But no shit. I’ll scream if you don’t look through your
messages.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There were hundreds of them, but in
the midst, there were five from Bini, each more worried than the last, but in
Bini’s inimitably gentle way, not showing it. The last one read, “Dear child, I
know you must be so busy with interviews to contact me, but let me again congratulate
you on your brilliant win. We would not have achieved anything without your
wonderful intelligence and creativity. And without you getting sick in the
first place! Please don’t let your sensitive soul get the better of you at this
important time. Remember that what counts is not what the crowd says about you,
but your own sense of worth that only you can weigh. your loving Bini”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Clare was busy on her own iphone.
“Cool! Wanna see this story on Fox? It’s titled Nobel Disgrace: The
Anti-American and the Lab Dancer.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby laid down her phone and blew
her nose. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“It’s too stupid,” said Clare, “but
heh. Oh you’ve <i>got</i> to see this.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Not another YouTube.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">“Not just here. It’s from some
science place, but like . . . it’s everywhere!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Under a banner that said “Daughters
of Lilavati” about two dozen women stood together on a stage. The streaming
subtitle said Scientists Scientists Scientists. Most wore saris or salwar
kameez, but some were in western dress. They bowed solemnly, then broke their
line--into dance--smiling like mischievous starlets, moving like houris. They
were colourful as a garden, and in their dipping twirling dance they waved
beakers, petrie dishes, goggles, rubber gloves, kidney dishes and bladders.
They used lab coats like veils and scarves, and threw themselves around with
joy and in such close cooperation, the riot was carefully calibrated abandon.
Suddenly, in the midst of them, Dr <span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Kadambini Bhattacharya burst through, in a gold-bordered pomegranate-red
sari. She moved her stuff like an overripe Bollywood star.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Libby's eyes were already flooded, but then<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bini and the troupe broke into what the
subtitle streamed--<i>The Purfouy Boom Boom</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-27901657937197661702022-06-12T06:57:00.000+09:302022-06-12T06:57:02.040+09:30Slew<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Because I wouldn't stop for Death</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He saw, and stopped for me--</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Carnage was for just ourselves--</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our immortality.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We slowly drove--As buddies now</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Since I had put away</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My thoughts that I would have to live</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Without Celebrity.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We passed the School, where Children strove</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and found a place to park.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And Death and I walked, chewing gum,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">into that hallowed Ark.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Since then--it’s Centuries, it seems</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet shorter than the Day</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">since Me and Death, my sidekick</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">had our cinematic play.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And now, instead of only Me (Death, only number two)</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Groundswelling has buried me</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Underneath this Slew,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This Evermore of I did it too's,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These flashes in the pan.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And Death? That asshole promised Me</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’d be the only Man.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Only till Eternity</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">for Being such a Man.</span></div></div></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-40983574187367653182022-04-23T10:51:00.000+09:302022-04-23T10:51:59.425+09:30 The pasts: some profiles<div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past loves spooning,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">backing a cold back,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">flooring a void,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">dipping into a throat, so yum with swallowed tears and snot.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Scraping aching insides. Gutting guts.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past hasn’t time for algebra,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">for irrelevant times. Just add, inexorably, and divide.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And as for “the past is the past”,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">that smug advisor rich with inexperience</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">is blubbering, rubbing its sore arse</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">while the past can't help but prance on its boots past.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past wafts not perfume, but pot pourri--</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">crinkled petals </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">memory-crenulated touch</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">mould and rot and ashes</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">love gone off</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">blood-red pashes</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">nostril-stinging taunts</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the metallic smell of eggplant that is love.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rhubarb-crumble friendship</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">gamey snipes</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the fresh itchy sweat from crushing a lawn when shadows fall,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the seaweed ozone of the very young,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and as though exhumed, that dank catacombic breath--the last horrific rattle of the too-soon gone.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past is that clingy, loving but not quite lovable-enough guilt-inducing friend. The pet, the brat, the insomniac who will not die yet won't lie still awake without attendant present company,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The past is the torturer too many cannot do without.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet sometimes the past, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">hurtful, howling, whimpering, </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"lives" if you could call it that,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">never quite believing its state possible: excised, abandoned as, for all it added up to,</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">waste.</span></div></div>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-53980607619203372202022-04-05T10:18:00.000+09:302022-04-05T10:18:11.441+09:30The shame of not keeping up virtual appearances<p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's so much of a relief to see that so many writers and artists I admire are so derelict at keeping up their professional web presence. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Indeed, these elaborate tombs litter the virtual landscape in a historically aberrant way. Raiders have no interest in them, and they seem to have the current value of the past. As ignored and if noted, welcome as the wads of <i>I wuz here</i> chewing gum gracing the darkside of chairs, tables, desks, mattresses--the discarded present turned to unconsciously sculpted concrete.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhmeo7lam0ApP-YjD4Q0ys5fWEx_t1Vc0CwVa7s1T-UYoBEnV4rxhxoVhY2izUH0XUK2ApCRNaW9JwKG00KoWyU1Cx3HXPAt1nBWqi8PNP4ipvz_Zfou7yHKyiqbcwcC8HdZ6zVTqzZot6TkcCsFrhmB_ff4KyOkDG2HRGeKqTzj3hNCkehPbM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhmeo7lam0ApP-YjD4Q0ys5fWEx_t1Vc0CwVa7s1T-UYoBEnV4rxhxoVhY2izUH0XUK2ApCRNaW9JwKG00KoWyU1Cx3HXPAt1nBWqi8PNP4ipvz_Zfou7yHKyiqbcwcC8HdZ6zVTqzZot6TkcCsFrhmB_ff4KyOkDG2HRGeKqTzj3hNCkehPbM" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Segoe UI Historic, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span><p></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-89442376916781009502020-11-10T12:07:00.004+10:302023-09-28T07:16:58.775+09:30Shaking Heaven's Fleas<p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"> </span></div><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b></b></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">Year of the
dog: Pandemic puppies in high demand, short supply</b><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">--CBC News,
Ottawa</span> </blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">Before the pandemic you could
normally expect to spend anywhere from a few hundred bucks for an ‘oodle’ from
a pet store to something in the low thousands for a puppy from a breeder, but
2020 has seen demand soar. Breeders around the country are now selling designer
dog puppies for upwards of $10,000. DMARGE was able to find a seller in Port
Macquarie, NSW selling ‘miniature Golden Bordoodle’ puppies for $7,500 each –
as of publishing, all these little cuties have sold out. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">--"AUSTRALIAN ‘DESIGNER DOG’
TREND DRIVING POOCH PRICES BARKING MAD IN 2020”, by Jamie Weiss, dmarge.com</span> </blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /><b style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">Pandemic puppies: Massachusetts
sees puppy shortage as demand for dogs skyrockets in quarantine</b><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">--Boston Herald</span> </blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">Demand for 'flat-faced' puppies
such as the French Bulldog and Pug has soared during the coronavirus pandemic,
according to the UK Kennel Club .</span><span style="font-family: helvetica; text-indent: 0in;">--Daily Mail, UK</span><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The rush on
toilet paper and other essential products at the start of the pandemic has come
and gone, but there's another shortage that hasn't quite let up. This one is
cuddly and warm, and one even Santa might not be able to get. <span style="text-indent: 0in;">--“Puppies in high demand and short
supply this coming Christmas amid COVID-19 pandemic”, by </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Michael Finney</span><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> and Randall
Yip, ABC7 News, San Francisco</span></span></p></blockquote><p> </p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><b><u><span style="font-size: large;">_________________________</span></u></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My beautiful black German sherpard past away
just three days ago at the age of 1 year two weeks. My entire family is
heartbroken we are non stop crying for Moonlight (our beloved German Shepherd).
She past away instantly with no symptoms we were so distraught. She was a big
girl standing up at 5 feet. She had long beautiful black fur. Such a beauty,
and tragedy to die from heart disease. </span></i><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left; text-indent: 0in;">-- online eulogy</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">shook my head, but no water flew out of my ears. I bit my rump till I
could taste blood. This was worse than watching balls being beaten back and
forth where there were no balls, no ball smell. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’d heard of Doggie
Heaven. It’s where they said Sunlight went shortly after I arrived. They cried
as if they were broken-hearted and hugged me till I could hardly breathe. But
they kept saying they were happy for her, that she had gone to a better place.
That she’d be at peace, have lots of friends to play with, eat fresh meat and
ice cream to her heart’s content, and sleep on the most comfy--Stop! I’ll never
trust a word they said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
place--it’s where “Dad” took Tracy for her driving lessons. He let me come too
“for the ride” but when they let me out, the ground was so desolate, I could
hardly pee. There was nothing worth looking at, no one interesting to smell.
The place reeked of road, the sweat of cars, the funk of fucking people. This
place looks the same, but it’s filled with the smell of fear, the noise of
cries and whimpers. I’ve never seen so many dogs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">I’ve never heard a
dog whistle, but my ears stand up at the thin blue scream. Some of us turn as
one, and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">that</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">--that land behind
the ruins of this shopping center--there’s a rusted sign on a chainlink fence. It
says (Don’t be so surprised. From 11 weeks, I was given newspapers, and I’ve
only got a cataract in one eye): <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h2 style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>DOGGY HEAVEN<br /></b></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>THIS FENCE IS PATROLLED 24/7</b></span></span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sit</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, blares
a voice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So of course I sit.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There are no gates in Doggie Heaven,</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> says the voice. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">You dig your way in under the fence. For the inexperienced and
incapacitated, experts either mentor or dig you a new one. Once in, you must
expect a period of adjustment, especially if you have entered with pre-existing
conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Pre-existing
conditions, </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">it repeats. There’s so little discipline here, you
could mistake this crowd for humans. And the din is deafening. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Sit! </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">it bays, though it had never released us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Of course we don’t
refuse anyone</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> it says as if it’s talking to a puppy who has only
piddled in the kitchen, not the carpet. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There’s no such thing
as a dog eat dog society except in human euphemisms. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In a
dried pig’s ear would this crowd know a euphemism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But there is a class
structure</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">that has inevitably built up and is increasing
exponentially in social stratification based on these pre-existing conditions
or the lack of them. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Wow. The voice mustn’t be attached to eyes. That
basset hound, for instance, can barely understand one-syllable words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And oh, boy, Tracy’s lucky </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">she</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> doesn’t have to go to Doggie Heaven. But maybe
she’ll go to her version, where she’ll have to go to all the school she cut
while lying to her parents.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Old dogs--those who
came here before breeds were invented</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> continues the
imperturbable voice</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">--and mutts--are naturally the
elite, but don’t worry. This is a compassionate society.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you had people and
they loved and ‘took good care’ of you, you can take advantage of our generous
dream rights, though if you truly care about them, you should not abuse the
frequency of these visits, or they’ll never be able to ‘get over’ you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yes, I’ll get to you
strays . . .<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It must be
dinnertime. My stomach’s growling. With my luck, I bet there’ll only be a damp
bag of kibble, wet, rubbery, stinking of mice, if I can even find it in a
corner of some garage . . .<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">By the
time the voice stopped, only some of us still had our ears at attention, our
buttholes warming the tar. When it finally said </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Okay!</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, of
course, with my breeding, I rushed forward to help get the intake through. Some
of us were better at this than others, but we managed by dint of lead, push,
growl, bite and mothering, to get every last dog through, down to the most
intransigent chihuahua with teeth like a whirring lawn mower, and that
urine-soaked mop of seizures, the shih-tzu.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The voice wasn’t
wrong about everyone needing adjustment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Would you like to
know more?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then sit. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Did you have to include the social
criticism?” asked a pug.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“We felt it only right to be scrupulously
honest.” The shaggy proto-St. Bernhard who had last saved a boy in 1845 looked
around the park. Her eyes, their red rims always showing, gave her the look of
someone who’d not only been awake for a week straight, but had spent those 168
hours writing a manifesto.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“More to the point,” she said. “Does anyone
feel we’ve left anything out? Try to remember back to when you first arrived.
