Stones Beneath a White Star

 

Stones Beneath a White Star by Martin Locker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was speaking with someone recently about teaching young children complex concepts. This friend is a teacher of very young children (three- to five-year olds) and is tasked with teaching them some advanced concepts. She was concerned that these kids were never going to remember these principles, though they might integrate them subconsciously, the same way that back in our secondary-school grade introduction to trigonometry and pre-calculus, we all said "we're never going to use this stuff". That turned out to be true for most of us, though our brains were permanently rewired, ever so slightly, to form thoughts in a new and different way than we had done before. All of this aside, we agreed that while these young kids probably won't remember a thing about what was said to them, they absolutely will remember the way they felt when they were being taught. I can attest to this. I remember my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wells, not because of the things I learned, but because of her kindness and patience and her great sense of humor. I remember her reading us the Winnie the Pooh stories and her spot-on voices (with the Disney movies as her template). And I remember her encouraging my reading, even recommending me to what they called the "talented and gifted" readers program for reading and writing. I didn't even fully comprehend what that meant, but I remember the way she made me feel: special, recognized, an individual. I'll never forget her. I can't even name my second or fourth grade teachers, but Mrs. Wells; she was an icon.

I share this because of the way Martin's book Stones Beneath a White Star made me feel. If someone asked me what the book was "about," I would stumble and mumble my way through an answer. Something about friends and loss and mysticism and mountains and reconnecting with the past . . . mumble mumble mumble . . .

It's tough to pin it down. But I know how the book made me feel.

Excuse me while I get a little personal. I'm hardly on social media these days (intentionally), so I don't spill my guts like some people do regularly. So, humor me. I'll try not to be boring. And maybe this indulgence will say a bit about the book. One caveat: I am a pen pal with the author. We write each other, pen and paper, yes, the old-fashioned way, irregularly. As a result I've gotten to know Martin a little. I apologize if you think this shades the review in any way, but hey, it can't be helped now, can it?

What I didn't say about my experience with Mrs. Wells above is that I was living in Italy at the time. My dad was military - I was what is colloquially called a "Military Brat" (hey, if the shoe fits . . .) - so I lived in a lot of different places through my life. I sometimes wonder if Air's song "Universal Traveller" wasn't written for me (did I mention the word "brat"?). I've been around . . .

One problem with having been around is that some of the places I lived, I can never visit again. The Air Force base I was born at in Germany is now a US Army base, the base where we lived in Italy, San Vito, is abandoned and off-limits, the base in England where I spent most of high school is now a British spy base (though I can, and did go on a tour of some of the base a few years back, "my" house is strictly off-limits), and the house I lived in when we were in The Philippines was buried under volcanic ash and the base abandoned by the US military. In essence, a lot of my childhood stomping grounds are either inaccessible to me or just plain don't exist anymore, though I have written a bit about my dream-life in one of those places.

This makes me a little melancholy. While many people can just drive (or even walk) to their childhood home, I just can't. I can get bits and pieces and visit places near some of those places, but time and circumstance have effectively banished me from my own childhood. It's a little more than mere nostalgia. I am haunted by the ghosts of the places of my past.

And here we have a segue into why I feel the way I feel about this book. Stones Beneath a White Star is the most profound work of Psychogeography I have ever read. It is about the spirit of a place, in this case, the Pyrenees Mountains (where, incidentally, my ancestors on my father's side hail from, generally - though they lived in the Basque regions, while this work takes place largely in and around Andorra). The religio-mystical history of the region is dealt with in encyclopedic depth. The book as historical treatise on the area is exhaustive, thick with referents and nuances that I admittedly know little or nothing about. But this didn't affect my reading, outside of wanting to know more about the people, events, and places portrayed.

The real rub of the book is the intimate connection of a few close friends and fellow-believers to the land itself. Their connections to each other (and some of those who have passed on before them) provide the engine for the story (such as it is). These relationships, between people, the land, and the history of the land, is absolutely immersive. I cannot say what the book is "about," nor do I care. This is the kind of book you just live in, for the moment, a meditation on friendship, loss, and retrieval, of the fluctuating bonds of love despite the catastrophes and disappointments of living life on this planet. It is a novel about the resilience of friends finding peace in a broken world.

You can probably see where this is heading . . . I live in a world of broken memories, unretrievable. I'd like to think this isn't just a function of mawkish nostalgia. I literally can't go back. But the memories still haunt me. Needless to say, this book affected me . . . deeply.

Thank goodness that while much of my past is bricked off (or behind barbed wire), one thing persists, despite location, and that is meaningful friendships. I've made and lost many friends throughout the years (as I get older, I lose more and more), but as I retain some ties over the decades and form new friendships with people I've not known before, whether intentionally or through pure happenstance, there is connection. And this connection is something to be nurtured, something sacred.

