Notes On The Inward City

I've been away from the blog, no doubt dispensing tidy tidbits elsewhere, none of which I can remember, but more than that, I've been laying pen to paper, in a big black book (not moleskine!)

for continual threads and bits and ejecta for the long fiction I'm working on. The long fiction is taking on the contours of a city in my head, full of more and more colorful and capacious denizens, especially as the parameters of the city I live in seems occasionally to shrink by the day.

I walk the pleasant five blocks to work, where I am five, six days a week, up a slight hill to a peaceful little crown of parkland with its view of industrial docks to the east and a red bald hill above my store and the downtown on my north west side. . .more often than not places of caffeine and cheap eats are also within walking distance. . .or we eat garlicky peasant food at home. I know people by name and face and their tendency to be drunk at noon, or just generally mute and peripatetic, like the old lady who just walks Bernal in aimless circles, occasionally stopping to smoke.

The shrinking outward city opens up the interior kingdom to more and more fevered immigration.

Sometimes the outward city looks exactly like the inward ones, like the other night when the fog seeped up from the ground like a B-movie and draped the struggling cypress, contorted like dancer's limbs, a vision of Hecate.

Living can seem a seldom-achieved balance between imagination and doing, even though the former is still doing and the latter can often be unimaginative.

The Long Fiction: the Uncanny is infecting it to an alarming degree, thanks to this really really invigorating "theory" book I re-found and am only reading now for the first time: The Secret Life Of Puppets.

A silly and misleading title, maybe, but its contents are just so wonderfully suggestive, almost as if the author Victoria Nelson is using criticism not to foster a comprehension of existing forms but to foster an exploration of nascent forms, or at least malleable forms, like the short supernatural fantasies of Bruno Schulz.

(More on him later. . .)

V-Day brought to you by Nick Cave

The Ship Song

"Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around

We talk about it all night long
We define our moral ground
But when I crawl into your arms
Everything comes tumbling down

Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Your face has fallen sad now
For you know the time is nigh
When I must remove your wings
And you, you must try to fly

Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around"

Lime Tree Arbour

"the boatman calls from the lake
a lone loon dives upon the water
i put my hand over her
down in the lime tree arbour

the wind in the trees is whispering
whispering low that i love her
she puts her hand over mine
down in the lime tree arbour

through every breath that i breathe
and every place i go
there is hand that protects me
and i do love her so

there will always be suffering
it flows through life like water
i put my hand over hers
down in the lime tree arbour

the boatman he has gone
and the loons have flown for cover
she puts her hand over mine
down in the lime tree arbour

through every word that i speak
and every thing i know
there is hand that protects me
and i do love her so"

Noir Effect 2

Suspense and The Gangster at the SF Film Noir Festival were unforgettable. . .both starring Belita and Barry Sullivan. . .sitting in the dark balcony seats of the Castro Theater with the people who just want to be alone. . .stretch their legs out, settle their dreaming eyes on the ruby-glowing chandelier husk. . .drink their flasks, far from the suffocating pettiness of other people.
Fatalism looks so good on the big screen, in those long shots, those huge, looming shadows, the fast talking, the risque amorality.
Living beautifully and dying with panache.