The Doorway: a panfandom game

If you would like to not, at this moment, return to the Tower, space can be found in Brooklyn. Settee (or guest room at the collective -- there are a couple, and we're a pleasant if perhaps overly earnest tribe there) though it might be, you are very welcome.

[Closer acquaintances of Isabel]

Or dinner, should you so desire it; something involving chicken and salad at least is within my repertoire, with or without a side of Satie.

This place.

It is most strange. We have a battered old piano here in Brooklyn (small, of course), and now I find myself able to write again -- a very little, but still. A pleasant gift for heavy summer days.

And since I was incredibly pained upon discovering this question and the set response today in an editorial meeting, I now share that pain with you:

Which country is possessed of the most philosophical birds? (If you find an alternate answer to the one I received, I shall commend you.)

The Blakeneys

A most delightful evening, thank you both.

from the Paris Review

Thoughts, my dears? & I put to you their follow-up query, so that I may mull it for a while when I have run away to the tropics:

Is there a point at which, via osmosis, adaptations, and self-delusion, one can actually begin to believe he has in fact read a book, and is there a German compound word for this phenomenon?

This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.

I am quite glad, now, that I am no longer a teacher.

In the spirit of sharing since there are quite a lot of new faces here who do not perhaps know what I spend most of my time at (when not at the art store), I thought I'd share a collage of some of my favourite recent work.

1. Union Square
2. Prospect Park
3. My darling sweetheart and editor-at-large of the Locative Press, Miss Isabel Pole
4. A rather curious reflection in Park Slope
5. The subway at 7th Avenue

"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."

- Virginia Woolf

That is what I remind myself when I feel especially fictive - or all too real. The thin line we tread between what is and what isn't can't particularly be identified. So when I say that I did not commemorate the ninety-seventh anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, it wasn't because I didn't stop to think about the way that this world and my world line up in all the ways that matter.

It was because I was living. I was living well.

I am fond of this city the way I could be fond of a strange creature -- genuine affection, but knowing so few of its faces that one might as well not know it at all. But how very close it is today; my colleagues tell me that this is nothing at all, and I certainly do not dispute it, but I would give a great deal for a cool, crisp morning walk in the wind or a summer downpour to go and stand barefoot beneath. (I am not sure I shall ever be a New Yorker.)

& a belated thank you to those who celebrated Locative with us on Wednesday, it was a delight to have you and I do hope an enjoyable evening.

Is anyone here formerly, or currently, an editor type? I've been writing and I want a professional opinion on it. Would anyone with that sort of experience, or even anyone who's just an avid, critical reader mind taking a look at what I've got?

It is sometimes very easy to get caught up in the day to day (my own, at present: somewhat gainful employment, editing, living) & forget that I am out of time. Sometimes -- less so. I do not write here as I once would have; I am not, here, what I once was. But I am certain that my case is settled for the best, & I have the freedom now to devote myself to different creative endeavours which I am sure would not otherwise have been the case. Studies of Keats are ten a penny.

The first Locative book is almost ready, a journal of most interesting thoughts and ideas from voices who very much deserve to be heard. There will be a launch party (how could I not?) at Kave in Brooklyn from nine until midnight on Wednesday 12th June: photography will be on display, there will be copies of the book to browse, & I may have procured some rather delightful prosecco for us. If that is not enough to tempt, they also have a piano and a lovely little courtyard; do come!

All this fictitiousness about is giving me a headache. Don't you feel transparent? You should. All your secrets are just spoilers now, after all. Or subtext, if you're lucky.

Or that's the theory. Never mind it, really. Let's all swear to be more interesting than our Wikipedia write-ups. I'd be inconsolable if life got too simple.

So sorry; Irene Adler. It's a pleasure.

That practitioner of magic whose skill lifted the age predicament has my particular - and most prolific - praise. I only hope that you are all much more careful in the future. As interesting as it was seeing what I would have looked like had I lived my allotted time, I don't particularly wish to repeat the experiment. Such as it was, I was getting very tired of looking at that face.