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A Natural History of Empty Lots

 

A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a soft spot for books about psychogeography. Having been lucky enough to have been born a world traveler (thanks, Dad), I have a strong sense of place, particularly for places I've "discovered" and wandered through. A lot of those places were (and are) off the beaten path. As a result, I was particularly vulnerable (that's the popular word all the kids are using these days, isn't it?), which, of course, exposes one, makes one maybe a little touchy, when assessing a work like Christopher Brown's A History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgeland, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places. I saved up for this book, and was ready to really cherish it, give it the benefit of the doubt, you know, be vulnerable.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that things got off to a rough start. I'll be frank, the beginning was downright boring. I even thought about lemming the book. But I love the subject matter enough that I gave it a chance. It felt choppy and poorly written. Only about 80 pages in did I feel like it had gained momentum and a bit of eloquence. I'm not sure where the editing really kicked in - was the first part poorly edited, or later parts well-edited, or did the editors start with an iron fist and let off as the book ran its course? I'll never know. But at some point it felt like two different books. Even 133 pages in, my notes read:

Is this book good, or just nice? I toggle back and forth between opinions on this one. I can't decide if it's "big" or "small," and I frankly only have an ill-conceived hint of a notion about what I even mean by that. It has its moments, but, then again, it has its moments, whatever that means in my intellectually lazy assessment. Maybe this book isn't for me, or I'm not for it?

This didn't bode well.

Thing is, I liked Brown's approach: Not alarmist, but not letting us off the hook for our environmental sins so easily, either. There's a touch of sadness and a touch of hope in those interstitial spaces where wilderness and domesticated spaces meet. I find a particularly wry, grim humor at work when Brown points out that roadkill might be one of the best indicators that wildness persists even in our most urbanized areas.

Really, I think the issue might be a problem with scope. A Natural History of Empty Lots feels most effective when focused on smaller scopes. The lone-standing "Holy Tree" (I'll call it), the lot on which the author carved out his own ecological/familial niche, etc. This reading might be the result of my own experiences exploring, particularly as a child, my own little niches: the Priory at Chicksands, dirty mechanical access tunnels to underground parking at the high-rise apartments where we lived in Brindisi, Italy (I still have nightmares where a hag suddenly appears in front of me in those tunnels, sending a chill up my spine and paralyzing me), the vast water-drainage system I entered (and almost got stuck in) at the bottom of the hill where I lived in Capehart Base Housing in Nebraska, the abandoned (and supposedly haunted) owl-infested Albion school in Idaho where we had a family reunion years ago.

  

The macro-scale of the book is interesting, to some degree, on a philosophical level, while the micro-scale foci are very interesting at an experiential level. I suppose there's something to be said for having one's own (now internal) experiences evoked by an external source. Maybe that's the trick.

For instance, the subsection "Foraging for Meaning," a list of found and created objects, does more to paint the narrative of the liminal space between civilization and the wild than any narrative. It is merely a list, but to me it seemed something much, much more poignant, showing, rather than telling, revealing meaning without speaking of meaning at all. Just a list of found and curated junk, for the most part. And yet, it seemed profound. Apotheosis in the trash stratum.

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Gravensteen's Weapons

 I love to travel. The Wanderlust is a core part of who I am. I was born "overseas," as a child, I moved every three years or so, and when "overseas" my family travelled for vacation as often as possible. 

One natural consequence of travel is to come home with photos to remind us of the good times we had and the interesting places we saw. Technology makes it easy to take as many pictures as we want. However, I've found that looking through a screen at the things that are immediately around me forces a one-step remove from the actual experience. I intentionally try to limit my screen time while on vacation; after all, why would I travel halfway across the planet just to be online? But, despite my best efforts to analogize, I'm often sucked into the camera eye and miss the saturation of experience that can occur while I am immersed in a new place. So, I've made efforts to limit how many pictures I take while travelling. Of course, I'll take some photos, but whereas I might have taken a hundred photos a day in the past, I've tried to limit myself to something more like half of that. Even then, I have a lot of photos to "dump".

This last April, I was able to travel to Germany for work. After this, my wife and I took a week-long stay in Belgium. We were "stationed" in Antwerp - our Air BnB was literally 100 feet from the train station - and travelled out to Ghent, Bruges, and up to The Hague, Netherlands. I took a lot of pictures that week, as Belgium has some of the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen. When I look at the photos on my phone, I'm overwhelmed. So, I am trying to parse out these photographs into batches that are a little more digestible in order to blog a bit more clearly about my trips.

We'll start with Castle Gravensteen, AKA Castle of the Counts in Ghent. I'll include pictures of the castle itself in another post (or posts). 

Being a dutiful D&D nerd, of course I toured the castle! And, of course, I took photos of some of the weapons displayed there. This shows maybe half of the weapons there (again, I tried to limit pictures so I could actually enjoy the experience in the moment). For you other D&D nerds, hopefully this will provide some inspiration for your own games. Or, perhaps you might just enjoy the beauty of these killing tools. 

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The Wander Society

 

The Wander Society by Keri Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretentious? Yes. But I like pretentiousness. But I actually LIKE pretentiousness in writing. Sure, it's a little "twee" at times, but so what? Keri Smith is living her best life. Get over yourself.