What would you have liked in your welcome pack?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A dog who was new here, and thus had only begun
transitioning, tried to speak, but his or her face wasn’t in any state yet. Its
bugged-out eyes couldn’t even blink once for <i>Yes</i>. Its millions of
followers mightn’t even know that it had passed on, having attained a certain
immortality on The Richest for its looks: “<i>like </i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">it stuck its paw into an electrical socket and has been dealing with the
aftermath ever since.”</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Are you friends? Can you step in?” asked the
proto-St. Bernhard, whose name was not verbal, of course, but
scental--(automatic translation: Rolling in Rotting Salmon).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">She’d asked a dog who’d <i>almost</i> sold for much
<i>much</i> more. Nibble, she was called by her rescuers who threw themselves
in front of the truck that was transporting her and about 150 other Tibetan
mastiffs stuffed in chicken crates. Their fad had ended as suddenly as it had
begun, and no one wanted them except these fanatic saviours. (How could I possibly
know this? As I told you, most of my puppiest life, I was stuck in a room floored
with newspaper spreads.) Her life after that had been just as confusing--so
obvious she was still shaking from peopleshock. Her smell--people can’t handle
it. She didn't know what had happened to her. She couldn't even remember her
first days, when she'd been taken from her mother and fed a lion's mother's
milk. Nor did she understand what anyone here was saying. And there is no place
here to hide. <i>And</i> though there are scores of Nannas here,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there’s never one where one needs one. She
bit the root of her tail, a bush of dreadlocks, in embarrassment, which made Rolling
in Rotten Salmon bow her head and drop her eyes sideways, looking at nothing,
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i> embarrassment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But Rolling in Rotten Salmon always found good
in a situation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“All those who’d like more brains, raise a paw,”
she barked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Why?” came a yip.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“To show you want more brains.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“For who?”--someone else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Why?”--from an English sheepdog.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Whom.”--a Scottish terrier. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“And where are these brains coming from?”--some
mutt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I know I’m dumb, but my people were dumber and
it never hurt them.”--something sprayed pink.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rolling in Rotten Salmon suppressed a growl. Meetings
could be very frustrating for those who tried to pay attention. For the rest,
that’s what fleas are for. The park was filled with the low clarinet reediness
of snuffling hunters, the thin staccato of castinetish teeth-to-teeth fine
nipping, and the repeated basenotes of involuntary footbeats.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So now you get the gist? It was I
who had the bright idea about screening, ID'ing (however that's spelled. I've only heard it), and forming a brigade to get
order and discipline at the fence. Before then, it was laisse faire chaos. Oh,
I’ve had lots of bright ideas, and am so handsome, I have quite a presence, but
no tact. It’s a little scrap of a thing with worn out paws and only a few well
chosen words--Fly, who chose to keep her lifelihood’s professional name, who
takes my ideas and brings the masses around without anyone feeling the least
bit manipulated. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The welcome pack is only one of our ongoing
projects. Ball-making, sand-dune re-creation, rotting-things-to-roll-in parks,
the constant inducements needed to bribe trees to drop sticks of assorted
appropriate sizes--all are constants, as are other parts of the necessary
infrastructure: lampposts for the Europeans, fire hydrants for the Yankees. But
those are piddlesticks compared to the most pressing and important need of our
Great Society--the levelling of the playing field when it comes to health care.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ignoring reality, however, is not an option.
Because of the growing demand by humans, for dogs, and because that demand is
for breeds with increasingly extreme profiles, the number of new entrants here
has skyrocketed even as the percentage of them with pre-existing conditions
overwhelmed our capacity to make their Heaven heaven.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At first, the agonizing spinal cysts that are
the price of pricey ugliness for that fashionable faux-electrocuted
Affenpinscher were treated by proto-cocker spaniels (the ones before their big
sad eyes were caused by ingrown eyelashes) who would gaze on a newly resident
Affenpinscher with such a caring warmth, the new resident didn’t know the
cockers practiced this look by gazing at pictures of dried liver.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The treatment was, as treatments usually are,
“moderately effective,” the term used by the bureaucracy here in DH to denote
“As worthless as a picture of a chicken leg.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Something had to be done, for immigration was
changing our society, turning it cruder all the time, its mainstays of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ways things are done</i> ever more dug under
as frustration with the status quo stirred up base instincts till our formerly
great society was rolling on its back, peeing on its very belly. Thus,
competitive howlouts of the old and fit vs. the young and fucked broke out,
revolutionarily, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before the sun goes down</i>,
the notes long and tortured as, and possibly haunted by, that humans’ horrorsong
competition, The Voice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Still at attention? If you’re good,
the answer’s obvious. Time has passed, but I forgot to release you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The old and wise Rolling in Rotten Salmon is
still top dog. She never gets others’ hackles up. And her broad head with its
tiny eyes and its practical ears is filled with reasonable brains. Well, <i>I
think so.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Reasonable! That’s what’s wrong with this
place.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Burnt Sofa and Rotten Egg are grousing again--their
tone so unreasonable, so unlike the tone of Heaven. Two uglier dogs used to be
hard to find, Indeed, they’d each been crowned World’s Ugliest Dog a few years
ago. BS is an English bulldog who could hardly breathe and whose legs are so
Chippendaled, he doesn't walk so much as shifts crabbily from side to side. He’d
been bought from a puppy mill by an organization opposed to puppy mills but
obviously not opposed to the deformed creatures making their new owners money
and fame, and thus giving more aspirational owners reasons to find and produce
ever more deformed and funny winners. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rotten Egg’s eyes are so bugged out of their
sockets, they leap whenever she gets excited--which is like, always. Like Burnt
Sofa, her teeth never meet each other but sort of wave from opposite poles of
her froglike mouth. Not that they were accidents. Their function had been to
mock horrify and genuinely amuse, aided by a few hairs standing up from her
crown. Otherwise, she's as naked as a newborn rat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“What good’s a ball to me?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another newbie's pitched up. Unlike BS whose
tongue is a hanger for a thick stream of spit, this dog’s tongue is small and
pink and dry. The dog’s bright little eyes are on a 7 o’clock/ 1 o’clock axis,
her head stuck in a lolled position.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Lolita!” Burnt Sofa nudges Rotten Egg. “This
is--”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I know who she was,” RE says coldly. “You made
millions on the internet.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“I?” The little dog’s eyes lose their gloss.
Her crooked tail droops as much as it can. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Don’t take your pain out on her,” growls BS,
and to the little dog: “You don’t have to act happy anymore.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“That doesn’t solve anything,” snarls Rotten
Egg. “Just not having to act happy can’t make us happy.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“But throwing off our shackles will.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Me, I've never spoken up at these meetings. I’m
not a public speaker. We do have, like you, a loud silent majority, and a
silent, furrowed minority. We manage to understand each other. So I’m letting
you in on more. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Something’s happening.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Be honest. “Doggie Heaven”--like Santa, for
your kids. We--we’re all just memories, eh? Get those damn buds out of your
ears. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">and Sit!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You too, you wretched batch of puppies. Don’t
cry! You’re not drowned rats. Here, curl against my stomach. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You, above and below: Quiet! Listen and learn--<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That low, but assertive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grrr</i> uttered by a little dog so fucked
up by breeding, she couldn’t properly bark--she was the first in our
revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Old Guard wasn’t swept away as humans do.
They were merely recognized as irrelevant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The most urgent order of change to effect was
redistribution. Extreme inequality was the root of the problem, and the reason
the problem had not been recognized was that the Old Guard was too old and
comfortable and the new, too young and therefore socially naive yet in levels
of pain and disability unimaginable to the sympathetic olds.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The revolution uprooted standards, digging up
the park meetings though they’d been the very symbol of social cohesion with
what must have been a proportional slice of the populace attending, or so it
was stodgily argued in the first and only challenge to the revolutionaries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Stop mewling. This is interesting. That little
challenge, I say, was a tiny toot compared to the ruckus kicked up when the silent
majority got wind of the plans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You’d think every dog had been made to eat what
some had died to tell of: the vegan rawfood diet of broccoli, soy and brussels
sprouts. Lucky you were too young for solid food.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The plans, by that Central Committee of Three, have
never been caught and collared. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">They are just, with no commands, no plans as
such, being dug into our future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Say a dog has hip dysplasia (which by the way,
was the first condition to be treated, possibly because there are so many
members here who were ex-law enforcement--you all would have got it soon). All
hips here will be replaced by healthy ones and all tendons and muscles also,
till the dog can happily jump over a junkyard’s chainlink fence. Naturally, the
laws of economics can never be broken, so the loss of bad bones, muscles, pain
and associated arthritis, must be a net gain to the breeders, handlers and
owners involved. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or as in the<i> grrr</i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> of that little dog with the
bright pink tongue that its lady’s boyfriend called obscene; “From each
according to his disability, to each according to his sleaze.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The revolutionaries will soon be shaking Doggie
Heaven so hard, a rain of our fleas is gonna fall on them below.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">~</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Still there, puppies? It seems to be
just you and me. How long’s it’s been? You seem to be cold in perpetuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I wasn’t wrong about one thing. A something has
befallen. Nothing like our old everyday pains you drowned puppies were too
young to experience--fleas under the collar, having to “hold it” all day till
someone comes home, trying not to commit a crime from the boredom of solitary
confinement, having to keep calm and carry on when people explode things
because they’re, inscrutably happy. Breathing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is something so big, many people would
have their tails between their legs if they had tails. Others, like dogs who
bark from the safe side of doors, jeer and laugh and live as always till, at
their eulogies, people act as if no one noticed their poo-poohs. Some call
what’s happening cosmic payback. But all that empty chewing on <i>why</i> is
what people do, like endless watching of balls you can’t mouth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Down there now:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">People hobble to cafes on legs as curved as your
tongues. They try to to sit on chairs, yet only manage to lean their butts on
the edge, their faces twitching. Sometimes a leg juts out with no warning and
they clutch parts of them as if pain is a clump of weeds growing in them big
enough for a streetgang of strays to pee on. They order coffee, which they pass
under noses that cannot be used to breathe through and if meant for decoration,
those who value that aesthetic must be a rarified breed indeed. Sprays of teeth
protruding from cracked lips make drinking their coffee impossible, so they
suck through straws--alternating with taking air through their mouths--as they hold
flea collars they call handkerchiefs to their chins to catch their stinking drool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At their feet are typically, unidentifiable
mutts who have bred as naturally as the day likes to be wild. These mutts rule
with equanimity, of course, being dogs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Equanimity? Fly, can you explain? And where’s a
Nanna where I need one?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><b><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> THE END</span></b></o:p></span></h2><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>or so I thought. </b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I was very proud
that I got this out. It’s one thing to read but another to tell. And I thought, whatwith all the distractions here, I did a rather good job of reporting. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But a story’s
just a story and life goes on, so to speak. It got out. The story. In places I’d
never imagined it could. Rabbits got it, but they’re dumb, but from them it
spread to their neighbours, the lab rats bred to higher, more specialised registration
standards than any Kennel Club.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">They’re smart but sick, you see, for
