May 2009
27 posts
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Photo courtesy of akabilk on Flickr.
The Thousandth Birthday Party Durant Imboden, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, December, 1966.
part 1
It was party time. Or rather it would be party time soon. The event was scheduled for the following day, at six in the evening, and Ogilvy Carr, the guest of honor, was nervously biting his finger nails in anticipation of the party game...
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When I Read the Book
When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of
my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out...
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Eastern Garbage Patch
Photo courtesy of cesarharada.com on Flickr.
More than a decade after Moore discovered it, this vortex of synthetic waste swirls tirelessly, but now has an official name: the Eastern Garbage Patch. Estimates of its size range between 435,000 and 932,000 square miles, but most scientists refer to it as twice the size of Texas. … The plasticization of the world’s oceans may prove to...
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I Know I Done You Wrong
Photo courtesy of paulb563 on Flickr.
Song ‘I Know I Done You Wrong’ by Charles Caldwell as perfomed on his record Remember Me. 2004.
Charles Caldwell, vocal & guitar | Ted Gainey, drums and mixing
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To a Historian
You who celebrate bygones,
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races,
the life that has exhibited itself,
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics,
aggregates, rulers and priests,
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in
himself his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,
(the great pride...
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Photo courtesy of solomonrothman on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 7
He sat in his chair, holding his drawn gun and waiting, having no more to say. HE knew that the berserker-ship would have had boats aboard and that it could build its killing machines into rough likenesses of men. These were almost good...
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One consequence of the loss of olfaction as an important medium of communication was an alteration in the relationship between humans. It may have endowed man with greater capacity to withstand crowding. If humans had noses like rats, they would be forever tied to the full array of emotional shifts occurring in persons around them. Other people’s anger would be something we could smell. The...
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Photo courtesy of photine on Flickr.
FRED JUNG: The virtues of humility. But reflecting back on your earlier recordings, critics have maligned you for trying to sound like Coltrane or Wayne Shorter. Was there a particular sound you were going for? BRANFORD MARSALIS: It is not really humility. It’s arrogance actually. Arrogance doesn’t really get its proper due. What passes for...
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In back of the real
railroad yard in San Jose I wandered desolate in front of a tank factory and sat on a bench near the switchman’s shack.
A flower lay on the hay on the asphalt highway —the dread hay flower I thought—It had a brittle black stem and corolla of yellowish dirty spikes like Jesus’ inchlong crown, and a spoiled dry center cotton...
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Photo courtesy of gential on Flickr.
Song ‘Trash Fish’ written and performed by Ralph White on his album Trash Fish. 2002.
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Missing You
A multi-colored chart without a boundary; An equation chalked on the board, with no solution; A one-stringed lyre that tells the beads of rain; A pair of useless oars that never cross the water.
Waiting buds in suspended animation; The setting sun is watching from a distance. Though in my mind there may be an enormous ocean, What emerges is the sum: a pair of tears.
Yes, from these...
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Photo courtesy of divyanshs on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 6
Some deep part of his mind had concluded that it was better for him, in his present situation, not to think about Time. He saw no reason to argue with this decision, and so he soon lost rack of hours and days — weeks?
He exercised and...
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Many important functions are expressed in territoriality, and new ones are constantly being discovered. H. Hediger, Zurich’s famous animal psychologist, described the most important aspects of territoriality and explained succinctly the mechanisms by which it operates. Territoriality, he says, insures the propagation of the species by regulating density. It provides a frame in which things...
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Photo courtesy of Snap Man on Flickr.
On August 11, Lee went back into the studio to record this session Tom Cat, issued here for the first time. Blakey, who had stopped doing sideman recording datres in early 1962, was willing to this one for Lee.
Meanwhile, The Sidewinder was released. As the story goes, neither Lee nor Alfred Lion of BLue Note plotted musically for a smash. In fact, the...
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Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember it is the morning when I must start by myself on the journey I lie listening to the black hour before dawn and you are still asleep beside me while around us the trees full of night lean hushed in their dream that bears us up asleep and awake then I hear drops falling one by one into the sightless leaves and I do not know when they began but all at once...
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Photo courtesy of selling alibis on Flickr.
Song, ‘A Clearing,’ by Brian Eno and performed on his 1982 record, Ambient 4: On Land.
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Rules of Sleep
In the sludge drawer of animals in arms, Where the legs entwine to keep the body warm Against the winter night, some cold seeps through— It is the future: say, a square of stars In the windowpane, suggesting the abstract And large, or a sudden shift in position That lets one body know the other’s free to move An inch away, and then a thousand miles, And, after that even...
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Photo courtesy of Don Solo on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 5
He had been through a lot even before his ship had fallen here, and sleep overtook him. Suddenly loud noises were waking him up.
He came full awake with a start of fear. The berserker was not helpless after all. Two of its man-sized...
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Photo courtesy of Brisan on Flickr.
I rarely listen to records. Never during the four months or so process of planning, recording, mixing of record projects. Otherwise, occasionally, and always something far removed from my own music. Old jazz, classical, tango. The art of listening to the music around you when you’re performing in an ensemble: I try to...
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Utterance
Sitting over words very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing not far like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark the echo of everything that has ever been spoken still spinning its one syllable between the earth and silence
— W.S. Merwin. Rain in the Trees. 1988.
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Photo courtesy of the food pornographer on Flickr.
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Photo courtesy of grande illusion on Flickr.
Song ‘I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,’ by Randy Newman. Performed live and solo on his 1970 record Randy Newman / Live.
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Finding a Teacher
In the woods I came on an old friend fishing and I asked him a question and he said Wait
fish were rising in the deep stream but his line was not stirring but I waited it was a question about the sun
about my two eyes my ears my mouth my heart the earth with its four seasons my feet where I was standing where I was going
it slipped through my hands as though it were water...
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Photo courtesy of cobalt123 on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 4
Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human was more important to the Creator than any sun of whatever size. He made himself watch the scenery. He determined to master this almost superstitious awe.
But he had to brace himself...
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Photo courtesy of dharmabox on Flickr.
I got a reputation for my trenchermanship early in life, and when I was going to school down in Tallahassee one of the guys in our group wanted to call me a cannibal; but he mispronounced it as “can-i-bol.” So the other guys’ in the band would call me Canibol more to tease him than to tease me. But of course other folks, not being in on...