Augorsels

or, August morsels, clearly

August morsels. Image credit: Substack Image Generator.

I write this tethered to the remains of the week. Outside, the vestiges of winter are being supplanted by an early spring. Leaves are rife with buds and a cerulean sky ushers into being the honeyed embers of sunrise. Though I welcome the warm photons upon my reptile skin, my concern for the planet never lessens when weather so unseasonable makes itself known.

The morsel tree, last bearing fruit in—oh, let me go check—December of all months, flourishes once more. I have stalked across its roots, careful of my footing as I brush past its floral and scented petals to select only the ripest fruits to scatter below.

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(Let me translate the above: I write this post ante meridiem on a Friday, aware once again that I am behind and that the groove of early morning ritual escapes me. I am working on the final part of And it was lost, which I aim to publish next week¹. The stone’s burden lies heavy in my heart, and so whilst its obsidian weight crushes each chamber and valve I will instead here prattle about nonsense.)

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The functionally infinite number of books that I must read has diminished by several entries. I have read quite a number of things this year², things that I may have mentioned. Or not. I don’t know. Anyway, the recently consumed: Blindsight by Peter Watts, Pale Fire by Nabokov, Blood Meridian by Cormac Mc Carthy. I’ll assume you care and so here are some words about words:

Blindsight is a SciFi first contact story, which also has a vampire(s). Yes. I’d … sort of expected a bit more from this one given how people laud it. It’s good. It’s gritty. It has interesting thoughts about consciousness and empathy and the writing is generally good, but it didn’t leave me lusting after anything. I want to lust when I read.

Pale Fire is wildly inventive. A book that starts with a fictitious foreword written by a scholar from a fictional country about a fictional poet. After the foreword comes said poet’s final poem (the eponymous Pale Fire) and then the rest of the book is the scholar’s dissection of the poem, done almost line by line and going off on tangent upon tangent for pages on end. As this unfolds, you become more and more aware of how mentally unstable and obsessive and unhinged the scholar is. At times, it is Nabokov at his finest and the whole concept and conceit is masterful. At other times, it kind of lost me. It pales next to Lolita, but is clearly crucial studying material when trying to understand the brilliance of this literary genius.

Blood Meridian is … oh let’s face it, everyone else except me has read this already and it’s unlikely that I need to state that McCarthy’s prose is exquisite³ and I’ll leave it to

Caz Hart

to offer the expert critique where necessary. I’ve wavered a bit through this, but only because I didn’t fully understand some of the skill at play. The book is brutal, bleak, horrifying. (So, basically everything I love in fiction and storytelling.) It is at its best within the tension of the dialogue and in Cormac’s ability to distil poetic beauty from nightmare. It has me thinking on things, and I can sense, somewhere in the fleeting sky, a waft of some inspiration for something.

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One of the joys of reading is in the decision of What Next. I am grappling with such now. I tend to be more of a mono-reader these days, but that’s going to be less so at the moment.

L.J. Gearing

graciously sent me a copy of Alex Bellos’ The Language Lover's Puzzle Book⁴ and also all of Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy. I must admit, I kind of bounced off of Silo on Apple TV because EXPOSITION IN ALL DIALOGUE grumbles, but I do want to know more about the world and its mystery and the books are likely the preferred path there.

I plan to pick up the first deluxe volume of Berserk because I went down a YouTube rabbit hole exploring post Book of the New Sun material and this was a consistent recommendation. I haven’t read much Manga, but its suitably bleak and enticing.

I have read most of the sample of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem on my Kindle, enough of it to pull me in anyway, and I want to try out the full book. I hear mixed things, offset by many positive things, and Stephenson is an author I am yet to explore and a book as supposedly esoteric as this caresses the rods-of-interest that lace the back of my eyeballs.

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A few weeks ago I sat down beside a vertical shaft of encroaching sunlight and spoke with the wonderful

Kimberly Warner

. I had the best time⁵. Kimberly has an innate ability to make you feel relaxed. It felt a rare instant friendship.

I get weird feelings when I think about promoting my own things, but I’m going to link our chat here because this is as much Kimberly being a wonderful interviewer than it is me babbling on about what it means to me to write. I tried to cross-post this earlier this week but the dashboard claims it only went to ½ of the n subscribers I have, so there’s a chance it may not have made it to your inbox and if you do want to listen to us chat then here it is. [Inserts smiley face.]

Slow blooming with Nathan

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It’s that time of year when MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival) is on and Jo and I have taken to the cinema to watch a number of gems.

Kneecap. This explores the dying Irish language through hip hop⁶. Yes. Gosh it’s great.

DIG XX explores the rise of The Dandy Warhols and the not-so-rise of The Brian Jonestown Massacre through footage from the 90s onwards. In this extended “XX” version, an additional 40 mins of footage have been added, along with an update on the various doings and goings on over the 20 years since its first release. I usually balk at near-3-hour-long films, but this one had me glued and entranced. I love a good band documentary and this one delivers.

Flow is an animation—and when I say animation what I really mean is DEAR DEITY THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL PLEASE LET ME LIVE IN THIS WORLD YOU HAVE CRAFTED—about a cat that’s alone in some climate-addled and half sunken world that must journey (mostly by boat) across a perilous land and find what it means to embrace the companionship of others. At one point the cat takes a fish over to a bird and drops it by its feet. Thanks, Gints Zilbalodis. Thanks for making me choke up at seeing a cat place a fish by a bird.

Hoard. This is a film about hoarding and trauma and dealing with trauma and the animal tension of attraction that can form between two individuals and the cloying and unsustainable life of feelings when said feelings are not equally distributed. It’s very 90s Britain, which I enjoyed seeing and living within again⁷. Some pacing issues, some issues of frustration of not being let in enough to the world of a certain character, but overall this is an impressive debut by Luna Carmoon.

We’re seeing some other stuff at the weekend, but Jo is ticketmaster and I’ve already forgotten what she booked. Something about a snail, possibly.

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Well, there are other morsels, but the too-small wicker basket I carry is now full and those I have left scattered on the ground will be gifted to nature’s dance of decomposition.

Until next time.

N—.

1. Something something promises.

2. I finished all of Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, but that warrants an entire post within which I will do nothing but gush lavish love at the pinnacle of literary science fantasy.

3. McCarthy’s prose is exquisite.

4. Can confirm: language lovers will love this, as will puzzle lovers.

5. Won’t lie, I was nervous about speaking words that, when strung together into a sentence, would hold absolutely zero meaning. Thank you Kim for making sure that didn’t happen.

6. This description does it no justice. A banging film. A banging soundtrack.

7. Hello Blue Peter (*waves*); here’s a footnote I prepared earlier.