they were never pets.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p><br /><p></p>anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-46164247478405079992020-02-24T14:24:00.001+10:302020-02-24T14:34:37.680+10:30The dicey road of a straightforward autobiography--- review of The Child Cephalina by Rebecca Lloyd<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_IndW8K_1tICgyGTiv6rO_z_iGk9VGh5ADMo0njR6umzn5z1cgMdFAAR8_UsFooCh7JSti9sQsBiuFzuUbFiIsJA3D_BEJscPOVshnRw3pIakVMK-mLiJlajNTdn6bE7oqbAStg/s1600/cephalina3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_IndW8K_1tICgyGTiv6rO_z_iGk9VGh5ADMo0njR6umzn5z1cgMdFAAR8_UsFooCh7JSti9sQsBiuFzuUbFiIsJA3D_BEJscPOVshnRw3pIakVMK-mLiJlajNTdn6bE7oqbAStg/s320/cephalina3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Child Cephalina</i> by <a href="https://www.beccalloyd.org/">Rebecca Lloyd</a><br /><a href="http://www.tartaruspress.com/lloyd-the-child-cephalina.html">published by Tartarus Press</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A mixed blessing, this novel having been published by the fine but small <a href="http://www.tartaruspress.com/lloyd-the-child-cephalina.html">Tartarus Press</a>, thus escaping a tortuous bone-breaking and reshaping it could have had to make it into a bestseller, titled suitably--<i>Fingered</i>, or <i>Clutchers</i>, or <i>That Child Has Too Much Knowing</i>, or something like <i>Justifiable Obsession</i>--as a creepy but sure-footed fly-on-the-wall ripper of a tale of infatuation, possession, love, jealousy, treachery, faithfulness, sacrifice, belief, and the power of the deeps--all with characters so easy to hate or want to be, their only ambiguities are those deliberate quirkinesses inserted in the right proportions.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instead, <i>The Child Cephalina</i>, with an unsensational cover instead of one that could scream Lolita, is that most treacherous thing: the whole truth, as told by someone in it. Come to think of it, <i>Lolita</i> was, too, fat lot of respect its narrator earned for telling us like it is. Lolita has stirred up generations of rage and disgust--yet, it, like <i>The Child Cephalina</i>, could be titled, <i>My Excuse</i>. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight,” says Humbert Humbert, to society’s outrage (just as Lewis Carroll has come to recently) and increasingly open admiration amongst a predatory brotherhood that has no time for love, instead priding itself on its unappreciated existences and ability to strike back.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But to this account of events 100 years earlier than Humbert Humbert’s “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury . . .” with the self-described “fancy prose style”.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Mr Robert Groves, a respectable writer, has the stolidness and sincerity of the Charles Pooter of <i>Diary of a Nobody</i> fame. Groves, however, is not aspirationally trying to be middle class. He has no interest in decorating, and indeed, is so slovenly, he has to be told by his help to put his pants on because he’s embarrassed the other servants. He lives in a part of London only a stroll from the great Natural History Museum, in a handsome house (owned by his brother) wherein, he tells us “Up until the day the child Cephalina came into our lives [in 1851], Mrs Tetty Brandling was a happy, sloppy woman who snuffled and wheezed her way through the day’s business with good grace.”</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is no more solid road of a read than a straightforward autobiography--though the substrate be euphemistically “damper than it should have been”, perhaps only a few clutching pebbles from falling into the Underworld itself. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Until I struck a bargain with Tetty, she had the two attic rooms . . . I had thought quite seriously from time to time about joining my brother and his family in Margate where the air is fresh, and had I gone there, I feel I would have been able to make progress with the small book of poetry I had been attempting to write for so long.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But while my work with the children of the streets was ongoing, I was not in a position to move from London to a quieter place. I had been interviewing them since 1848 for which they received a meal and sometimes a bath or some clothing--I recorded a great many aspects of their lives, and came to understand, and I say unashamedly, admire, the courage and ingenuity it takes to be a poor child in London Town.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Henry Mayhew’s voluminous 1851 <i>London Labour and the London Poor</i> did everything Mr Groves hoped his work would do. First of all, <i>London Labour</i> got published and Mayhew was paid for it. It also achieved instant acclaim, though some of the interviewees might have had a different attitude, since, on publication, they formed the Street Traders Protection Association against him.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The two men had some superficial similarities beyond their interests in the poor. At a young age, Mayhew actually left Britain to escape creditors. Later, after achieving success as a journalist and publisher, he escaped the way that the established do: through that time’s equivalent of Chapter 11. Robert Groves would never have done the former. He was both far too timid a character and hopelessly incompetent by his own admission. Unlike Mayhew, who had the gift of gab and wit, and collected other talented authors and artists as socks do, burrs, thus his cofounding of <i>Punch</i>, Robert Groves hadn’t the faintest whiff of wit or possibility of scoundrelism in him. That’s why, as with so many other respectable people of the middle and upper classes, a Tetty was worth her weight in debtors' prison. She not only cleaned and cooked but purchased the necessities, and also had to fend off the unpaid and make the excuses Mr Groves shielded himself from, with her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And she had to do all this dressed so poorly, it caused her even more shame. And then she, a widow, had to present herself to her family back in the countryside as respectable, a predicament that causes its own predicaments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Oh, Mr Groves. So kind, so sensitive, so generous, so clueless, so unaware of the repercussions of his good deeds, his saviour impulse--he’s a Victorian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/26/nick-kristof-anti-sex-trafficking-crusade">Nicholas Kristof</a>. Sensitivities alone could be a massive enough take-away meal in this read, if not for that first clause in Groves’ first sentence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As Groves’ practical friend says: <i>The lives of girls, you know? How our society . . .?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And there lies the purpose of his cry of the heart to us, his unseen readers. The exploration of loves in this novel is accomplished with the utmost delicacy. No bone is crushed, though the finest earbone is uncovered and brushed free. And not just Groves’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Beliefs also come into this tale in ways that Groves would be the last to want admitted in--especially since his brother, ever his financial crutch, is an ardent spiritualist who, in contrast to Groves’ barely eeking by, makes a good living writing spiritualist texts.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But his brother isn’t the man of action Groves proves himself to be. Groves isn’t interested in the spirit world, but the one living in the foul stink outdoors. He’s already saved one poor boy, but when the child Cephalina chooses him as her saviour, to the horror of Tetty Brandling, he is not only helpless; he learns he can be devious.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like Kristof, he forays into a secretive world of a person he doesn’t really know, for a good cause--in his case, to save a child--who has asked him not to spy on her. There he meets the Dickensianly named Clutchers.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s not as if Groves doesn’t have good advice. Tetty doesn't mince words:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Something’s afoot, Robert. I can feel it, and this is not just fimble-famble. Perhaps it is that I am seized with the kind of faddy thoughts only a woman gets. Yet, I have always wondered why it is that men are not blessed with faddy thoughts for I know certain sure they could benefit greatly from such a blessing. But God in his glory sees fit to carve men more crudely than he does women . . . perhaps he does not care about them so much.</i></span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At this point, I should shut the curtains on any more reveals about the plot. This story does have elements of Dickens--the keen nuancing of wealth, class, and sensitivities. It has the fierceness of outrage, minus the melodrama, about “the unfortunates” that Dickens had, and that that most unappreciated and <a href="https://www.annatambour.net/SocietyforthePreventionofCrueltytoBulwerLytton.htm">ignorantly lambasted novel <i>Paul Clifford</i></a> had, about which its author had high hopes as a social reformer in novel form, partly “to show that there is nothing essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice”.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But those elements in <i>The Child Cephalina</i> could be backdrops to the main obsession. And as for what’s afoot--“a sordid thing”—this account, because it’s told throughout by a man without a sense of drama, is horror most exquisite.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The byline for <i>The Child Cephalina</i> is Rebecca Lloyd. There’s good reason to believe this is itself, a case of spiritual transportation.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you like novels about people who can't be summed up--real people who could be laughed at, reviled, and loved for the same deeds (the only kind of fiction worth reading, imo)--I highly recommend <i>The Child Cephalina</i>. <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100005777741812&extragetparams=%7B%22__tn__%22%3A%22%2CdK-R-R%22%2C%22eid%22%3A%22ARDCLhRNc_8Upc2l--az_oQCpveq74n7OCrC7Q7-9aDRvtuKSyGg5puHbglPx0T-dFbnsGUT2M21YVS2%22%2C%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.lloyd.9216?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARDCLhRNc_8Upc2l--az_oQCpveq74n7OCrC7Q7-9aDRvtuKSyGg5puHbglPx0T-dFbnsGUT2M21YVS2&fref=mentions" style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Rebecca LLoyd">L</a>loyd is an expert at embedding herself, not only in history, but in characters as foibled and unaware of self as we all are.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My only reservation is one hardly likely to have company in this readership. I am such a die-hard sceptic that I haven't believed what I have seen and felt with my own eyes and hairs on my skin. But Tetty wouldn't have time for such silliness.</span></div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-18415580400772192252019-08-23T16:32:00.000+09:302019-08-23T16:38:38.385+09:30More current than Breaking News--this urgent read with a misleading title might even be a fake novel--Ahab's Return by Jeffrey Ford<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are a rare few books that read as if they were struck into being by lightning, they’re so timely. And there’s no telling when this timeliness will strike. Just out in paperback is a novel that first came out in hardback and e-book editions last year, but over the past few months, days, hours--reads so newly struck, so uncannily relevant--<br />Yet---</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Cut the anchor!</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Only madness can explain why something so perfectly built for a storm, this storm here and now, has been shackled, not even to a real anchor but a mass of fouling--the dead weight of one of those great books people should have read.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0wG0KalpiQPBBL1aUDB67PSa7LmvCC1J2BqHsx-qN3XhgvGdYv0S678iQMYqNaahkcz0s7-Gxi-TUaUyDZy7IeEPLzg6HRyOITCEIZd1RWc2brCa0n1rSUYQALxLa9HMc_EdMEg/s1600/Ahab%2527s+Return.jpg" /></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062679000/ahabs-return/"><b>Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage</b></a> was launched a year ago, and though the title and descriptions naturally lead you to believe this a spinoff of Moby Dick, that’s not only wrong, but not only has Jeffrey Ford himself had to say you don’t have to have read that tome to read this, but, Oh, the irony. In Ahab’s Return, an insider, a real person fictionalised in Moby Dick says, ’“That book is a farce. I’ve read it.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“But you are not Daggoo,” said Ahab. “I remember that.” “No, I am Madi. I have always been Madi... All I brought with me was my name, Madi.”<br />“I was joyful to be alive. I could go to America a free man and make my way.”<br />“And then you got here,” I said.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The ‘I’ is George Harrow, the narrator. also a writer, but unlike Ford, he’s a star reporter, an expert in a very particular art and craft.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“You might be the finest confabulator on this godforsaken island.” [says his boss, the editor of the <i>Gorgon Mirror</i>]</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">His take on that?</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Whereas another might have taken the term to mean liar, I understood it to be an appellation of artistic prowess.”</span></blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">New York at that time needed no sensational tweaking to titillate, outrage, horrify readers. So Harrow’s readers wanted entertainment, nothing more. And he’d lived as shallow a life as possible, till Ahab turned up looking like something from the dead, but very much alive-- and greed for a sensational story made him a story:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“My detractors didn’t realize that I, George Harrow, was not a do-gooder, an abolitionist, a friend to the downtrodden, a lover of Catholics or the sons and daughters of Africa, nor was I in league with the idiocy of the Know-Nothings, indiscriminate haters of anything other than themselves. No, I was merely an opportunist”’</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So our fearful reporter wasn’t giving us hokum when he said:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“It was said that Malbaster was not born from the womb of a woman, but instead coalesced like an angry storm cloud during a riot in the Five Points brought on by nationalist factions attacking a dance where Irish and colored mixed . . . Malbaster, an evil for the ages. I saw him as more a petty criminal with a murderous streak, who used said intolerance as a means of financial gain.”’</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No narrator can pick the core of the story they tell, so I'll say that from my pov, it's Seneca Village. There is a manticore in this novel, a killer of marvelously oddball tooth movement, yet it is a banana slug compared to the efficiency of erasure of a place with such significant history that, like Belsen, all you'd need to say is the name.. If only they weren't blacks who owned land and had the right to vote, the atrocities visited upon them as they were dispossessed for the rich, would be spoken of as 'biblical' by Americans. I knew nothing about Seneca Village's tragedy before this novel, yet history does, as it keeps repeating itself, Yet who’s to know if history’s grassed over?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This novel is, I think damned for some time now, and periodically ever after, to be so relevant, it's creepy, and fascinating. Indeed, from the first paragraph, it's a veritable squid-hook of a multi-pronged approach. Bad stuff and weird shit happens. Truth is caught in a classic quicksand trap. A mythic beast can still chew through a man's neck fast as a woodchuck could chew corn.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the main thing is: <a href="https://www.well-builtcity.com/">Jeffrey Ford</a>'s tale telling is pure, old-fashioned joy to read--and proof that a novel can be enthralling and a page turner of suspense as well as being a cattle prod of a stimulation to see what’s happening, this very moment, around us and in places we’re not supposed to see, including history..