Kip Manley's Blog, page 26
October 18, 2021
No. 38: Ekumen ain’t everything (Act III)
the Gleaming poignard – every Time – Indigo, Fuchsia, Apricot– the Slogan
October 15, 2021
No. 38: Ekumen ain’t everything (Act II)
“Somebody’s coming” – fixing His tie – the Sources of water – “Welcome!”
October 13, 2021
No. 38: Ekumen ain’t everything (Act I)
Mirepoix – Girls Rule& – a Cheap plank, in a Variety of styles – the Fate of camellias – mercy, my Lord
October 11, 2021
No. 38: Ekumen ain’t everything (Opening)
the Toilet – νεῶν κατάλογος
September 19, 2021
No. 38: “ – Ekumen ain’t everything – ”
Ol leech callin anyone who ain’t sober. Gloria indulges in a night on the town, while Jo stays in with friends. 36 pages with color cover. $3.00 plus shipping and handling.
the Toilet – νεῶν κατάλογος – Mirepoix – Girls Rule – a Cheap plank, in a Variety of styles – the Fate of camellias – mercy, my Lord – “Somebody’s coming” – fixing His tie – the Sources of water – “Welcome!” – the Gleaming poignard – every Time – Indigo, Fuchsia, Apricot – the Slogan – a Lonesome banjo – no, She didn’t – Pinkish-orange light – Mr. Loudermilk
August 14, 2021
Things to keep in mind (Another secret of magic)
Approached differently, the construction of science and religion as antagonists implied a third position representing where the categories both convene and collapse. In my last book I deployed this trinary in a genealogy of the category “religions,” but here I want to follow the third term. Negatively valenced, it is understood to be superstition and in this respect appears as the double of either religion or science. Hence, a certain cross-section of scientists trumpeted the power of their respective domain by suggesting that all of religion was a superstition. Positively valenced, the third term is magic, which was often supposed to take the best elements of religion and science together or to recover things suppressed by “modern” science or religion. Indeed, most of what gets classified as contemporary esotericism or occultism came into being as an attempt to repair the rupture between religion and science.
August 3, 2021
Things to keep in mind (The secret of Collections)
And though a Collection is not esteemed to carry with it a Proof of Genius and Understanding like a genuine Composition, yet the Labour must be allowed greater, as ’tis certainly more easy for a Person to pen his own Thoughts, than dexterously to select and range those of others; more especially if he has them to seek, compare and correct from a large Variety of Authors in different Languages. This has been my Task. And I wish my Performance may be looked on like the Bee’s Industry; as Honey will not lose its Taste or Virtue, by reflecting that that Insect was only a Collector, not Author of its Sweetness.
July 26, 2021
Better hit ’em on they ansible.
Four weeks ago it was unconscionably hot. Remember? The heat dome squatting over the Pacific Northwest, and temperatures inside our shaded breezy house rivaling the usual outer bounds of high temperature outside for a day late in June. —When our internal temperature finally dropped below 80°, I could once more turn on my elderly Mac without fearing it would melt, and open up the file to see how far I’d got. (I do have other ways to write, but when it’s 110° outside and only twenty degrees cooler within, one would much rather lie on a bed without thinking rather than strive, diligently, to unstick oneself from one’s ways.) So I opened up the file to see I was only just barely quite halfway through the first draft of no. 38: the barker had only just started his (completely rewritten) spiel. —That was four weeks ago.
Since then: the gates have opened; we’ve been exploring the centerpiece of the whole dam’ thing (which didn’t snap into focus almost until I was upon it) (and then there’s the whole new character it turns out I didn’t need, who I have to go back and unwrite, sorry Nick)—but: but. I still haven’t gotten to Gun Street. I’m not sure no. 38 will be done in time to appear in August. I think I’m gonna miss the deadline. (Whoosh.)
No. 38, “ – Ekumen ain’t everything – ”, lines up if you like with the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana, Old Mister Scratch his own dam’ self: dark sides and shadow selves, forbidden thoughts released, the ties that bind made manifest to be tested and indulged: when snowballs don’t stand a chance, as we prepare to take our leave of the realm of fucking around, and our first steps into the world of finding out. —Perhaps that’s why picking my way through’s been so infuriatingly slow?
Sure. Let’s blame that.
Structurally speaking, this is the last of the wind-up installments: the next, no. 39, sits in the very middle of this volume, the apex of its rising action: decisions will be made, positions staked, irrevocable actions taken, perhaps even a blow or two to be struck. And then the four falling, unwinding installments, echoing and reverberating, and the final climactic novelette, no. 44, that will end the volume and the season. (Should I have tagged this with a spoiler warning? Do you feel spoiled? Apologies.) —Maybe that also has something to do with it.
If you follow the Pixelfed, you’ve already seen the cover reveal: a photo taken in the middle of the Tilikum Crossing, which the kid once said is like the sort of bridge they have in Pokémon cities. It won’t, insofar as I know, appear in the novelette itself. —Go, then, and prepare thyself for the Dog Days. They’re a-comin’.
July 5, 2021
Things to keep in mind (The secret of ornament)
His argument was that the name we give to that supposed author disguised a bias modern folk have for writing and against listening. In Kanigel’s words, literary critics of the twentieth century associated reading and writing with “advanced civilizations,” and disliked the “repetition and stereotype” that characterizes oral poetry, a leaning that “blinded them to the fecund richness of illiterate cultures.” Although this theory had been modestly proposed by a number of scholars before Parry, and the groundwork was laid by the French scholar Marcel Jousse, who himself grew up amid the oral songsmithery of a largely illiterate community in France, Parry’s innovation lay in the scientific way he proved his inklings.
Using numerical methods, he counted exactly how many times the “ornamental epithets” so characteristic of Homeric epics—γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη (bright-eyed Athena), πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (loud-roaring sea), and so on—appeared, and, crucially, where in the dactylic hexameter of the poem’s lines they cropped up. Such epithets were not, Parry showed, functionally descriptive at all; they tended to provide no new information about whatever story was being told, but instead existed for what he called the “convenience” of people performing the song. The epithets showed up in “prescribed position and order,” he wrote, essentially filling in metrical gaps wherever they occurred, “giving a permanent, unchanging sense of strength and beauty.”
June 25, 2021
No. 37: and thirsty wilds (Closing)
“Force & Victory!” – You will be Warned