While I tried to remain as quiet and as unobtrusive as I could during the time as an older version of myself, I did observe the Winged Victory of Samothrace and wondered over how lucky the statue was to be headless. A hapless victory perhaps, without the countenance to prove it or the brains to guide it, but one which ascended all the same.

It isn't that I'm grateful.

It's just that I am so terribly grateful.

[Filter: POLE]

Have you got a date set for the press' first run?

It is curious to know what you would look like had you lived had the opportunity. I suppose I'm getting used to it rather easily.

By the bye, this is Septimus.

I am a British citizen within my source text & as such I would be an alien in America were I to visit it even in a more normal manner, as is entirely natural. I find myself now the citizen of a Britain which never existed outside of a page or a mind; a fascinating study, to be sure, but not one which conveys any practical obligation in either direction. Discussing the marks upon the slate of my former government and its analogue in this world would, I fear, lead us down a different pathway of discussion (though it is one I am quite willing to follow, should it arise), but nevertheless: it is a rather galling thing to move from one situation where I lack suffrage to another.

I consider myself now to be stateless. Do you?

Are the vampires gone?


I'd really like to go to this I think:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/egyptian



Would anyone like to join me? It would be very interesting to see the finds of this world as opposed to my own, I think [...] I wonder if

I remember spending a long April afternoon in lectures -- plant dyes, knowledge of which I am sure I have not missed greatly -- passing back & forth a page in a game: each person writes a line, then folds the paper over to conceal all but the last few words before passing it to the next. Childish, perhaps, but we were well pleased by it.

The same is not quite possible here upon this network (I confess, I still spend as much of my time with pen and paper as possible), but this is another slow April afternoon, and so an invitation: contribute, separately or together, & we shall see what we can create.

Waking, with sunlight dappling through the sea of leaves above to fall warm and welcoming upon my cheeks, it suddenly became quite clear that --

And to you.

[Sherlock Holmes & Sherlock Holmes]

I am told when it comes to information there are none better.

It seems to me that this isn't the time to refashion the past so much as weave a new future (excepting in actual fashion, where I seem to gravitate far more comfortably towards the first half of the last century, and am quite happy with the fact). And yet -- I am what I am.

I have found a printing collective willing to help through colleagues, and so much as I find our status here a predicament the Stark staff I have spoken with regarding this have been nothing short of marvellous: so. I intend to start Locative Press, primarily but not solely for the publishing of works by fellow refugees. Print runs will be small & some books hand-bound; for all that this city seems increasingly enraptured by the digital, and for all the gifts it has to give us, I am convinced that many people still find great value in such things. I certainly find an actual book, well-bound, a treasure.

If any are interested in embarking upon this with me, you are most welcome; if you have works you would like to publish, I hope that you will come to me (even if you wish simply for an opinion, or an editor; this will be no vanity press, we will be working together).


[Filter | Walter Blythe]

I meant what I said about your poem; please do consider this, Walter.

[Filter | Septimus Smith]

You are thinking so hard, Smith, I can almost hear you four floors down. A walk?

The second meeting of the DRAKR (Displaced Rebels/Revolutionaries/Republicans Against Kings and Rulers) will be held Wednesday evening at Sam's.

R.S.V.P.

Oh, why did no one mention Mr. Stoppard?

“Autumnal— nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day… Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it.. Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses… deep shining ochres burnt umber and parchments of baked earth— reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.”

(Forgive me this, when we are waiting for the spring; it is still half December, in my head. And perhaps Autumnal is not merely bound to the season itself.)

Dance -- ballet, in particular -- is more physically strenuous than one would think just by watching. By no means was their en pointe (leastways not from me) but I feel as though I can pretty successfully say I'll pull out the ladder for the high shelves.

Walter, if I spill anything on you, I'm sorry. But I think your hair might even benefit from a linseed treatment.

[Filter: Isabel]

Again, thank you for introducing me to new experiences.

[Filter: Neal]

It seems I missed your birthday.