</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He delights in throwing readers into different times and places (I recommend, in addition to this book set in New York City in the 1850s, his <i>The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque</i>, set also in NYC, but in the 1890s.) You will feel that you are in wherever he throws you because he so much lives there that he's walked the streets, though they be ghosts now. You will never find, in any Jeffrey Ford confabulation, the slightest whiff of that cheap seducer that turns characters into generic jokes--the movie script. Yet his constant state of curiosity and his adventurous mind has made him a magpie..</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There will always be some expertise for the curious and curiouser, some unusual state of being, creature, condition--something that he throws into the tale because it naturally, belongs there, or will belong--for his fiction, no matter how close the relationship between reality and the imagined--is never affected, never played for the superficial shock, never, thank the gods, 'quirky'.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He must have fun playing, too. I loved his laziness, that sitting back and letting another storyteller do all the work. This is how Wodehouse got more rounds of golf in, playing while Mulliner talked himself hoarse at the clubhouse bar. Ford’s guy not only takes on the whole job of narration, but he treats us to excerpts from his own writing, about which, though he’s a pro, he’s both embarrassed and proud about, and forced to defend.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I’ve got years of experience investigating stories.” [he says]</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“But why do you investigate them when you’re just going to grind them into a spread of fiddle-faddle?”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Don’t you understand that there can be a certain truth in fiction?”</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And there we have it. Is the hokumist a fake, too?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">___________________________________________________________</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I didn’t mention that there are so many passages that I wanted to revisit, I had to buy not only the hardback when it came out, for the physical pleasure of reading, but the e-edition because my hard copy started looking like a porcupine.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(and finally, an apology. I love Jeffrey Ford's writing, yet this novel stands out as particularly important, a milestone of a novel, something that belongs with Dos Passos and Cather, Sinclair Lewis and Dreiser. I would hate for it, so readable, so unpretentious, so necessary, to miss the readership it deserves. And so I've wasted many hours and many drafts composing what in the end, I flung upon this 'page as a matter of urgency, as another mention and recommendation, for every one counts and is necessary in this growing storm.)</span></div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<i><b>But is this novel even a novel?</b></i></div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #f2f3f5; color: #1c1e21;">Ford has often written of something unbelievable but true, a lifeform that's no myth, something that looks like one thing but is something else. This time he's</span><span style="background-color: #f2f3f5; color: #1c1e21;"> created that very thing--a historical novel that's being born again, faster and faster, as breaking news and news that doesn't break but lives like a guinea worm, under the surface, but unerring in achieving its dreadful goal.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-83706781257448797712019-05-03T15:29:00.000+09:302019-05-03T17:06:28.295+09:30America's Great Red Party: Trump's Radical Socialists<div style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 6px;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Democrats! Responsible media, or should I say, “Idiots!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On a bed of mashed red party, Trump has stretched his
generous bulk out for you, red tie, flaming pants and all. He even roasted
himself and stuck the apple in his mouth. And what are you doing? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Getting stories like this by Matt Viser in the Washington Post: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>For
months, President Trump and his allies have tried to cast his Democratic
challengers as radical socialists bent on yanking the country much further to
the left than most Americans might find comfortable.</i>--<b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-bidens-message-to-donald-trump-im-no-socialist/2019/05/01/1b573bc2-6bac-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?utm_term=.bffae6937485">Joe Biden’s message to Donald Trump: I’m no socialist</a></b></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>And that’s it?</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in February, “With reelection looming and his wall all
but defeated, the president sees a convenient political target on the left”,
David A Graham wrote in <i>The Atlantic</i>--<b><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/trump-socialism-venezuela-bernie-sanders-ocasio-cortez/583135/">Trump's New Red Scare</a></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now it’s Red Scare time full on across the country, typified by this AP
headline. <b><a href="https://apnews.com/ca0309e344da4f539366c5992ecb5ea6">GOP hoping voters open to warnings of Democrats' socialism</a>”</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“Socialism is about only one thing: It’s called power for
the ruling class.”</i></b> — </span>President Donald Trump, speech at the Conservative Political
Action Conference, March 2, 2019</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which president and which congress have worked hardest to
achieve that, and succeeded to such a degree, they’ve not only achieved
unprecedented redistribution, but have instituted root and branch change in
government itself--changes meant to be so fundamental, they are not impacted by
elections?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Trump and the Trumpian Republican Party are not just
socialists, but <i>radical</i> socialists.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s Democrats who declare themselves so socialist and profess to be so radical are mewling
fakes compared to the Trumpian Reds. Universal health care? That's such a basic given in democracies such as Australia, it's thought of as 'socialist' as much as all the other featured taken for granteds basic in a civil society--socialist stuff such as sanitation, public parks, roads, civil and military protection. Democrats have never been true socialists, and it's counterproductive for the Dems who are running as socialists to claim they are, for the word is a scary one to Americans--<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693618375/socialism-vs-greatness-for-trump-that-s-2020-in-a-nutshell">one that no one who wants to win in America should call themselves, hoping to win</a>. Republicans surely don't. They just use socialism to rule.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although there have been Republican administrations such as
Warren Harding’s that have made decent strides, they were incompetent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And while it is true that, as old headlines state,
“[The]Trump Empire Built on Inside Connections and $885 Million in Tax Breaks
and that “In Trump and Kushner's world, other people pay taxes”--that amount of
socialism is chump change to today's radical reds. Robert Reich describes it well in “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/trump-offers-socialism-for-the-rich-capitalism-for-everyone-else"><b>Trump offers socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else</b></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>"To a conservative mind, socialism is <a href="http://trumpgolfcount.com/">getting somethingfor nothing</a>. Yet this is what the president promotes for the wealthy.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whatwith his work ethic, Trump can’t take all the credit for the Republicans’ masterpiece
of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/opinions/trump-kushner-taxes-paid-by-others-mccaffery/index.html">radical socialist redistribution</a>, their tax package. Yet he doesn’t need that to establish him as the greatest
radical socialist president the world has ever known. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's sad, so sad, therefore, that this achievement isn't appreciated and lauded loudly, as it should be. Tom Nichols merely writes this headline, for instance, in
the <i>Atlantic:</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/moore-and-cain-nominations-reach-new-level-cronyism/586831/"><b>Trump Goes Beyond Cronyism—To Something Far Worse</b></a>--"By naming people such as Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to top
jobs, Trump converts the machinery of government to his personal use.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Trump has said, “Socialism is about only one thing: It’s
called power for the ruling class.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What better for that class, therefore, if it’s a class of
one?<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Will Democrats praise him and the Republicans for being the <a href="https://trumpgolfcount.com/">revolutionary radical socialists</a> they are? Will Democrats tell Americans how socialist
America actually is, and who benefits from it and how much it costs? Will
Democrats show how much they who pay taxes support the parasites on the people,
and just who these people and corporations, uh, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution">"people</a>" that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution">socialism provides for so generously</a>, are?<br />
<br /></div>
<b><i>
“I want you to put socialism on trial,”</i></b> <span style="font-weight: normal;">said White House
economic adviser Larry Kudlow in a speech at CPAC, Feb. 27.</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everybody should. Republican Red socialism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-822438559412233652018-08-23T15:08:00.002+09:302018-08-26T11:42:09.581+09:30Eileen Gunn, Curator of Absurdities<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">I've
been, frankly, chicken to write about </span><a href="http://eileengunn.com/" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><b>Eileen Gunn</b></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">'s fiction, because she's done
so much that is important, and her scope is much greater than the books I’ve
read to compare to, but I want to say something, so here's my blurtings. I
first fell in love with her stories from the collaborations with the equally
intimidating to write about Rudy Rucker in Rucker's insanely smart, fun, crazy
online magazine </span><a href="http://flurb.net/" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><i>Flurb: A Webzine of Astonishing Tales</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">. (Gunn herself was </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">the key miscreant responsible for an equally addictive but totally different webzine, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="http://infinitematrix.net/">Infinite Matrix</a>.) </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">But to get a proper dose of Gunn, there's nothing to equal a
collection.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMtR7NPPKEH8ekBm4Vudok7Nrw0G6qIze0E2iIYhzzobCJFuEGIbjK490LEwsNpyATH4lO_4UBj57Tvq7UL7KsI73BfVW549j-WbcWQW_8iJPFBB24_chmE_Gh66qi4JUNs8k-gA/s1600/two+collections+by+Eileen+Gunn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="836" data-original-width="1254" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMtR7NPPKEH8ekBm4Vudok7Nrw0G6qIze0E2iIYhzzobCJFuEGIbjK490LEwsNpyATH4lO_4UBj57Tvq7UL7KsI73BfVW549j-WbcWQW_8iJPFBB24_chmE_Gh66qi4JUNs8k-gA/s320/two+collections+by+Eileen+Gunn.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">These
two important collections are like Gunn herself--so supremely cool in their
lack of pose yet so richly diverse and deep and generous that you end up
learning stuff you didn’t mean to, laughing wryly and getting on top of stuff
that was destroying you, getting moved to move the immovable, even feeling deeply
about someone you don’t necessarily want to be. Quite Marvelessly, Gunn does
this to you with not a superhero in sight. I wondered about her sense of humour
and satire, which makes me think first, of Gogol; second, of Norbert Davis; but
third, of Nabokov, so I wasn’t surprised to learn she’s fluent in Russian, has
lived in many places, and done a great many things, including being a key worker
in a corporate hive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">
Unlike many writers, especially those who’ve been moulded by an MFA, she doesn’t try to create an absurdity or sprinkle odd things in, or twist the
plot, to make some nothingstory quirky. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 6px; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYMy5eqxdOV1pV8hHp42aJoCr1IMwPHoWjXmsjuxlnuZ3drKKjpy8udZPB5xsGSNdZsTwiW_RodjiB-9MLMHcDMd9jpTXSmBbuLZutgwXXqKNgJgoVlWy0IFGHJsJmPgsXN7_q7A/s1600/9781892391186_p0_v2_s550x406.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="247" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYMy5eqxdOV1pV8hHp42aJoCr1IMwPHoWjXmsjuxlnuZ3drKKjpy8udZPB5xsGSNdZsTwiW_RodjiB-9MLMHcDMd9jpTXSmBbuLZutgwXXqKNgJgoVlWy0IFGHJsJmPgsXN7_q7A/s320/9781892391186_p0_v2_s550x406.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="194" /></a></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">foreword by William Gibson</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;">afterword by Howard Waldrop</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stable-strategies-and-others-eileen-gunn/1102569749;jsessionid=FB9B9341B839E75D90202AB2ADCA1387.prodny_store01-atgap05?ean=9781892391186&st=AFF&2sid=Goodreads,%20Inc_2227948_NA&sourceId=AFFGoodreads,%20Inc">A must-have classic </a></b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stable-strategies-and-others-eileen-gunn/1102569749;jsessionid=FB9B9341B839E75D90202AB2ADCA1387.prodny_store01-atgap05?ean=9781892391186&st=AFF&2sid=Goodreads,%20Inc_2227948_NA&sourceId=AFFGoodreads,%20Inc">not just for fanatic collection collectors</a></b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"></span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"></span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Gunn’s a curator of absurdities--of the real life dimension. I can’t imagine
her constructing a story out of the prescribed elements. Nor does she try for
tricky interesting language effects. Her own voice when writing about
organisations, for instance, seems to burst forth from a well of experience and
fedupness (so the very funny and famous "Stable Strategies for Middle
Management" told in a matter-of-fact tone, might have sprung from Kafka’s
“Metamorphosis”, but gets far more mileage with readers because it does it with
the engineered lightness of, say, David Langford’s <i>The Leaky Establishment</i>). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">She is
also a constantly curious delver into the generally unknown, so her stories are
often like a Cracker Jack box would be, mid-last
century, to a five-year old who's eating away till, !!!--for this kid must have lived in a cave far from Howdy Doody tunes and therefore never heard </span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Georgia, serif;">there’s a prize in every box</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Awesome
knowledge coming as a surprise gift--<a href="https://www.well-builtcity.com/"><b>Jeffrey Ford</b></a> does this too, and in the
hands of writers as smooth and ego-invisible as these two, the stuff we learn
is an intrinsic part of what makes the stories so memorable, be it snowflake
collecting from Ford, or phantom-limb hauntings from Gunn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">If
this were a different time, I wouldn’t compare Gunn to anyone, for I think her
stories have their own voices, none of them being anyone but Gunn in service to
them, or in her collaborations, a certain seamless synergy that works a treat.
