a poem

Anaïs Nin died this day, 1977 — an immense influence on me. She showed me what a novel might be.

Imagine a bowl, sunlight falling into it. Then remove the bowl.

Sendak on Fresh Air, a playlist freshairarchive.org/playlist/9281

"Didn't anyone ever tell you kneeling stunts the growth?" —The 4th Doctor

some hunched homunculus at the bottom of the stairs or moving toward me in the hallway and I would totally lose it

Lying in bed, predawn, listening to a reading of Greg Bear's 1983 short story "Blood Music" (I've also read the novel, it doesn't scale well) I look up and, in the gloom, make out a dot or mark on the ceiling directly above me —some kind of bug, big as my thumbnail— and I shudder. Life is everywhere

"We have to throw your brain out the window" —Richard Feynman

In writing, all you've done up to the point of finding the thing you need, has to go. It wasn't wasted, as no work is ever wasted. But it can do nothing but obscure what you've found.

Inaugural edition of Games and Comics Quarterly! drive.google.com/file/d/1cuZX...

in a bad horror film, saw a hand painted sign over a Hungarian cemetery: "feltámadunk" google translate says it means "we rise"

Sci-fi is notoriously bad at predicting the future. But after decades of "zoom and enhance" in non-sci-fi cop shows, thriller films and etc., we now live in a world where that's actually possible.

•Fix-up: short stories reformed into continuity as a novel •Mosaic: a continuity of theme, not character or plot. Cf Kosiński’s "Steps" •Peel-away: Novel projects, from which sections have been sold as stand-alone stories EXAMPLES OF THE LATTER? Better name for the process? All help accepted thanks

@swan-tower.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy Marie: For an essay for publication, I'm looking for examples of novels-in-progress from which sections have been "peeled-away" for publication as short, stand-alone stores (not excerpts) A Codexian suggested you as source. I'd welcome a brief exchange! dM

I'm kinda a connoisseur but this is one of his best interviews www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDPH...

the new(?) playback speed slider on youtube is perfect for turning sleepytime lofi into productive listening lofi

If we remembered our birth, we could not possibly fear death. Birth must be far worse. But we won't remember our death, so there's symmetry for you.

Dick Cheney is dead See? Anyone can do it!

All I found was a circle of sawdust The circus had moved on

Onlique Strategies

Ich bin der Sohn des Monsters

There was a reminder that the library was always seeking books, and that they paid in wine. —Postapocalypic newspaper item, Station Eleven: a Novel

Dead language says what? Vicipaedia is the Wikipedia written in Latin la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipae...

"No one’s ever described as being unsparingly kind." -Station Eleven

Post-Scarcity models, in Sci-Fi or elsewhere, need to address Bataille's notion of The Accursed Share, elucidated in his book of the same name. He suggests that what drives economics isn't scarcity, but the need to rid systems of their unusable surplus, which otherwise becomes toxic.

"This great nation swapped Democracy for dictatorship" — Mr. Robot, Season 2 (2015) • I bet you couldn't find a single year in the last 100 in which this sentiment has not been publicly expressed

The human voice will be drowned out futurism.com/sam-altman-d...

Our MOTIVES often have little to do with our ACTIONS or I read my psychology, history and, yes, economics incorrectly!

Some people think of the glass as half full. Some people think of the glass as half empty. I think of the glass as too big. —George Carlin

"Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, going into a second edition." —Wikipedia, describing Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan

In the 17th century the Faculty of Paris was allowed one dead body a year, and the famous physician Mauriccau lay under grave suspicion of having illegally procured bodies to dissect for his anatomical studies. -The Vampire, His Kith and Kin, Montague Summers

St. Gregory writes of the word Angel, "nomen est officii, non naturae,"--the designation is that of an office not of a nature

Said aloud today: "Science is evidence based. Evidence is not science based." I realize now the guy was thinking about 'evidence' in criminal court cases. But, bro: no one in court is going to ask, "Did you try spanking your child at different elevations above sea level?"

All the meat, he thought, and all it wants. —Gibson, Neuromancer

“I try to live in the continuous present. Happiness, I would say, consists in living in the continuous present all over your body for as long as possible.” ~ Quentin Crisp

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. —André Gide

Predictions of the future often seem to forget that change CHANGES things

Rewriting is easy Writing is IMPOSSIBLE

very early on in my academic career I realized that, as a professor, no one cared what I looked like. today... well I've never gotten more positive comments on my appearance than I do today. mostly from dudes, admittedly, but also young people of any gender —and every one of them about the beard.

David Byrne famously seeks the emotive quality of lyrics rather than their literal meaning. He's not wrong,there

Real people who've given their love to AI entities, my heart goes out to them. I think of artists seeking love in the gutter, abandoning their children for an ideal of freedom. Who cut off parts of their bodies to make some incomprehensible point. It’s a sad, bad mad life, no matter how you live it.

In some successful film or "televisual" adaptations of well known mystery stories the culprit is changed. I think we gotta stop calling them "whodunnits" and recognize that the vibes are all there is

"He was intelligent—when he bothered to be—but was in no danger of becoming a genius." —Clarke

New alien species: The VSSAR. Vegetarian Space Socialists who are Always Right www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9W7...

I've taught hundreds of young people to code on glitch.com, for its ease of use, generous hosting, brandable urls and kid-friendly interface. Come July 8, all that goes away. A community of millions of users running tens of millions of apps will vanish from the earth. It's a cryin shame.

"If men learn [to write] it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks." —Plato, _Phaedrus_

"We know things in the act, not in their essence." —Peter Putnam, as quoted by his students

"Space is small; only the planets are big" —Robert Kleinman

I guess it pays to google yourself (if you don't go blind) dreamforgemagazine.com/tag/don-mark...