As I was coming down the [Elizabeth] river in a sloop bound for the
bay, it happened to prove calm, at which time we were three leagues
short of the river’s mouth; the tide of the ebb being then done, the
sloop-man dropped his grapline, an dhe and his boy took a little boat
belonging to the sloop, in which they went ashore for water, leaving
me aboard alone, in which time I took a small book out of my pocket
and sat down at the stern of the vessel to read; but I had not read
long before I heard a great rushing and flashing of the water, which
caused me to suddenly look up, and about half a stone’s cast from me
appeared a prodigious creature, much resembling a man, only somewhat
larger, standing right up in the water with his head, neck, shoulders,
breast, and waist, to the cubits of his arms, above water; his skin
was tawny, much like that of an Indian; the figure of his head was
pyramidal, and slick, without hair; his eyes large and black, and so
were his eyebrows; his mouth very wide, with a broad streak on the
upper lip, which turned upward at each end like mustachioes; his
countenance was grim and terrible; his neck, shoulders, arms, breast,
and waist were like unto the neck, arms, shoulders, breast, and waist
of a man; his hands if he had any, were under water; he seemed to
stand with his eyes fixed on me for some time, and afterward dived
down and a little after riseth at somewhat a farther distance, and
turned his head towards me again, and then immediately falleth a
little under water, and swimmeth away so near the top of the water,
that I could discern him throw out his arms, and gather them in as a
man doth when he swimmeth. At last he shoots with his head downwards,
by which means he cast his tail above the water, which exactly
resembled the tail of a fish with a broad fane at the end of it.
A copy of Jean Ray’s Malpertuis arrived today, and I also had the
flounder siciliana at the finest Italian restaurant in Bethel, NC (La
Cassetta, I recommend it)—flounder being one of the many toothsome
fishes I did not catch on my recent outing. There are apparently some
Pacific islands and perhaps also places on the Indonesian archipelago
where you can catch marlin from the shore. Or could. There won’t be any
fish left to harvest from the ocean in fifty years according to the
day’s news.
I think that the length of time we saw a CGI bombinent black fly mass
whip a man athwart trees and then the ground (“kerosene”) tonight was
unusual in several respects. We had witnessed the burial of the dead—I
half-expected to see brands arc-light Trixie’s floating pyre—with the
white robes. Perhaps it’s a ritual meant to invoke buzzing manitou.
There’s also the precognitive Scotsman and the Odin in the monitor. With
the “[Skr., = decree, custom.]” aesthetic—the bricolage and pastiche
of high, low, and especially middle—I can anticipate what
Buffy-veteran staff writers are going to paste together next.
This, the only Mieville I’ve yet to read (well, not King Rat either)
arrived yesterday, and I’m taking some time here and there to read it.
I’m more than a bit of a sucker for the Fiend Folio bestiary combined
with vanguardist class critique.
And the opening reminded me of my recent fishing trip, where I succeeded
in bringing out of the water only a floating green anole lizard (Anolis
carolinensis), who gratefully wrapped himself around my lure, a
mullet-looking thing I rather quixotically hoped might interest a
passing trout or red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus). The pinfish and crabs
poked out its eyes. To be completely fair, I did almost bring up a
minute sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus). What really gets me
about this failure, however, is that both of the last times I’ve gone
fishing (both in a small Core Sound creek), a couple, using essentially
the same bait and rig, has caught several large speckled trout
(Cynoscion nebulosus), black drum (Pogonias cromis), bluefish
(Pomatomus saltatrix), and even a handsome oyster toad (Opsanus
tau), in the same spot at the same time. Besides the aforementioned
lizard, I’ve only managed assorted croakers (Micropogonias undulatus),
pinfish (Lagodon rhomboides), blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), hog
fish (Orthopristis chrysoptera), and the lone meager spot (Leiostomus
xanthurus). Furthemore, I recently bought an ultralight spinning rod
and had it spooled with 6lb monofilament, which I’m finding doesn’t hold
up too well near oyster beds.
I finished this recently, and I’ve also done a tour through the academic
literature and some of the reviews. I have not, however, read through
much of the forums (that link will likely
annoy you, but I lack the will at the moment to give you a proper one);
and what little I have read has left me uneasy.
Danielewski’s interview in Critique showed flashes of what seemed to
me to be unpleasant arrogance, particularly in regards to the
ostentatious anticipation of all critical comment (up to that point, at
least). The fake citations seemed particularly clumsy in places, though
the framing device may partially explain this.
The last entry for “tesseract” is from Sidney Sheldon: “For Catherine
time had lost its circadian rhythm; she had fallen into a tesseract of
time, and day and night blended into one.”
From The Other Side of Midnight, a work which, if Wikipedia is to be
trusted, may owe something to The Magus.
I watched my first episode of this unbelievably dreadful program last
night, and, as luck would have it, it was set in the orange groves of
academe. An anthropology professor, fixated on pain as the horizon of
human consciousness or expectation, is found strung to a tree (by a
small woman using a convenient pulley system that just happened to be
there, apparently, after dragging this exsanguinated and much larger man
several acres from his office–but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
He’s been expertly tortured, this Svengalite anthropology professor who
brings Colombian torturers to his classes and makes his students kiss
his shoes (I would think that the phrase here is “lick his boots,” but
it was thus); and David Caruso, with help from technicians including the
token Southern tv actress, deconstruct the systematic appearance from
the chaotic reality using science derived from the Thomas Dolby video.
DNA, computer models, the blonde Southerner expertly eye-balling a
five-inch ice-pick–it’s really all there. The faith placed on forensic
gadgetry–its sheen is so blinding that the alleged crimes compensate
with grandeur, with a complete disregard of anything other than
fantastic truth, dream logic. Again, this was the first episode of CSI:
Anywhere I’ve watched, and I can’t say how typical it was. The clumsy
and inaccurate reference to the Stanford prison experiments might have
suggested a hopeful gravitas. I don’t know. The tv itself was small and
far-away, and I was also diverted by Primary Colors (and disturbed
that I was having trouble remembering the clefs, disturbed also by the
wretched prose, but still).
Mustard gas, according to Haldane, was the most humane weapon ever
invented, with about a 2.85% permanent casuality rate (“Eugenics and
Social Reform,” ca. 1926).
In his essay “The Future of Biology,” (ca. 1926), I learn that it was
then common to graft apes’ testicles into old or prematurely senile men,
an attempt to get a hitherto unisolated hormone into the blood stream.
The graft generally died after a few years.