Half a league, half a league,Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.Not though the soldier knew/Someone had blundered/Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to
This is extraordinary, and it stayed with me in a way I was not expecting.
What struck me most is that this does not read simply as noir, confession, memory, or ghost story, although it carries traces of all four. It feels more like a piece about inheritance: the things men inherit from fathers, from cities, from poverty, from violence, from their own younger bodies, and from those old ideas of strength that eventually stop working.
The hotel section is especially good. The threat itself is disturbing, but the deeper wound is humiliation. A man who has built a life, a business, a family, and a sense of himself is suddenly made powerless in front of the very people who were supposed to confirm that life had meaning. That is a much more frightening thing than simple danger. It is the collapse of the story he had been living inside.
I also loved the way the piece keeps moving between the grotesque and the tender. The humor is sharp, almost defensive, but underneath it there is grief everywhere: lost time, lost authority, lost homes, lost versions of the self. Even the small details — coffee, collar starch, hair oil, a remembered pistol, the cat singing when she can — feel like objects left behind after some larger emotional explosion.
The Shirley Jackson nod feels earned. The haunting here is not a ghost in the hallway. It is the building, the family, the city, the body, and the old masculine code still rattling around long after it has stopped being useful. Really powerful work.
Like a participatory creative synthesis of the NITS saying 'Adieu, sweet Bahnhoff', but at warp speed. Enjoying the journey (as usual). -K2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl-waV81xdE
I guess Errol Flynn, high on blow, rode into the Valley of Death in the 1930s take on the Light Brigade, my favorite, when bad guys were easily identified. Had to give ol' Errol credit, though, he was sympathetic toward the horses. So he then did another rail and everything was good again.
I recommend a sentimental journey on the Youtube path if you can find Charge of the Light Brigade. Old Errol had a fire in his eyes that said “Follow me into Hell, boys!” It was only later in my life that I read that he may have been pharmaceutically assisted. He was, however, dismayed at the number of horses felled by trip wires in the days that producers not only sexually abused starlets, but physically abused the livestock. Errol was certainly chagrined by the latter.
There’s something strangely tender about the way your sentences refuse to behave. Also, I love the way your writing sometimes feels like someone thinking out loud. You do it well enough to where it feels real
The train of thought is moving so fast I keep missing stations. Losing the cat somehow reads like a solution to overcrowding. Cool chaos, as always x
We have to stop this train until we find the cat, @MoTy. I hope you realize this. <5
Someone let the cat out of the bag, and now we’re absolutely fucked x
This is extraordinary, and it stayed with me in a way I was not expecting.
What struck me most is that this does not read simply as noir, confession, memory, or ghost story, although it carries traces of all four. It feels more like a piece about inheritance: the things men inherit from fathers, from cities, from poverty, from violence, from their own younger bodies, and from those old ideas of strength that eventually stop working.
The hotel section is especially good. The threat itself is disturbing, but the deeper wound is humiliation. A man who has built a life, a business, a family, and a sense of himself is suddenly made powerless in front of the very people who were supposed to confirm that life had meaning. That is a much more frightening thing than simple danger. It is the collapse of the story he had been living inside.
I also loved the way the piece keeps moving between the grotesque and the tender. The humor is sharp, almost defensive, but underneath it there is grief everywhere: lost time, lost authority, lost homes, lost versions of the self. Even the small details — coffee, collar starch, hair oil, a remembered pistol, the cat singing when she can — feel like objects left behind after some larger emotional explosion.
The Shirley Jackson nod feels earned. The haunting here is not a ghost in the hallway. It is the building, the family, the city, the body, and the old masculine code still rattling around long after it has stopped being useful. Really powerful work.
Like a participatory creative synthesis of the NITS saying 'Adieu, sweet Bahnhoff', but at warp speed. Enjoying the journey (as usual). -K2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl-waV81xdE
Appreciated, sir! Thanks ever so much for your continued support. It does not go unnoticed.
I guess Errol Flynn, high on blow, rode into the Valley of Death in the 1930s take on the Light Brigade, my favorite, when bad guys were easily identified. Had to give ol' Errol credit, though, he was sympathetic toward the horses. So he then did another rail and everything was good again.
Alfred Lord Tennyson. I know very little about the motion picture adaptation and even less about the social vices therein.
I recommend a sentimental journey on the Youtube path if you can find Charge of the Light Brigade. Old Errol had a fire in his eyes that said “Follow me into Hell, boys!” It was only later in my life that I read that he may have been pharmaceutically assisted. He was, however, dismayed at the number of horses felled by trip wires in the days that producers not only sexually abused starlets, but physically abused the livestock. Errol was certainly chagrined by the latter.
I have made a note of it. Thank you, sir.
You are prodigious and go where others fear to tread.
I am grateful for whatever this might mean.
There’s something strangely tender about the way your sentences refuse to behave. Also, I love the way your writing sometimes feels like someone thinking out loud. You do it well enough to where it feels real
Whaddya mean, "refuse to behave"? Explain yourself, please.
Um. Ok? I just meant it’s structurally unruly I suppose. Not in a bad way
Oh gosh.That's super complimentary. Thank you so much!