We See In Part

The Song of No Bird

2006-10-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

The phone - bakelite, worn smooth, black beetle-like and brooding - rings. Jarring. It had been a quiet day until that smooth shrill sound, the sort of day where nothing happens, but happens so languidly (so exultantly) that nothing becomes everything. Becomes anything.

The phone. I think of alarm clocks peeping softly without electronics. I think of LED numbers (11:11; 23:23) raging red at me until their light dims, until their mad red glow dies sullenly at last. I think of clockwork and razor blades.

The phone. (I give in.) Something crackles at me through the wire, wheezing great racking coughs of static, snow fallen on copper wire. Red, cruel and gleaming, through the white (and the white is everywhere). The static resolves. The sound focuses. My consciousness become a lens, become a mirror, become an over-elaborate sentence that rattles and jangles pleasingly, hollowly. Saying nothing. The traitorous quiet part of me is obscurely pleased.

"You're invited," it begins, the voice, the voice come to me through the wire, and I know what's coming next. "You're invited to a /night at the opera./"

Dead air follows.

All the way home.

Not quite petunias

2006-08-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Oh, not again.

The Devil in the Details

2006-04-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

"It comes in shapes," someone said - not to me, I hasten to point out, but I was in the vicinity and really, public spaces are not meant for privacy.

I walked the long way home. Thinking. Hands in pockets. Dead leaves everywhere and it's nearly May. May! Three letters of permissiveness and a built in handshake. Nice work if you can get it.

"It comes in shapes," the woman said, and I remember now that it was called "The Witching Hour." No one else does. That's lonely and strange.


> WAIT

You wait...

Time passes.

It's true. I can't seem to stop it.

Eight letter nightmares at three am

2006-04-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

So the scariest thing I ever saw on TV - this, by the way, is by way of an exorcism - was something when I was a kid. Not that I mean to suggest to you I've ever been an immature goat, except figuratively (figures), it's just a phrase. Or a phase. Something like that, anyway. You know what I median.

Anyway, yeah. TV. Television. The scariest thing. I don't remember the programme, really, or the context, or even the linear progression of narrative or the intriguing juxtaposition of thematic elements or even - beyond "doodoodledoo-DOO-DO-DO-DOOO" - the sparks and coruscations of the music, incidental, titular or otherwise.

do-do-dooo.

Just an image. Images. Static and snow (imagine travellers on a mountain path, lost in a snowstorm, emerging into a greyscale world of antique broadcasts, meaning subservient AT LAST to image: all our old friends come again, singing the familiar old songs, hands cupped and mouths pursed to catch the old phrases, the old rope).

...

Mmm. Maybe in the morning. You know. When there's not-dark.

PIN numbers and secret codes

2005-11-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

I saw this on the way home, daubed in streaky white paint on the walls of an old abbatoir (don't ask why I know it was an abbatoir). It fascinated and unnerved me in equal measure, and I don't know why. That also unnerves me, but I find that less fascinating. But there it is, palette-reduced to make up for the terrible low-light functionality on my camera.

Maybe later I'll think of something suitably random and whimsical, ward it off, get it out of my mind. Light a night light. Whistle a cheery tune. What did Coleridge say about the traveller on the lonely road?

The strangers are coming.

:-/

Conversation of the week

2005-11-16T04:40:00.000-08:00

"The mechanics should offer compelling and tangible benefits to marriage - like access to the spouse's corpse."

The context of this discussion I leave to the imagination of the reader.

Still not part III

2005-11-15T04:24:00.000-08:00

'...To-day I have five hundred men in my employ, who are poorly paid, but who pursue the work with an enthusiasm which possibly may be born of fear.

These men enter every shade and grade of society; some even are pillars of the most exclusive social temples; other are the prop and pride of the financial world; still others hold undisputed sway among the 'Fancy and the Talent.' I choose them at my leisure from those who reply to my advertisements. It is easy enough -- they are all cowards. I could treble the number in twenty days if I wished. So, you see, those who have in their keeping the reputations of their fellow citizens, I have in my pay."

"They may turn on you," I suggested.

He rubbed his thumb over his cropped ears and adjusted the wax substitutes. "I think not," he murmured, thoughtfully, "I seldom have to apply the whip, and then only once. Besides, they like their wages."

"How do you apply the whip?" I demanded.

His face for a moment was awful to look upon. His eyes dwindled to a pair of green sparks.

"I invite them to come and have a little chat with me," he said, in a soft voice.'

Bored with enquiries!

2005-11-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist. ;-)

Part III is rescheduled

2005-11-13T12:58:00.000-08:00

I've been diverted. And isn't it interesting when that happens?

Also interesting is a question I've been posing myself. Say that - hypothetically - someone had sold on spec the outline for a novel which was a thinly-disguised version of the Neurocam thing. Names, faces, blogs altered enough to spare blushes and the innocent alike but still drawing very, VERY strongly from the source.

Would it be ethical to publish and profit without crediting the muse? After all, you can't really steal an idea, can you? If I take it and tweak it just enough to make it mine, you still have yours.

(Edit: I suppose what really interests me is the question of ...well, ownership I suppose. Who has a claim to my experiences? If a third party or third parties enable and facilitate them, does the result belong to them? Is it attributable to them? In the act of altering them - even if only providing the initial push that sends one skeetering, teetering, tumbling downhill - have they gained a right to what is perceived by the other?)

A part of me sneers that down as moral cowardice. What do you think?

In the meantime, here is something I am trying very hard to see through.

And That Superhuman Crew (II)

2005-11-12T04:23:00.000-08:00

ZIEGLER
Bill, tell me, did you never consider the
possibility that the whole thing might
have been nothing more than a
charade?... A charade played out for
the benefit of someone who didn't
belong - to frighten them and make
sure they keep quiet?