What he have here is non-fiction disguised as fiction. It's a handbook, really, an eclectic mix of false story that entices one into the Wander Society. There is a touch of armchair philosophy and a lot of practical types on how to be impractical, which is a wonderful undertaking. Whimsy is the heartbeat of everything you'll find in this work. If you take yourself really seriously, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

My favorite sections were "The Wander Society's Tactical Guide" and, most importantly, "Assignments/Research/Field Work". These are were the rubber (of your soles) hits the road (or the dirt or mud or gravel). This is what I was looking for when I first heard about this strange little book. Before reading the book, I had already implemented my own brand of "Leave Behind," as Smith names it, a calling card, if you will, and a tribute to life, death, and the struggle between the two. It's been exactly a year since I started the practice of beautifying death on the trail, and, in fact, I laid a garland on a critter this afternoon. Poor little guy! If I don't memorialize his little life, who will?

This book has also helped me as I do my best to go analog and ditch the smart phone. Walking, especially wandering (there is a difference) is a great way to immerse oneself in analog, as long as one is willing to turn their phone off or leave it at home while on the trail. It's a beautiful, horrifying, lovely world. Look up from your screen for a while and take it all in. The Wander Society can be used as a tool to help you learn how.

Remember "Solvitur Ambulando" and "non omnes qui errant perditi sunt"!

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Terror Train to Köln Dom

 The last time I travelled to Europe, I was fairly convinced that it would be the last time I set foot on the continent of my birth. Of course, this saddened me a great deal, as half of my childhood was spent there (Germany, Italy, and England). But the travel gods have smiled on me and I was able to go to Germany, where my work sent me for some training and to establish some connections between our US facility (here in Janesville) and our division's "mothership" in Oelde, Germany. It was work, but it was excellent. I have a much greater appreciation for the breadth of the work we do now, so, mission accomplished. Of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to pay for my wife's flight over. So, while I was working, she did a number of day trips to surrounding cities in the region. And, of course, we took a weeks vacation afterwards, most of it spent in Belgium, but those are reminisces for later blog posts. 

On Friday, I packed up a little early and went to the train station in Oelde to catch a train to Köln. The intent was to meet my wife there (she was visiting a different city that Friday - Hamm or Essen, I can't remember which), and we were then to meet a co-worker who I got to know when she worked in the States for several months, along with her fiancée. 

What I didn't know, is that the German train system has degraded markedly since I was a kid. The trains most decidedly do NOT arrive on time (unlike Austria) and, as I found on this little "adventure" (it's not an adventure until you're lost), they are sometimes altogether cancelled for reasons that remain a mystery to me. I blame the de-socialization and privatization of the train lines. Yeah, the country has probably saved some money and cut some waste by privatizing, but have they really? The old adage "you get what you pay for" has never been more true.

I got to the train station with plenty of time before arrival, had my ticket and passport ready, and was very excited to get on a European train for the first time in six years. Then, as I was waiting, the announcer said something about my train that I mostly understood (I can understand a little over half of what I hear in German, but I still speak like a three-year-old. Maybe four on a good day.), but wasn't completely clear on, so I looked at the board and saw this:

That's my train on the highlighted column. Notice the lack of a platform number in the last column? Yep, my train was cancelled. So, I did what any person using public transit in a foreign country who only understands half of the langue does: I panicked. First thing, I called my wife, who had dealt with the train system for the past week while I walked to and from work. She was also having train issues. As we were talking, I remembered a local traffic office downstairs, in the "station" (that is far too grandiose of a word to describe the wide hallway with a glass-windowed office and bathrooms that I am confident people have been murdered in), so I went downstairs and, thankfully, they were still open. And the host there spoke excellent English. I'm sure he had dealt with dumb Americans who were in Oelde for work before, so he was well-equipped to recommend another train where I could switch trains in Hamm and catch a connector to Köln, no problem!

Slightly comforted, but still a little wary, I went on my way. Caught the train from Oelde to Hamm, which was standing-room-only because of the cancellations back down the line, but I had no idea which platform to catch my connector on. This occasioned another trip to the help desk, but this time, the English of the person who was trying to help me was about as good as my German, and she was most decidedly NOT used to dumb Americans. Eventually, as I was growing in worry about catching the train, she was able to direct me to platform 10. I sprinted and made it there in time. .

This time the train was even worse. It was a double-decker, which was cool, except I had to stand halfway up a semi-spiral staircase, which, while I'm sure it was very aesthetically pleasing, was not practical to stand on. Thankfully, I had been walking about six or seven miles a day for the first six days we were there, so my legs weren't too bad and my back held up. Above me and to my left was a young couple who were "working out their relationship" the entire ride. She was crying and he was muttering and trying to placate her and she just kept repeating the phrase "Wie schön für dich" ("How nice for you") again and again. I thought maybe this was just a German train culture thing, but when I looked at all the other passengers around me, they looked at them baffled, then looked at me like "Please! Help meeeee!" This was not normal, apparently. But it carried on the entire time of that train ride.