My favourite collabs are with <a href="http://www.rudyrucker.com/"><b>Rudy Rucker</b>.</a> These two writers are intimidatingly
smart but don’t act or write like that. Instead, this duo produces fun, smart
stories that I’d call ‘screwball’ to their own design. And as is usual with
their individual works, there’s serious stuff aplenty there--just not with any
pretentious labels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">As
Gunn has often been called a writer of science fiction, it is in this capacity
that I am the most frightened to say anything, for my perception might be too
screwy to expose without ridicule, but here goes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Science
fiction has often been burdened by having to be either Present / Future or P \
F. Rarely is it P?! > F?!, which I would define as seeing the future not
with any foundation of optimism or pessimism, but with the realism of today’s
absurdities continuing to their logical future. This is how I see Lem’s
immortal works, and I think it was the ruse of science fiction, and satiric at
that, that allowed him free rein to write about the future as fiercely as he
regarded the present. I think Gunn does this too, making her science fiction
all the more meaningful to this reader. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Mind
you, this isn’t some Praise Be session. I don’t love everything she writes. My
personal taste prejudices stuck to me like fleas when it came to “The Steampunk
Quartet”, first published by Tor. It’s not so much that I’m not into steampunk.
I’m not, but I can stomach it when it comes to the brilliant <a href="https://gailcarriger.com/"><b>Gail Carriger</b></a>,
though I’m hanging out for her to outgrow steampunk and invent her own new
genre. So it's not steampunk in the Quartet that gives me gas, but the towering genius of China Miéville: and since
I’ve tied on my concrete boots, I may as well sink myself so deep, my bubbles won't reach the surface, by adding that celebrated
“recluse”, Thomas Ligotti. But some of my best friends find much in these two,
as they do, one of the most quoted of all authors, the man who penned “The pen
is mightier than the sword”. Just kidding. I don’t know anyone but me who admits to
a regard for <a href="https://medlarcomfits.blogspot.com/2006/10/frankenstein-bulwer-lytton-and.html">Edward
Bulwer-Lytton</a>. No, some of my best friends are Lovecraftians; but we must
all see the good in people and ignore the parts every right-minded cephalopod
would want treated with extreme prejudice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">imo,
Gunn’s best when she writes alone and in her own strong, service-to-her-story
way. I think it is her humbleness in the presence of the story itself, that
makes her a great writer and natural storyteller. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10.5pt;">
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAoWuFzXd_FRNZIRb6J6Td03fH4YvS7gTimm_G2iG-Buql5tPpK3OtmNP3w1-TzpQOL-5d7bo9VpmF54myc8scOTInb2DGzgQQHG-Q8qSYaRhL9TXSVLCcTTc0rM7Z6O9oMpnqTA/s1600/9781618730756_med.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAoWuFzXd_FRNZIRb6J6Td03fH4YvS7gTimm_G2iG-Buql5tPpK3OtmNP3w1-TzpQOL-5d7bo9VpmF54myc8scOTInb2DGzgQQHG-Q8qSYaRhL9TXSVLCcTTc0rM7Z6O9oMpnqTA/s320/9781618730756_med.gif" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>unquestionably excellent, and </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>as with <i>Stable Strategies</i>,</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>unusually pleasurable </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>book design</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>by John. D. Berry</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>who also designed the font as though </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>he tailored it to fit Gunn.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Published by the excellent, <br />easy to buy from <a href="http://smallbeerpress.com/books/2014/03/11/questionable-practices/">Small Beer Press</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">
I’ve spoken of her finely honed sense of humour and satire, but she’s got such
a broad range that satire is only one of her methods of getting into our heads
and hearts. In her aptly titled <a href="http://questionablepractices.net/">Questionable Practices</a> (she’s got a great feel
for titles) one story above all shows this range. Heartbreaking tragedy is made
all the more powerful by the way it is told, with shifting points of view and
interjections of painless, succinct Dummies’ level information. In the hands of
another writer, this could have turned into a mess, but Gunn’s depth of
emotional involvement. knowledge and feel for what she is talking about, and
control of her elements makes “Phantom Pain” a perfect story to end this
collection--with a resounding whisper. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-indent: 0in;"><b>EXTRA: </b>The portions of both books that are not fiction </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">are not decoder rings, but positively clutchably </span><i style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: georgia, serif; text-indent: 0in;">precious</i><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">. There're prizes of info in both collections,</span><br />
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">but few other authors will give you, for free, </span><br />
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">a tale </span><span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">of a delicious, successful, lie. </span><br />
<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><i>And</i> a bonus. <i>A Secret that Really Works.</i></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"><o:p></o:p></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1c1e21;"></span></span>
</div>
<br />anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-44095834673138129902018-02-28T15:29:00.001+10:302018-02-28T15:32:50.070+10:30Nature's post-production techniques<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1tpyGwQUx8abWhZrErHD5vc929z_VMI8W_iDOj2NefPv-DLv6LA6ifoj8jsRL5YBaPabF_MV6IKyxCS9ZNxFnx94yrN-sleRix8XzReeN3PO-20r_ViN0eDsqj2891DtC4FJ0nA/s1600/seaweed+cr2+bendalong+2018-02-28+006+copyright+Anna+Tambour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1143" data-original-width="915" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1tpyGwQUx8abWhZrErHD5vc929z_VMI8W_iDOj2NefPv-DLv6LA6ifoj8jsRL5YBaPabF_MV6IKyxCS9ZNxFnx94yrN-sleRix8XzReeN3PO-20r_ViN0eDsqj2891DtC4FJ0nA/s400/seaweed+cr2+bendalong+2018-02-28+006+copyright+Anna+Tambour.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Nature is extravagant. But you, too, can afford what is used here, for it is all open-source.<br />
<br />
Natural light, shade, and colours; dissolution, drying, soaking, and a certain amount of rot. Additional lens is 10-60mm thick seawater.<br />
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<br />anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-59242370896207231862018-01-09T15:15:00.000+10:302018-01-10T01:37:08.686+10:30on The Sometimes Spurious Travels Through Time and Space of James Ovit by Garry Kilworth<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"If I am to be kept in the dark, I have no idea what can be said and what can't. You cannot withhold information from me, simply giving me hints that a crisis is about to occur, then expect me to say the right things."</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br />
</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No, this isn’t Rex Tillerson or anyone in what’s left of the US State Department. It’s James Ovit, truth-telling in the self-deprecatedly titled <i>The Sometimes Spurious Travels Through Time and Space of James Ovit</i>--dubbed by the publisher all too skeptically “a science fiction novel in three parts”.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=gksjo"><b>The Sometimes Spurious Travels in Time and Space of James Ovit</b></a></div>
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A science fiction novel in three parts</div>
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<a href="http://www.garry-kilworth.co.uk/biography.php"><b> by Garry Kilworth</b></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/book.php?book=gksjo"><b>published by Infinity Plus</b></a></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This so-called novel is really a journal by one who, wherever he goes, whenever, seems to prove that the more things change...</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"I was sleeping with an extra-terrestrial, a creature from outer space, one of those beings that were inscrutable to Homo Sapiens and had to be watched in case they had malevolent designs on my home planet, a world which was by definition better than any other."</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">though, like the Brexiteers pointed out to their dishonest benefit, experts don’t necessarily know all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> "One does not have to travel naked through time."</i></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Actually, I copied so many parts of this journal that I found wry truth in, that I <i>should</i> stop here, because you should be the one to get the same thrill that I have. As with all the best kind of fiction (to my taste) the thrill is based on the state of the real world, producing that complexity of reactions--wry, tragic, infuriating, funny, horrific, teetering, touching--all that, and this novel which reeks of integrity and knowledge, manages to be a page turner of the first order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although almost no one has heard of <i>The Sometimes Spurious Travels Through Time and Space of James Ovit</i>, it should be as known as the fiercely funny Glenfiddich Award-winning <a href="https://prospectbooks.co.uk/products-page/current-titles/something-quite-big-a-novel/">Something Quite Big</a> about NATO by Alan Davidson, a self-deprecating hard-bitten idealist who'd had to live in a pragmatist's armour till he threw it off, spectacularly with this book of his that had the good fortune to be banned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But it lacks that thrilling page-turningness and weird disparity mixing that <a href="https://keithbrooke.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/two-new-paperbacks-from-garry-kilworth/">one can rely on in a Garry Kilworth tale.</a> And it also lacks the insane brilliance of tossing three books into the air together to make such a class, fearlessly symmetrical, synergistic act.</span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As a political satire and intrigue, </span><i>The Sometimes Spurious Travels Through Time and Space of James Ovit </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">has the quality and timelessness, and often, humour, of </span><span style="background: white; color: #545454; font-family: inherit;">Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">’s immortal <i>Yes Minister</i> (</span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/aug/07/yes-minister-brexit-eu-jonathan-lynn-sir-humphrey" style="font-family: inherit;">Yes, there's a Brexit Special</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">); the added bile of that interstellar traveller Ijon Tichy’s </span><a href="http://english.lem.pl/works/novels/the-star-diaries" style="font-family: inherit;">diaries</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> that spanned 30 years of the mortal Stanislaw Lem's life to put to our primitive paper; the added touches of whimsy that remind me of another favourite out-of-this-world diplomat, </span><a href="https://www.matthewhughes.org/" style="font-family: inherit;">Henghis Hapthorn</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, captured in tales by Matthew Hughes</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: inherit;">But Garry Kilworth’s creation is entirely his own, with his own style and such an idiosyncratic and rich well of knowledge, life experience and skills he draws on that often, passages aren’t just fascinating, but rather breathtakingly beautiful, like the rainbows on rotted meat.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background: white; color: #545454;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"When I was a child there was no need to roam far away from one's home because the world came to your kitchen door...the rag 'n' bone man who would give me a goldfish in a jam jar in exchange for any unwanted items (even jam jars from the kitchen waste)...Until I was ten years old, I had not even visited the next village, two miles away. Then my father died of gangrene of the leg when his scythe sliced away part of his calf. He was drunk at the time, having been drawn into the pub on his way back to the hay cutting after dinner one Saturday. He patched himself up, without washing the wound, and finished his day's work. On finding it did not get better, he again treated himself. We could not afford a visit to the doctor believing it would eventually get better on its own. He didn't want to worry his family over a 'scratch'."</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background: white; color: #545454;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And in all this, there are nuggets throughout of matter-of-fact asides, coming out of the blue like elbow jabs from a spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background: white; color: #545454;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"If we had time travel in the 1950s, it would be pass</span><span style="color: #6a6a6a; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">é</span></span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> by now, wouldn't it?"</i></span></span></blockquote>