At Midnight, All The Agents (I)

2005-11-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

The sky was the colour of a smoker's lung with the smoker peeled away. And so truth is introduced with theft - a better writer walked before us, his memorial these footsteps that stretch before us in the sand.

This too is deceit. An idea cannot be stolen. It can only be copied, duplicated, replicated. Copying leaves the original intact, whole, but altered. Original but no longer unique (Eliot wrote what he wrote only because he did not understand the secret ways by which the conscience might be murdered).

This is the truth and the whole of the truth: all writers are the same that way. All that matters is that you find your own way through the last wall. Four is more sacred than three.

The clouds pulsed weakly overhead, wringing out the last few drops of rain. It fell sluggishly in great dusty discoloured ropes. Thick and tarry.

I opened the door and I went inside.

* * *

There is always a place like this. It's context, logic. Understand that and a broken chair becomes a horse, a lance, a grail. Understand the logic. Contextualise it. Control it. There's always a place like this. Do as you are bidden, and there will always be a place for you inside.

* * *
Under the blue-white fluorescent wash my skin is ghost pale, the rain outside phantom tears. There is no yellow (of course. I'm smiling. I wear no mask).

What do you see in the corner? A man in white suit and ego? A childish silhouette? Prospero's forgotten mentor, come to exact the vengeance of rememberance? No. No Sycorax, no Prospero. Not even a Caliban or Ariel. You see...


You are in a maze of twisty
 turny written passages all 
alike.

>LOOK

You see nothing special.

Despite - because of? - this the air is charged, callousing, thickening: and in the exchange of charge and the mayfly dance of electrons I see writ the sigils that prophecy a tempest to come.

I take my seat.

* * *

Unveiling is only a synonym for disappointment. What of the masque when the dancers are undone (what is a lie)? Only the process is important. The music is not black marks etched on page, not the scrape of bow on string, not the waves that propogate, that conjugate, in the dead air between sign and signified.

* * *

The mask is the key and I am the lock. As I sit looking into that face (the reflections darting in the periphery, a troupe of ghosts mocking us in the shadow play) the face looks back into me and it smiles and I recognise the smile. I feel the smile, the fluid hydraulics of sinew and muscle that pull the fleshy mask to and fro, that hide the ultimate truth of grinning bone.

The smile is mine and it has been taken from me. I want to tell him that I wear no mask but the context of the place is become a thing of cold iron and glacial silence.

He begins to speak words and it shatters. A splinter has pierced my heart.

All my tears are frozen.

* * *

Wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a wave pattern. It is commonly designated by the Greek letter lambda (λ). Yellow is a colour with a wavelength 565-590 nanometers. It is one of the subtractive primary colours, and its complementary colour is blue. However, because of the characteristics of paint pigments used in the past, painters traditionally regard its complement as purple.

Yellow is a bright cheerful colour, often associated with happiness and peace.

* * *

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says nothing.

Firedrake says, "I am the pie that bakes and eats himself."

Cronin and Midnight

2005-11-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

Cringe.

UPDATE: My error. Hopefully fixed.

2005-11-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

Okay. So. The count starts at one and ends at tenex? Fair enough.

This is not in my usual code

2005-11-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Someone lit the blue touchpaper. :-(

The Tatters of the King

2005-09-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

Another mail from lara was quickly followed by another from the mysterious "Facilitator" of the "annex," which makes me inclined to believe that either

i) They are the same person, or

ii) The Facilitator has access to lara's messaging.

The latter is by far the most entertaining possibility, so I'll choose to believe that for now. Despite warnings, I've been able to keep in touch with both of them but things are getting to the point where I'm going to be asked to take sides, I think. Maybe I should ask them to take my side instead. Or Uncle Podger's side. I don't think he uses it much.

Murdoch eats IGN

2005-09-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26027

Good gravy! This bad news for humanity. But very useful ammunition at work; despite hard evidence in the form of increased profits, cash flow projections, audience<->publisher channel parallelism and some other buzzwords I had to use earlier today, The Powers That Be here still seem reluctant to sign off a project that's chiefly internet-based.

Perhaps they suspect it of dire and terrible things; some variety of witchcraft, like the diabolic musics which haunt the horned phonograph of Mr Edison, the eldritch and uncanny melodies to which unspeakable things cavort.

Cavort.

In the scuddy.

One of them - a Power That Is, I mean, not an unspeakable thing - once asked me "where [I] kept the internet."I think I left it down the back of the sofa. Possibly behind the fridge. Or maybe the dog ate it. You know the one. It's always listening to the gramophone. Like it hears something you don't...and isn't telling.

I think this is traditional

2005-09-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

"...you are not enjoined against discussing the fact that you have "been promoted"; indeed you are
encouraged to do so."

Woo. Woot. And woo woo woot.

In the space year 1954

2005-09-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

R. F. Borkenstein, captain of the Indiana State Police, invented the Breathalyzer for field sobriety testing.

That is all.

If I had a blog...

2005-09-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

...I could boast about meeting Mr Henley, apparently, but I don't, so I can't. He's a chap with a mystique which in the grand scheme of things has hitherto passed me by - but it's an undeniable mystique nonetheless.

Wait. I may be talking about deoderant here.

But since I don't have a blog, and thinking of things which have passed me by, I'll observe that Douglas Adams was right, and deadlines do make a pleasant whooshing noise as they go by. It's much less amusing for those of us with a lack of millions in the bank and a number of people depending on them being met when they do, though.

In formation

2005-08-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

If this were a play, I'd be staring, dazzled into the footlights, grinning like a frightened loon and screaming silently at my memory to cough up the lines. Thus would I be spared from noticing the fact that all the seats were empty.

All of them were empty --