So, when word came over the speakers (and I understood this message clearly) that this train would not be continuing to Köln, but would instead stop in Dusseldorf and then skip Köln to go straight to Bonn, I'm not sure if I was pissed off or relieved. A bit of both, honestly. By this time, I had a three-way texting conversation going on between me, my wife, and my co-worker. Natalie's train to Köln had also been cancelled! Argh! Thankfully, my co-worker, who had just left Dusseldorf to head to Köln with her fiancée by car, told us to stay put at Dusseldorf station and they would come by and pick us up and we would drive to Köln. Oh, did I mention that we were an hour and a half late by that point and had an early train to catch back from Köln to Oelde?

Now, why would we suffer such torture at the hands of the German train system? I had been told by people whose opinions I respect that I must not leave the area without visiting Köln Dom (Cologne cathedral). This was the point of that tortuous pilgrimage. Being in the back seat of our friends' car travelling at 200 Kilometers Per Hour, as the frustration and fear of that awful train trip subsided, I was getting rather excited. Some of that anxious energy had to do with the fact that we would have about an hour to see the cathedral and get dinner before we had to catch our train back to Oelde, but as we rounded a corner and the Köln Dom came into view, I was completely awestruck.

I've seen a lot of cool things in my day because I was blessed to travel the world from birth. I've seen many of the "have you seen?" monuments in Europe and the US (though definitely not all), and some have been more impressive than others. But this was at a whole 'nother level, as they say. This monumental piece of architecture took 600 years to build. Yes, 600 YEARS! Nearly two and a half times as long as the United States has been a nation . . . to build one building! I asked my co-worker's fiancée if he knew how many people had died building that, at which point his face grew grave (he is a very cheerful person) and he just said "Many". I'm certain of that. 

And what did they get for all this sacrifice? Only one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures on the planet. We had seen <a href="https://forrestaguirre.blogspot.com/2021/06/vienna-part-i.html">Stefansdom in Vienna</a> on our previous trip, and while that was very impressive, it really paled in comparison to Köln Dom. I took some photos (below), but honestly spent most of the time in reverence just trying to take it all in with my natural eyes. The phrase "pictures don't do it justice" seems trite and over-used, even abused, but in this case, it was clearly correct. I simply could not absorb the magnitude of it all through that stupid little piece of electronically-charged glass in my little phone. I'll include some pictures, but if you have any chance to see this magnificent structure, TAKE IT! 

As you can guess, because of the time in the evening, the cathedral was closed, so we didn't get a chance to see the inside. I'm guessing it's gorgeous, yet overwhelming, just like the outside. I'd love to get inside someday.

What we had planned to be a great dinner turned out to be ordering Döners at a shop on the square. They were good (but not nearly as great as the ones we had in The Hague the next week), but we had to eat them on the train back to Oelde. Which, incidentally, had to make an emergency stop in Hamm with policemen running around all over the place - I still don't know what the heck they were doing, and they looked like they didn't know what they were doing, either - which took about a half hour before we finally, finally arrived back in Oelde. Thus began the first of that vacation. More later. 

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Wanderlust: A History of Walking

 

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Walking is dead. Long live walking.

I came to this book with admitted biases. One of the goals I keep in my bullet journal is to do at least two "long" walks a month. I define this as a walk of 3+ continuous miles, not on a treadmill, but outdoors. And while I know that this won't seem like much to my European friends (more on that later), for an American to walk three miles straight through and not on a treadmill - well, unfortunately, that is an oddity. Unlike Europe, we're just not built for it here, and Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking addresses that fact from multiple angles.

Solnit traces the strange development of "nature" walks over time. The differences in attitude toward natural paths versus groomed walkways, along with differences among class perceptions of landscape and walking itself, not to mention regional preferences, show a more variegated landscape than the modern reader might expect. You might expect a book on walking to be pretty straightforward, one step after another, right?

It's a bit more complicated than that.

The book begins with anecdotal discussions with anthropologists regarding the very earliest walkers which is, by turns, insightful, funny, irreverent, and which tear through some of the most commonly held misconceptions about early hominids (some of which I held). It's an interesting start and necessary, I guess, but I question the need for it. Is it just a vestigial tale? Perhaps, though later chapters examine the in-body experience of walking in various social and political contexts which also say something about bodies and their physical place in the world, as well as what the exercise of the use of those bodies means (I do not only mean in the sense of physical fitness, as this is just a by-product of walking).

There was a bit of metalepsis in my reading of Wanderlust, though it was purely unintentional. When I am working at the office here in town, I always take some time to go for a walk on the Ice Age Trail, which passes very near to my workplace. I also walk home from work sometimes, after my wife has dropped me off on days when she needs the car (yes, we are one of those rare and elusive one-car American families). On my last long walk home from work (4.2 miles), I was heading down the sidewalk reading this book, and a total stranger, who was mowing her lawn, stopped her lawnmower to ask what I was reading (note: I wish there were more people like this in the world!). I showed her the cover and she just started laughing out loud. We exchanged pleasantries and I was on my way again. I'm kind of worried that she's going to intercept me another time, when I'm reading something far more morbid or controversial.