Oh, and it's a love story, too, cardboard-character free. Outrageous cheek in a political satire, let alone a science fiction whatever.<br />
<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: inherit;">The worst thing about this unique book is that Garry Kilworth is one of the <a href="http://claudepages.info/the-best-short-stories-of-garry-kilworth/">finest short story writers</a> today, who hasn’t burnt out but should have. He shouldn’t have been able to bring off this ambitious novel, too. But he has. He brings out expectations that he should damn well fulfill. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: inherit;">So, Garry Kilworth, if you can't, supposedly because you slime out by calling yourself just a writer or something equally weasily, get James Ovit to do it: <i>Change the course of history to make the current history we’re all swimming in, fake.</i></span></div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-29004179688349746442017-07-01T13:43:00.001+09:302017-07-01T14:14:34.441+09:30Nothing less than a life's companion - review of Oothangbart by Rebecca LloydDo you feel as Donal Shaun Hercule Poseidon put it? <i>"That's all?"</i> Donal asked. <i>"Is there nothing more?"</i><br />
<br />
Now when to read news is to feel bathed in toxic sludge; when time is commonly cut into measly little parcels; do you feel as so many do, one with Donal: <i>"It was as if the whole of his insides were writhing in an unnatural manner, and he often felt as if he was choking...He wanted only to fling back his chair, leave the building and run forever." </i><br />
<br />
Do you also feel that timeless conflict of meetings--making you imagine murder while also wishing you could make yourself disappear? Do bullying cowards take up all your air; and do you feel scorched as fear of the other, the unknown, fear of a new thought is being stoked to the ambience of hell? But hell, who has time to think let along daydream. And what if someone finds out you actually contemplate? In Oothangbart where Donal lives, even the wonderful and new is viewed with the alarm of Chicken Little.<br />
<br />
If you feel as choked by all this even though you don't live where Donal does, in a town as impossible to spell as Woolfardisworthy or Poughkeepsie (Oothangbart is also renowned in every citizen's greeting for its perfection and exceptionalism), now there is no better antidote than a little unassuming book published last year--a book that not only identifies but crucially, frees.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZz70kAm8Hrtlv6InLFhj4uGs89WQ88PM8_BZpBhUtd-AGnvmiQEsHBd6Xk6xV3Iz5Jv-guOpxOuEQ6h20Mt76V15eXL3Z9KL3lr18hBbU1RquOqcRa7X-PEBA9hfzve6QhcNUg/s1600/Oothangbart+a+Subversive+Fable+for+Adults+and+Bears+by+Rebecca+Lloyd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZz70kAm8Hrtlv6InLFhj4uGs89WQ88PM8_BZpBhUtd-AGnvmiQEsHBd6Xk6xV3Iz5Jv-guOpxOuEQ6h20Mt76V15eXL3Z9KL3lr18hBbU1RquOqcRa7X-PEBA9hfzve6QhcNUg/s320/Oothangbart+a+Subversive+Fable+for+Adults+and+Bears+by+Rebecca+Lloyd.jpg" width="201" /></a></div>
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<i>published by <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/PillarInternationalPublishing/">Pillar International</a></b></i></div>
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<i>"a teeny-tiny independent publisher based in Limerick, Ireland"</i></div>
<br />
<b><i>Oothangbart, a Subversive Fable for Adults and Bears</i></b> by Rebecca Lloyd could be called “Orwell’s Animal Farm for the Age of Team Players” but it is so much more. The gripping solution in <i>Oothangbart</i> is imbued with the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was not only the driver of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but who said, "You must do the things you think you cannot do."<br />
<br />
Simply but powerfully written in a wholly natural style, but one with so many parts I want to read again that my physical copy bristles with pink slips (like all <a href="http://www.steveaylett.com/pages/index2.html">Steve Aylett</a>'s books, which are rife with perfectly put, often tragically funny aphorisms about modern society), no reader of <i>Oothangbart</i> should be embarrassed to admit that what happened to me, does to you. When I finished the last page, my cheeks were literally wet with joy. This book is not just about society but friendship, love, revolution: kites, not flags, oh my!<br />
<br />
<b><i>Oothangbart, a Subversive Fable for Adults and Bears</i></b> is a mess of a title. Who can remember that? But soon, enough, subversion insidiates, for this story is our very lives: a complex metaphor for so many parts of society, from the social escalator of success for the successful, to the fear and aversion to the different and foreign that I've had a hard time writing anything about it, for the thought "That's positively Oothangbartian" has hit me constantly since finishing it, and I've been tempted to share these parallels. Not that you need them. What you do need is the honest reassurance that Lloyd's chapter 2 title: A PERVERSE THOUGHT fits the book as perfectly as a drug label round a bottle.<br />
<br />
Some of it is even so damn true but unadmitted, it's explosively funny. True bagels (yes, there be bagels here as well as bears), not the ubiquitous 'bagels' like those blueberry fluffies in the vending machine at the Seoul airport, are well and truly heavy as stones, and quite as indigestible. But the things people, uh, bears, do for love...<br />
<br />
It's perverse, brave, stirring, as perfectly pitched to the ridiculously real as the Academy of Projectors in Lagado that Gulliver reported; or Nobel-laureate <a href="http://www.salk.edu/scientist/sydney-brenner/">Sydney Brenner</a>'s advice in his collection of essays, <i>Loose Ends in Biology</i>: "I have personally found it extremely useful, when dealing with managers, to invert all the catch phrases and exhortations."<br />
<br />
Oh, hell. This gem is so "Positively Oothangbartian" I'm not strong enough to leave it out.<i> "There are people getting degrees in biological sciences at the best universities in America today who don't know the names of anything outdoors, who have never studied anything but a cell."</i> -- Jonathan Foley, exec director, California Academy of Sciences ("The Meaning of Lichen" by Erica Gies, <i>Scientific American</i>, June 2017)<br />
<br />
in Oothangbart:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Everything seemed senseless; every effort he’d made to be sociable with fellows he had no feeling for at work, every pleasant greeting he’d given to pompous types who could ride The Escalator, seemed futile.<br />
If obedience was its own reward it surely meant that a fellow was waiting for nothing at all, and how could waiting itself be desirable when it took up time? One could wait forever in Oothangbart doing all one was told by fellows in high positions and at the end of it all nothing would be different. Throwing himself down into the folds and dust of his sofa, he lay with his arms covering his head and thought about the Time of Dreaming.</blockquote>
The smallmindedness that reigns supreme now in too many places is torn to shreds and fed to the fishes in this glorious novel. The misfit Hutchinson, one of the unforgettable characters here, reminds me of the great Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who said <i>“Deliverance will not come from the rushing, noisy centers of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.”</i> And though I said I wouldn't, I must give yet another example of the way this book is like a spiderweb, its triplines reaching out in all directions:<br />
<br />
From the 27/6/2017 PBS Newshour <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/jason-isbells-nashville-sound-conjures-rural-americans-concerns/">interview of Jason Isbell</a>, singer-songwriter and guitarist--"A lot of people that I grew up with, went to school with in Alabama, and a lot of people in my family who told me growing up that cities were terrible places and anything outside of our little circle was scary and dangerous and frightening. And I thought about the effect that had on people, when you start to believe that, and you let yourself be so afraid of other people and the outside world, that you never feel tethered, you never feel a connection with the rest of humanity. So, I wrote that song based on that kind of fear."<br />
<br />
Rebecca Lloyd's timeless <i>Oothangbart</i> sings, too. Read it, give it, read it to someone you love in the small time you snatch between... or as Lloyd writes in the Afterword <i>“This book is for people who hate the typical work hierarchy that if drawn as a symbol looks like a pointed white-faced clown hat without the bobbles, and it is for ...”</i> But Lloyd is wrong to limit. <i>Oothangbart</i>, just as freedom, is for everyone.<br />
<br />
Finally, I said I wouldn't bring up endless connections, but as there's no penalty these days for lying, there's something else that needs saying and quoting. It's really as remarkably easy to write a book as it is to steal someone's time with mindless entertainment or hypocritical "The sky has fallen!" literature for people with enough leisure to enjoy the mudbath. But literature and life itself can be so much more.<br />
<br />
As <a href="http://www.rikkiducornet.com/">Rikki Ducornet</a> says, in <i>The Monstrous and the Marvelous</i> (a deeply inspiring collection of her essays)--<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I insist: it is not only our right, but our responsibility to follow our imaginations' enchanted paths wherever they would lead us; to heed those voices that inhabit our most secret (and sacred) spaces...It is precisely this capacity for invention that makes the world worth wanting. The capacity to dream very high dreams and to sing--as did the ancients of Dreamtime--songs potent enough to engender a universe. Those who ask us to deny our dreams would pillage our valley of marvels...would deny that the frontiers of the novel, our first love, are infinite.</i></blockquote>
<b><a href="http://www.beccalloyd.org/">Rebecca Lloyd</a></b>, short story writer and novelist, has refused to be denied, and in following her imagination of the possible, has created one of those rare books that becomes a life's companion on the endless paths it opens up.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBFrpNdBiVh-LBzAvOW3dV5roKkqRdafM2L03DfcRnFWD9d-CokcK-HajNVlz5DULzoI0jgstzaDrAPIEo37w-dSMAD1vvcUiXWCRuoPf9YE3SDq9YKsiwAM_Ww3Etdh3TSQqkbw/s1600/Oothangbart+a+Subversive+Fable+for+Adults+and+Bears+by+Rebecca+Lloyd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="313" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBFrpNdBiVh-LBzAvOW3dV5roKkqRdafM2L03DfcRnFWD9d-CokcK-HajNVlz5DULzoI0jgstzaDrAPIEo37w-dSMAD1vvcUiXWCRuoPf9YE3SDq9YKsiwAM_Ww3Etdh3TSQqkbw/s200/Oothangbart+a+Subversive+Fable+for+Adults+and+Bears+by+Rebecca+Lloyd.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Oothangbart-subversive-fable-adults-bears/dp/1535198834/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Amazon</a></b><br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oothangbart-subversive-fable-adults-bears/dp/1535198834?platform=hootsuite"><b>Amazon UK</b></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Oothangbart-Rebecca-Lloyd/9781911303022">The Book Depository</a> </b>(free international shipping, though this book should be published in many countries and languages)</div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-32840622203246654592017-02-01T06:00:00.002+10:302017-02-24T09:17:23.307+10:30A tense flight—Prayers at 30,000 ft<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_1j">
“Oh, no,” I thought with fear and dread as I got in my right-side aisle
seat on the 8-hour Kuala Lumpur/ Sydney flight. A young woman in a
chador settled herself and her two children in the middle row just ahead
of mine. Her husband was separated by the aisle, so I was directly
behind him. Children! If only they could be flown as baggage.<br />
<br />
The
woman was in her mid-twenties, her husband maybe mid-thirties tops.