Speaking of which, Solnit does not shy away from controversy. She has an entire chapter on sex workers and the freedom and limits of such work when related to walking. She also presents a chapter on walking as a revolutionary political act, from the Civil Rights protests to the Argentine mothers of the "disappeared" walking in solidarity against a tyrannical regime.

Earlier, I had mentioned Europe. I was born in Europe and lived over half of my childhood there. So maybe I see the auto-mation of American society with a bit more of a critical eye than most of my American friends. Last month, I had the opportunity to go to Germany for a week for work (I work for a German-based company), followed by a week's vacation in Belgium and The Netherlands. On average, I think we walked about 6 or 7 miles a day. When we weren't walking, we took trains almost everywhere. I had a rental car for my first week in Germany, but really only used it to get from Amsterdam to Oelde and back, then out for dinner for one night. Other than those three trips, we stood on trains and walked and walked and walked. For my American friends, what you need to understand about Europe is that it is BUILT for walking. Some of it has to do with scale (Germany and Wisconsin are almost exactly the same size, for comparison), some of it has to do with history (plazas built around medieval marketplaces or Renaissance and Baroque cathedrals), but much of it has to do with choice: the choice to let pedestrians (and bicycles) predominate. The old medieval streets are simply too small to avoid congestion, but rather than just widening the roads (and destroying several historical buildings in the process), Europe has, by and large, pushed cars to the outskirts. Having a healthy public transportations system makes this more feasible (though some would argue that the amount of strikes and delays that occur is anything but "healthy" - thanks, privatization!) but again, this is a choice made largely by the people who live there, who want walkable, bike-able streets, helped along by the scale of the cities and countries in question.

I could go on and on about third places and the lack thereof in the states, but I will try to bite my tongue a bit after stating that the disappearance of third places in the US has everything to do with the prevalence of automobiles. The one really depressing moment I had while on vacation was looking over a plaza thronged with people mostly just hanging out and eating Italian ice cream (those who know, know) and people-watching, while realizing that there really are no places like that, none, zero, zilch any closer to me than Chicago (an hour and a half and a parking nightmare away).

I didn't take this book with me when I travelled, and I'm glad I didn't. I might have just opted to stay there. Walking, as you can probably guess, is a part of me and a very important part of my life.

When I returned from Europe and got back into the groove of work again, I naturally picked up where I left off. The funny thing is that I was simultaneously reading Walter Benjamin's collection of essays, Illuminations. I discovered that Solnit mentions Benjamin explicitly and particularly his thoughts on Baudelaire, something that had struck me while reading Benjamin's book. It seems all (walking) roads lead to Baudelaire in some way. It was all a very strange synchrony, though the figure of the Flâneur might just be the hinge on which all these synchrony's rotate, at least as far as urban walkers go.

But Solnit is equally at home (or away from home?) in presenting the history of rural walking, as well; something I know a little bit about. Here, also, one finds a long tradition of political protest in the form of voting with one's feet (and sometimes, fists). Protest marches in England, for example, seem to have originated in the country over contested right-of-ways through public and private land. I recall, in fact, when I lived in England, at the base I lived on, there was a "bridal path" we were told was required to allow the Queen to ride her horse on, whenever she wished it. But it actually acted as a public path, at times, with anti-nuclear protesters (this wasn't a nuclear base, but the protesters had no idea) from the CND marching through every few months or so. So long as they stayed on that path, there was really nothing to be done about it. If they strayed from it . . . well, I've seen what British police can do. There's a reason British cops don't have to carry guns, and it's not because they are convincing conversationalists.

I'm guessing, though, that Rebecca Solnit is a convincing conversationalist. I can attest to the fact that she is a convincing writer. If nothing else, I'd love to take a long walk and talk with her.

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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

 

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a weird and unplanned synchronicity, I read Walter Benjamin's Illuminations at the same time I read Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. I had no idea that these works had any connection with each other, but there is a very strong connection in their analysis of the work of Baudelaire. More on this later.

It took some time to get to Benjamin's excellent and very eclectic collection of essays. Hannah Arendt's introduction is extensive and interesting, laying a foundation for what is to come by examining Benjamin's light in both a historical and intellectual context. I came through it feeling well-equipped to tackle Benjamin's sometimes-abstruse work. Rather than a barrier to getting to the source material, Arendt provides a useful and understandable bridge to Benjamin's core ideas.

We start with "Unpacking My Library," which every book-lover should read, but, more especially, every book collector. I'm admittedly somewhere between the two poles of reader and collector Benjamin presents, but I lean more toward the former than the latter. Benjamin, an admitted book collector (there is an underlying hint of shame in the title as he presents it, as if it is a guilty pleasure), points out the collector's foibles with a great sense of self-deprecating humor.

"The Task of the Translator" presents several thoughts on translation, including the very interesting question of one's linguistic machismo when translating. Should the translator impose his language on the one being translated, or should he allow the language being translated to inform and even form his own? I have always respected "good" translators and their work, but now I question what, really, does "good" mean in this context? I don't have a firm conclusion, but I do have a lot of thinking to do as a result of reading this essay, which was probably Benjamin's intent.

In his essay "The Storyteller," Benjamin parses out the different characteristics, not of structure, but of the worldview of storytelling (as in: around a campfire), the short story, and the novel. He reflects on collective vs individual memory, the impatience of modernity (don't get me started), and how the absence of death and the view of eternity it provides has shaped fiction, in general. The irony of Benjamin's demise is not lost on me. It's a bittersweet read, precisely because of what followed.

As much as I love Kafka, it's apparent that I need to read more of him. I guess The Collected Stories (all of his short stories) and The Trial aren't quite enough. I feel like such a poser . . . Maybe I should read him in German to feed my ego a little. In any case, I found Benjamin's "Franz Kafka" inspiring. Absolutely one of the best summations of the spirit of Kafka's work that threads the needle between analysis of Kafka's psychological state of mind and the more metaphysical/surreal aspects of Kafka's work. I've been a fan of Kafka's work since I was young and this rekindles the fire to dive back in again.

Sadly, I know very little about Brecht's work, having only read (in German) "Der kaukasische Keidekreis". But while I should read more of Brecht's work, I know something about the man himself. I had a professor in college who was a Brecht expert. James K. Lyon, from whom I took my German literature classes as an undergrad, wrote the book
After doing some more research and interviews, Professor Lyon discovered that every Wednesday night, Brecht would have friends and acquaintances over so he could show them what was going on in Germany at the time. They watched (and discussed and mocked) German propaganda films - hence the anthems and salutes. But this poor lady thought Brecht was a communist and a nazi!

Now on to Proust and Baudelaire. The Freudian analysis of Proust and Baudelaire feel flimsy, at best. I get the analysis of memory regarding Proust, and the examination of time might have some basis in psychology, but the Freudian dream-connection just hangs by a weak thread. I found Benjamin's Marxist analysis of Baudelaire much more convincing than his Freudian analysis of the poet. After reading this, I definitely need to read Flowers of Evil yet again. In fact, I should make that a regular practice. I can't stand French as a language (everything is an exception, sorry, but give me German, Swahili, and Latin rules all day long), but if I were ever to attempt to learn it again, it would be for this sole purpose: Reading Baudelaire.

As I said earlier, I was reading Solnit's Wanderlust at the same time as this book. I'll probably save most of the correlations for my review of Solnit's work, but there was an amazing amount of connection, with Solnit quoting Benjamin critiquing Baudelaire, while herself analyzing Baudelaire's work, not only on the figure of the "Flaneur," but also on walking as a socio-political act. Fascinating stuff, especially since my wife and I had recently returned from a vacation in Europe where we figure we clocked in around 90 miles of walking in two weeks.

The book continues with Benjamin's analysis and critique of film in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which is not so interesting when addressing the work itself as it is fascinating when one looks at the audience and the change it engenders in them vis-à-vis their appreciation of static art. I might also add that the exploration of strangeness that an actor undergoes when acting in front of the camera and of that same actors dissociation with self led me to think about real and rumored instances of actors who fell too far into their characters and never quite shook the stain to their psyche. Granted, many of these stories are overblown and sensationalized, but I have spoken with some actors who have had to essentially detox from their role to return to normalcy.

The final essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History" is be far the most challenging piece in the collection. It is a somehow timely piece of class history and touches on resistance to fascism in ways that many people now are exploring and re-exploring. Benjamin's arguments might be difficult to understand and sometimes seem to cater to the "party line" a little too cleanly, but they are worth consideration and contemplation.

All-in-all, this is an intellectual/philosophical grab bag on a wide variety of topics. Each is addressed in a different way - you won't find Benjamin pounding the same drum repeatedly - and one will have a variety of emotional and intellectual responses to the whole. But one cannot argue that the work is insignificant. Far from it.



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Prisms of the Oneiroi

 

Prisms of the Oneiroi by Martin Locker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I've read bits and bobs of Martin Locker's work before, this is my first full-length foray into his work and I feel like I've struck gold in the Pyrenees. I paid for it (including shipping from Andorra), but this is worth ten times what I spent! There's a wonderful variety to the stories in this collection, all girded by Locker's own voice, or, more properly, voices, as his characters are distinctly-identifiable from one another. Each tale is a different facet of the same gem.

Ligotti has nothing on Locker when it comes to existential dread on a cosmic scale. This was the sort of suffocating fear of the universe that Lovecraft strove for, but Locker has found. "The Dreaming Plateau" is horror of a different order of magnitude, made all the more impactful by the elision of the most purple prose. The poetic heart is intact, but without un-necessary frills, with terrifying clarity. And for some reason, my mind kept flashing images from the Tibetan scenes in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus throughout, which is not a bad thing. I was waiting for Tom Waits to burst through a door at any moment.