Both were unusually good looking. He and the little girl and boy were
dressed as if they lived in a middle-class suburb of Sydney and were
going out for a special occasion. Casual nice. The mother settled
the children with no fuss. Indeed, through the whole flight, those
three were passengers to die for. Quite unlike the flight from Vienna
where a bloke who would make Crocodile Dundee look like George Clooney,
walked on my seat to get to his, pawed through a basket of hot rolls
proffered by the stewardess until she told him to get his mitts off, and
drank beer after beer, carefully placing his empty tinnies at my feet.<br />
<br />
But back to the family. Husband and wife occasionally whispered across
the aisle, but otherwise kept to themselves, she busying herself making
sure the children were cared for and quiet, and comforting her daughter
when the little girl vomited from what looked more like exhaustion and
fear than airsickness.<br />
<br />
The father/husband was something else. He
was the busy sort, and as soon as the screen was available, channel
surfed until he got to the Koran. Several times during the flight, he
went to this channel. At other times, he surfed the games channel and
played several. But whatever he was doing was always interrupted by him
bending over and nervously tweaking the contents of a large plastic bag
at his feet. I couldn’t see it, but could hear the plastic. He watched
two movies--something with Sandra Bullock, and The Devil Wears Prada.
But that bag seemed to obsess him.<br />
<br />
On the flight, we were given
enough junk food snacks that I stored them up, and offered them to the
mother for her children. She thanked me in fluent English, and her
husband turned around to chime in.<br />
<br />
In the same centre row as the
woman and her children, was a man in his mid-twenties and his woman.
That’s said deliberately. She was almost a cliché, she was so much his.
He’d wrap his arm around her neck in a proprietal lock, and talk to her
with the assurance and menace of her being a possession. She never said a
word that I heard. Now, I don’t usually crane to see everything
everywhere, but he was impossible to ignore. He drank, ranted in pure
Australian the whole time, and kept jerking back the seats in front of
him, loudly demanding their occupants agree with him, all with the
friendly insistence of the drunk. His woman had her eyes closed most of
the time as if she was asleep. The staff tried their best, but were
ineffective as recorking champagne.<br />
And all the while, the man in front of me kept rifling through that mysterious bag.<br />
<br />
When we finally landed, the captain’s announcement wasn’t that we had
landed, but to keep to our seats because we were to be boarded by
federal police.<br />
<br />
They took away the creep, to muted clapping.<br />
<br />
Soon, I finally had a chance to see the bag. It was a tough plastic, a
brand bag, and it said “UNHCR: United Nations High Commission for
Refugees” illustrated with those unforgettable uplifted-in-support
hands.<br />
<br />
The family was in front of me in the wog entry queue, for I also, am an immigrant without an Australian passport.<br />
<br />
I remembered my first day in Australia, when I fumbled paying on my
first bus here. The driver took the money from my hand with a smile, and
a “She’s right, luv.”<br />
<br />
The family and I were just about to be
called, each to an immigration official, so I had to speak up. There was
so much to say, but all I had time for was, “I hope you’re treated well
here.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you,” said the woman, as the man distractedly nodded my way as they stepped forward left.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
I can’t stop thinking of them now. How, even with our often inhumane
Australian government treatment of refugees and the serious infestation
of bigots in our parliament, it was probably a good thing that those
refugees were coming to Australia, and a bloody good thing they weren’t
on an American flight.<br />
<br />
The Koran is bad enough, but imagine the
horror if someone saw the guy reading <i>Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes
of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His
terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on ... I have read a fiery
gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:" As ye deal with my contemners,
so with you my grace shall deal"; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the
serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on . . .</i><br />
<br />
And if
someone doesn’t know songs, how could anyone blame anyone for not
realising a person could be innocently reading that sword of God shit to
become an American citizen? How could the vigilant think anything but
“TERRORIST!”<br />
<br />
Indeed, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was sung
by the cream of US leaders in Washington DC’s National Cathedral as one
of the first 9/11 responses, and will most likely be again, since it
goes on to say, quite comfortingly to those who have gained yuge,
unpresidented power and call America a Christian country: <i>In the beauty
of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom
that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die
to make men free, While God is marching on.</i><br />
<br />
(and yeah, eternal noseyness is my creed, so I was as stickybeaky on this flight as years ago, in a Moscow hotel when I eavesdropped on a bunch of American Christian evangelists planning their campaign while flipping pages in large ringbinders labelled <i>To Russia With Love.</i>)</div>
anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-8620492716954166612016-12-15T17:13:00.002+10:302016-12-15T17:28:04.912+10:30A perpetual-enjoyment collection: 400 Boys and 50 More, by Marc LaidlawThough they’re rarer than postage stamps who whistle, you might know a writer, and wish to give that creature a present as where-have-you-been-all-my-life loved, once tasted, as a perpetual-chew toy. Or you might know a reader who craves collections large enough to indulge all through the nights. If you’re really lucky, those rarities combine to be <i>you</i>. If so, there’s a way you can treat yourself without breaking your virtual pocketbook, and do it the instant-gratification way. In fact, I urge you to discover this most exciting collection--one that could have been in hiding, so little has it been noticed.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkAgS6YfvMAOrWUb9spEKElltUQIi646_Moup_1Lm_nf2SzfENtxRIYKjmwBHZFOyZJPom02KVv8x1H5RHy7D6a3Grg_ELc4UpfZciLxUXs5aHn5fJj5-oGbqMhanzoj4x0H6SrQ/s1600/marc_laidlaw_cover_400_boys_tinted_full-440x624.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing/400-boys-50/"><img alt="http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing/400-boys-50/" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXhI9x5suzYwDL2AMNPisSsIL0ZWs9qrvzY_v7eeNwkH3RRrk9XvQZT6FFKgz6hiTYjPd9yRNLcjCCujHzmfxpLt4HC8_gW5krKPjLlvZzVcOK7mQAmwp5MJCr2Q6IunEblCWrCg/s320/400+Boys+and+50+More+-+Marc+Laidlaw.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<br />
I hate that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/400-Boys-More-Marc-Laidlaw-ebook/dp/B01JH0I3VQ/ref=cm_rdp_product"><b><i>400 Boys and 50 More: Short Stories by Marc Laidlaw</i></b></a> is not in the type of edition it deserves--an <i>Everyman’s Library Collected Stories</i>--even though in this case, it would be <i>Some</i> Collected Stories, and still be as thick and heavy as a corned beef with all the fat trimmed off before it’s sold. <br />
<br />
“Well over a quarter of a million words, written over approximately 40 years” this truly is 50+ stories, each one carefully chosen (and not all previously published). Laidlaw has lightly spiced and larded the sections, describing each stage of his journey as a writer. Normally I'd prefer my head to be slowly ripped off than read ‘a writer’s life’ stuff. But here it's a treat, especially when he fails to brag when he could have, and instead, let you in on his greatest ambition at one stage: sleep. So modest, you'll want him to have revealed more. Funny and inspiring, including his lesson in how to be disreputable (typically, he doesn't admit to his success). But these bits are just a small part of this collection. The meat is top-of-the-line stuff that first appeared in <i>Omni</i> (a you-gotta-read: "The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio"), <i>The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction</i> (ditto: "The Ghost Penny Post" pub'd by MFSF in 2016), <i>Nightmare Magazine</i>, Rudy Rucker's <i>Flurb</i>, <i>Subterranean Press Magazine</i>, and some of the most lauded Ellen Datlow anthologies. Pinnacle publications and editors. <br />
<br />
But who cares about history? The question is: Do the stories work now? <i>And how!</i> The thing I like best about Laidlaw won’t fit into one 'is'. 1) He’s a wet dishcloth to his stories. They rule. So whatever voice the story is, it most assuredly is. If that philosophy was good enough for Hans Andersen, I reckon it’s good enough for any writer. Certainly this reader loves it in a collection, as it makes each story a new find. 2) Whether the tone is baroque or contemporary, the tale *moves*. Though the stories aren’t shallow by any means, they are stories that professional storytellers could have waxed fat on. 3) Laidlaw's horror hasn't a whiff of falseness. It's real and deep and sophisticated and thoughtful as philosophers in hell. One example is his brilliant "The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft", which should be in many anthologies. 4) When Laidlaw's stories are funny, the humour is gloriously under the top. He does deadpan so well ("Mars Will Have Blood", "Pokky Man"!), I can hear the ghost of Jack Benny applauding. But don’t worry, anyone born ten minutes ago. Laidlaw should appeal to old, young, and immature enough to enjoy anything marked 'for adults'. And oh. did I mention that many of the stories' titles are treats in themselves? Get the book and see what I mean. And if you think as I do, then cry out as I have been for a while, for an omnibus collection of his Gorlen and Spar stories, my favourite contemporary high-fantasy characters and tales. They’d make a terrific movie series, too. anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-71630750330094122312016-11-04T17:24:00.000+10:302016-11-05T09:19:30.368+10:30The wake-up kiss for the incurious: Exploring tidal waters on Australia's temperate coast<br />
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Every year, millions of people stand on rocky shores gaze out to sea like sleepwalkers, looking for whales while at their feet, literally, unexplored worlds teem.<br />
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So you’re going to the beach. If you haven’t packed this essential, you are going to miss so much. If kids are coming too, this book can make your trip a life-changer for you and for them.<br />
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<b>Exploring tidal waters on Australia's temperate coast</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
by Phil Colman and Peter Mitchell</div>
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I’ll say right off: I consider this a model of a guidebook in any field, and this one encompasses so many.<br />
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In many ways, it’s written as if two children never grew up enough to get boring and well-behaved.<br />
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Although it's a superb identifying aid for anyone who's ever been challenged as to who's the real alien when you look coastal oddities in their, uh, eyes? this book would make an irresistible nag if you think you live too far away (say Broken Hill, NSW; Irkutsk, Siberia; New York City) or think zombies are more interesting than the truly freaky tidal world. Although this book’s title speaks specifically of “Australia’s temperate coast”, it is not stuck in one geographical place.<br />
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I’m prejudiced about this book. I first found it at my local library, and within a half hour, realised that it had answered so many questions about things I’ve seen and had never been able to identify or understand. I had to tell the authors. So I tracked down the guy whose concept it originally was--Phil Colman--to tell him how great this unassuming masterpiece really is. Subsequently, I was lucky enough to meet Phil Colman and spend a couple of hours with him as guide, exploring tidepools on Long Reef, his stamping ground in Sydney. Two of the best hours of my life, with one of my favourite people anywhere. I can’t remember ever saying so many incoherent one-word sentences that ended in multiple exclamation marks. He is so gracefully knowledgable, proving that there is no reason a brilliant expert can’t communicate in ways any dumbo with curiosity and a will to learn can understand and thrill to.<br />
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Onwards to the Book—<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ6QK2I386-ffRoVwV0UjpH8f-gUfTNvhCIeJNtAzNgnkmw0D0U6Nq2ztc5HUfFPF_NV26D1TLjdB56vJSz1mbSAHA5Fo6HmPdnVtD45hY0Kk31MswdiI1m4zKvwm4fy8zM-9WSA/s1600/tidal+flannery+quote.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ6QK2I386-ffRoVwV0UjpH8f-gUfTNvhCIeJNtAzNgnkmw0D0U6Nq2ztc5HUfFPF_NV26D1TLjdB56vJSz1mbSAHA5Fo6HmPdnVtD45hY0Kk31MswdiI1m4zKvwm4fy8zM-9WSA/s1600/tidal+flannery+quote.jpg" /></a><br />
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Relationships are discussed in awesomely voyeuristic detail.<br />
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About Neptune’s necklace <i>Hormosira banksii</i>, “a brown algae (it actually looks green) . . . Each front looks like a row of beads about 12 to 15mm in diameter. On the surface of each bead you may see little yellow spots that mark the egg and sperm chambers. As you walk on them the vesicles split open with a popping noise and you may be surprised to find that they are not filled with air, but with water that keeps them alive whilst exposed at low tide.”<br />