"Corfdrager" examines one of my favorite enigmatic pieces of art, Bruegel's "The Beekeepers and the Birdnester" (and the art used on one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands, Sunn's White 2) as a catalyst for the narrator's encounter with his family's past and his own inheritance via a seemingly academic investigation. One wonders, by the end, if the academics aren't the most horrific aspect of the story. If you went to graduate school, you know what I'm talking about here. The dive into apiary lore is more sinister and more irresistible than one might imagine.

While reading Prisms of the Oneiroi, I am using a Winterthur Poison Book Project bookmark (you can get one, like I did, for free here). The irony of reading "The Temple Consumes the Rose," which features a green book by Sar Peladan, is not lost on me. I might also be tempted to consume such a book, if I was to be rewarded the visions of Latoure, even if it cost me my life. Such is the price of true art. A moving occult tale.

"The Secrets of Saxon Stone" was a delight to read, and I am not being facetious. Daimons abound, the psychogeography of the region portrayed is reflective of the spirits that not only dwell there, but are interwoven into its very fabric. This is like Dunsany, but without the pedantics that sometimes overween his work. This is mythical and approachable, lending familiarity to the representation of the divine.

Locker displays his acumen for ethnography and mythic studies in "Sea Salt and Asphodel," a story of dreams, prophecy, and the cycle of life and death. The depth of immersion here just has to be experienced - I can't describe it. Suffice it to say that this tale is told in such a way that one feels at one with the others presented in the story. You don't read this story, you live in it. The reader feels a part of the tale, such is the attention to detail.

"In Search of the Wild Staircase" is an epistolary story in the vein of Harper's magazine travelogues from the late-19th- and early-20th-centuries, albeit with a folk horror twist. That twist is set on its head, though, as it is implied, at least, that The Church itself is the source of the frisson. The story ended a bit too hurried for me, but it's still a very solid work. I'll never look at the little country of Liechtenstein the same again.

Locker, you clever, clever man. "The Jasmine Tear" is a story worthy of a Twilight Zone episode, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a short story. The koummya, the djinn, the deal with a demon, and the treasures of the Maghreb - this is worthy of Musiqa al-Ala; a masterstroke of storytelling that will stick in my mind until the Last Day (or fifty years, whichever comes first)!

I found "A Dialogue of Innocence with the Hidden Parish" deeply moving. First, it created a deep psychogeography of a particular house seeping with sadness, longing for company. I thought of my parent's home and the sorrow I associate with it, but more of that at a later time. I also thought of my own childhood and the deep impressions of place I felt as a young world traveller. Moving every two or three years (Dad was in the military) forces one to latch on to the feeling of a place rather quickly, so I might be a little hypersensitive that way. Combine that with the death of my parents a few years back, and maybe I was destined to fall in love with this story.

Ever contemplated choosing homelessness? I have (when it's warm out). In fact, I was very strongly tempted at my last job to just give a try at homelessness, but fate, thankfully, intervened. In "What the Vagabond Sees or The Parish Coda," an entire society and cosmology is outlined for English Vagabonds, whose motto is "No Parish But Albion". If you know, you know. I immediately connected with this tale, due in part to a trip I took in 2019 that allowed a fair bit of rambling around the Cotswolds. I recalled the many carefree hikes that friends and I took in the English countryside, from Brighton and Eastbourne to the Midlands to the Cotswolds, when I lived in the UK as a teenager. As I understand it, after The Great War, many veterans, disillusioned from the horrors they saw during the war, became homeless wanderers in the 1920s. I think that the song "The Tin Man" by Grasscut is inspired by that phenomenon or, if it's not, I'm going to interpret it that way anyway. I've often dreamt of what it would be, in my dotage, to hike around England until I just drop dead. I know I'm going to sound borderline insane, but it's a very tempting prospect, in all seriousness. This story just unlocks that morbid longing in my heart all over again. Maybe. Someday. Maybe. But only if I'm alone. And it's warm. But I can't imagine a better way to go.


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Dhalgren

 

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The older I grow, the more I realize that my childhood might have been exceptional. Not exceptionally good, mind you, just an exception to what the "normal" American child experiences. I was raised as an Air Force brat. Born in Germany, lived in The Philippines, Italy, England, and all over the US (Texas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wyoming). Since the commencement of "adulting," I've lived in Pennsylvania, California, Utah, and Wisconsin. This shiftiness, especially in the first eighteen years of life, led to forming and cutting friendships and love in rapid order. I have no idea what it's like to have a "hometown". That just doesn't exist for me. I keep contact with a select few people I knew as a child. And even though I've lived in Wisconsin for nearly thirty years now, I still feel like a wanderer on this planet.

In all these journeyings, I've come to appreciate places for their unique mood, style, atmosphere, amusements, and shortcomings. When I visit a new place, I like to soak up the ambience and get to know the place. Cities, in particular, have personalities, I've found. My favorites are Oxford (UK), Vienna (Austria), and Madison, Wisconsin (US).