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The common bluebottle that when dried on the beach, pops under a foot like an exploding paper bag, gets a writeup that includes: “The bluebottle is not a single animal but a whole complex of individual zooids. The individuals cannot exist alone, only as the superorganism…The whole animal is a hermaphrodite, but produces males, which remain attached, and minute females, which float off and eventually produce another bluebottle by a process of budding.”<br />
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Scientific theories are examined with the same delightful unwillingness to just look away. About one theory that is great in theory, “many ecologists now think that the concept is too fuzzy to be of practical use. Oh, well, back to the drawing board and try again.”<br />
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Phil Colman is a scientist who’s specialised in insects, seashells, and other specialties one can add an -ist to, for international museums. He calls himself a naturalist, and when he isn’t guiding, teaching, or trying to save coastal environments, is luxuriating, picking off leeches, etc., in the wilds of New Caledonia. Do read his <a href="http://yaba.edu.au/day-life/day-life-mayor-%E2%80%93-mayor-michael-regan-independent/the-full-story">Saving the Reef (by navigating Government)!</a> He writes that he’s “been taking people to look at life on coastal shore platforms at low tide for more than 40 years” Questions people asked made him see the need for “a simple book … written in plain English”.<br />
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Because Colman wanted to describe not just what things are, but how they live and relate to not just each other, but the places they live, the authorship became not one but two, as “’I’ became ‘we’ when a colleague came in to help me out with aspects such as geology, or which I profess to know little.” In Peter Mitchell, geologist, academic, environmental consultant who says with typical modesty, he “doesn’t know who he is anymore” and that “in the third half of his life he spends time trying to correct the environmental mistakes he contributed along the way”, this book got the perfect co-author. <a href="http://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/exploringtidalwatersonaustraliastemperatecoast.php"><i>Read more about them and their creation in this Pittwater Online story</i></a><br />
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The original concept enlarged and enriched itself quite naturally, and the result should be a classic, so much does it say with so much fun and wit, in a book that you really can carry as a companion. Modestly titled and only 122 pages long, it is extraordinary in its ability to answer so many questions.<br />
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Winner of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW Whitley Award in 2013, <i>Exploring tidal waters</i> should have won some international award because its scope is global and its communication quality outstanding.<br />
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As I think Peter Mitchell writes in “The Water environment” chapter (though the writing of the two co-authors is seamless) “Waves travel in great circle routes round the world unaffected by the Coriolis ‘force’ and they only change direction when they ‘feel bottom’ near the shore.”<br />
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It is an instant reference for a myriad of “what is it” questions as well as taking anyone and everyone down avenues of weirdness it takes an unhinged imagination to imagine they exist. It is also one of those books that will not exhaust itself, but only stir further interest. Even compared to the classic I’ve written about before, the huge heavy, Isobel Bennnett’s brilliant <i>Australian Seashores: adapted from W.J. Dakin’s Australian seashores</i>, a book I love, this little book is actually more useful. The photographs, many of which are by Peter Mitchell, are superb. Combined with the succinct explanations, this makes the book the best I’ve seen for searching something you’ve seen and coming up with a “That’s it!”<br />
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The design is for maximum usefulness, as are the glossary, index, and generous resources listing. The book is even bound right. Shove it in your pack, and you can be sure its pages won’t fall out.<br />
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And in every sense, the information is inviting instead of intimidating.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>a chapter title</i></div>
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And possibly best of all, this is all done with <b>no dumbing down</b>. Children especially, deserve better.<br />
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In the chapter “Jargon”, for instance. “Scientific names may be a bit daunting but they are better than common names that are sometimes only used locally and are certainly not standardised. For example, a common bivalve used as a fishing bait along our NSW shores is known as a pipi (also pippi). This just happens to be a Maori word that applies to three different bivalve genera in New Zealand…In South Australia the same shellfish is called a Goolwa cockle, while in Queensland it is sometimes known by an Aboriginal name, ugari (also eugari or yugari). But any scientist in Sydney, Tierra del Fuego, or London can avoid this confusion because everywhere in the world it is <i>Donax deltoides</i> as there is only one such species. Try to get used to scientific names. Four-year-olds have no trouble with <i>Tyrannosaurus rex</i>.”<br />
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I’ll leave it to children of all ages to discover what this book says about “solar powered dragons”.<br />
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<b>Every library in Australia should have this in stock, so tell your library.</b><br />
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<b>And you should have your own, to put sticky notes on, date that you saw, identify, think…</b><br />
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Get it and give it. It will help answer your questions as well as drive you crazy to solve more. And it is the perfect waking kiss to those whose curiosities are asleep.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6lmrQbBnroPHXVSONAZgu4B8aAHQo-pqpAiHWhlGrg0u7yaV5GcKcJF17h2A9OY8u_5bhWGM-H9fikyhu7EkkUL4tL_7amlwAOymjJaz_xPXhkQ3lxhOUXpcVRLY6ahR_6GPv2g/s1600/at+Long+Reef+with+Phil+Colman-copyrt+Anna+Tambour-ws.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6lmrQbBnroPHXVSONAZgu4B8aAHQo-pqpAiHWhlGrg0u7yaV5GcKcJF17h2A9OY8u_5bhWGM-H9fikyhu7EkkUL4tL_7amlwAOymjJaz_xPXhkQ3lxhOUXpcVRLY6ahR_6GPv2g/s320/at+Long+Reef+with+Phil+Colman-copyrt+Anna+Tambour-ws.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>with Phil Colman as my guide, I 'discovered' this beauty.</i></div>
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<i>With <b>Exploring tidal waters on Australia's temperate coast</b>, by Phil Colman and Peter Mitchell, </i></div>
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<i>I learned, and you can learn too, who this is.</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7351">Get yours from the CSIRO bookshop</a> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>or</i></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
get yourself on a <b><a href="http://reefcarelongreef.org.au/guided-reef-walks/">Guided Reef Walk</a></b> where Phil Colman himself might be your guide, and buy your copy then.</span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></h3>
<br />anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20078507.post-18133410184228544892016-09-05T14:35:00.001+09:302016-09-06T14:22:11.542+09:30Kaaron Warren's The Grief Hole is for all of us bloodsuckers<!--[if !mso]><img src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">--<a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/carol-hunt/mother-teresa-a-friend-of-poverty-not-of-the-poor-34301299.html">the now-sainted Mother Teresa</a></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">Theresa thought she was beyond horror at human behaviour. She’d been submerged in it, surrounded by it, and risen above it, day by day, in her job. The contrast of THEM making her feel like a better person.</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">— <i>The Grief Hole</i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">“Everyone’s a parasite” </span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></span><span lang="EN-GB">-- Aunt Prudence in <i>The Grief Hole </i></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">A band of angels couldn’t have conspired better to launch Kaaron Warren’s newest novel, <i>The Grief Hole</i>, upon the world at this there</span><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><i>’</i></span>s-no- better time.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This novel could have been so many things--a simplistic <i>Avenger</i> ripper, a Walmart-baroque peepshow into sadism and misogyny such as <i>Game of Thrones</i>, an unreadably dense but otherwise deeply thoughtful exploration of evil and do-gooding Nobel Prize for Literature winner.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But it is none and yet, all of these in parts.</span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">The Grief Hole</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> is, firstly, such a gripping and suspenseful read that its depths are only seen when looking back, for looking back is something your mind will do, regardless of your command. This page-turner does what literature <i>should</i>, explore without constrictions the unfathomed, the unseemly, and the avoided-at-all-cost—doing all this with no affectation in the telling, thereby making the impacts on anyone exposed to <i>The Grief Hole</i> unavoidable and irredeemable.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And as for the beauty of suffering, the artpieces intentional and otherwise, of unnatural death—the nuances of good and evil in this novel shine like the rainbow on rotting meat. The contrasts between people Prudence calls ‘monsters’ refuse to keep their clarity, undermining the very nature of ‘good’, though not with any of the usual faux-nihilism tosh. Both Theresa and the beloved international singing star Sol Evictus in <i>The Grief Hole</i> have much in common with Octave Mirbeau’s Clara in <i>The Torture Garden</i> (<i>Le Jardin des Supplices</i>) whose passion is, not a box seat at the Opera, but strolling participation at staged displays of exquisitely refined torture. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Warren</span><span lang="EN-GB"> has a particular skill with characters, so lightly sketched they could be pencil-drawn instead of oil. Explicit three-dimensionality expressed in a simple line. Family members, the one true love, hired muscles, The Lacemaker, dogs, and of course, a host of ghosts. My favourite in this novel is the wise fool, Aunt Prudence. This isn’t the only work of </span><span lang="EN-GB">Warren</span><span lang="EN-GB">’s in which an aunt is a standout who I hope to meet again. Aunt Beryl (who, like Prudence, has astounding toenails) in Warren's short story <span id="goog_1591836839"></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LPFTG6I/sr=1-2/qid=1473049271/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1473049271&sr=1-2">“</a></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LPFTG6I/sr=1-2/qid=1473049271/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1473049271&sr=1-2"><span lang="EN-GB">Bridge</span><span lang="EN-GB"> of </span><span lang="EN-GB">Fools</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LPFTG6I/sr=1-2/qid=1473049271/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1473049271&sr=1-2">”</a><span id="goog_1591836840"></span></span> is as outstanding as any aunt drawn by those other aunt-employers, Wodehouse and Saki.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The story itself is both fast-moving and, far from pitching us twists and horrors like fish to seals, seems to grow as organically as bread mould. The only aspect that I felt possibly contrived was the age of Theresa, who I reckon would be about 5 years older to have her experience in social work. However, I could be wrong. Perhaps what it took for her, was just that level of experience and naiveté. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I thoroughly enjoyed the read, though as the saying goes, <i>maybe ‘enjoy’ isn’t quite the word</i>, especially about that all-too-visceral hole. One last terrific part, however, is a hint in the thrilling ending. It isn’t an ending at all. Prudence is incorrigible, and Theresa didn’t have to think twice to answer her own question, “Is that what I want?”</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB">A rare book, this. I hope it flies out beyond genres and one language, to take its rightful, deeply unsettling place, in all <s>good souls</s> monsters and parasites.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Grief Hole by Kaaron Warren</b></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Cover & internal artwork by Keely Van Order</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Published by IFWG Publishing Australia</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://ifwgaustralia.com/tag/the-grief-hole/">GET IT.</a></b></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span><br />
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anna tambourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01338581782386113668noreply@blogger.com0