I've also met some strange characters in my life's wanderings. When I was young, I had more time and freedom to get to know individuals who lived out of the mainstream of society. Freaks, geeks, punks, goths, metalheads, gangsters, ex-soldiers, mystics, chronic alcoholics and drug abusers, the chronically mentaly ill, the homeless, other wanderers. The list can go on and on. I find humans endlessly fascinating and endlessly frustrating. I have a love/hate relationship with the human race. For the record: mostly, I love 'em!

I find that my experiences have everything to do with Dhalgren. Everything.

I'll be honest, I was shocked at how much I related to many of the characters in this book. Because I knew them. Some I still know. I won't name names, but the carnival of personalities in this work are almost all people I've met. It's an ugly bunch, with a lot of deviance from social norms. These are "my people".

But the real main character in this story is not the protagonist, who has forgotten his name and is simply called Kid throughout. The main charachter in this story is the city, Bellona.

Like any city, this work of psychogeographical semi-apocalyptic fiction is not particularly "linear". In fact, the last section's typeset is intentionally non-linear, with "asides" that contrast sharply with the other text in its immediate vicinity, a choppy fluidity between space and time-lines, and an aggressively experimental layout. Much like a city. In fact, I'd say this is one of the greatest works of psychogeography I've read to date.

And why "semi-apocalyptic"? Before I answer, let me point out that my Dad, an avid and voracious reader of science fiction (I owe that addiction to him), had this book on his bedside shelf for many months. I don't know if he ever finished it, but it eventually disappeared some time in the early '80s. So when I began the book, I was expecting all the regular tropes of science fiction, but something of a higher intellectual train than the pulps. Well, I was altogether wrong. Dhalgren is a semi-apocalyptic work, a story set in a city that has become a sort of pocket dimension, it's own entity, while still existing in a decidedly non-apocalyptic America. It's a place that time and space didn't forget, really, but a place that time and space set aside for its own little apocalypse. Something like "The Zone" in Roadside Picnic, or like what happened to the planet of Tekumel in the Empire of the Petal Throne universe.

In Bellona, things have become . . . disordered. Imagine that the late '60s and early '70s never ended, but that law and order were simply absent. It's not utter chaos - people still gather in groups, some in communes, some in gangs, some in ultra-luxurious compounds, some in . . . utter denial of the situation they are in (they try to maintain a "normal" lifestyle, despite the crumbling city and social order). Yes, there is violence, but there is also love and loyalty. As Depeche Mode used to say "People are People". And so it is in Bellona.

But Bellona is a jealous city. It doesn't let go so easily that one just walks away. Something undefined and strange compels many people to stay, though some do "escape" . . . if they avoid the forces that have been put in place to contain the decay of the city from escaping into the rest of the world. Well, it's not so mystical as it sounds, but as in many cities, people find it difficult, sometimes impossible (because of ideology, economics, or relationships) to leave.

Is the city alive? Maybe, maybe not.

Are the people who enter it under some kind of geas that doesn't allow them to leave? Possibly.

Will everyon who reads this work enjoy it? I doubt it.

Is Dhalgren a great work of experimental science fiction? Absolutely.

I'm glad I journeyed there. Though it was rough going, at times. Very rough going. I myself was, for a time, trapped against my will. But, as with many of the places I've seen in my life, I would return, if only for a visit.

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The Hellebore Guide to Occult Britain

 

The Hellebore Guide to Occult Britain by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Next time I'm in the UK, this book is coming with. The unstoppable crew at Hellebore have created a mostly (though not completely) comprehensive guide to magical places in teh British Isles. Sections are divided geographically, so you can pull this Baedeker of the bizzare wherever the ley lines have taken you and have a Virgil to your Dante.

The book itself is a handy size and seems well-constructed, which you'll want if you're taking it with you. Most of the place entries have a postal code listed, so if you can interpret that (or ask a local postmaster), you'll be good to go. Entries range from megalithic tombs to occult bookstores to locales tied to famous practitioners of magic (though one should take any location related to Aleister Crowley as questionable because, you know, Crowley).

Now, I have two slight complaints. First, and this one is small . . . too small . . . the print is too small! This is the case especially in some longer, colored text blocks. Pardon the old guy with eyes that are going bad who are interested in this subject matter. There are thousands of us, I'm sure. Might want to consider bumping those fonts up a point and doing a slightly longer book.

Earlier, I said that this book was mostly comprehensive. Of course, not everything can be covered in an almanac such as this, but I noted two glaring ommissions of which I am personally very aware. I won't go over details in this review, but if you read my blog post on The Priory at RAF Chicksands and The Devils Quoits, you'll see exactly what I mean. The weird thing is that Clophill Church, which I mention in my blog post, and which is DIRECTLY tied to the Chicksands Priory (albeit by an undergroudn tunnel - I kid you not; I've been in that tunnel myself) is mentioned, while the priory is not. I don't get it. The very reason that people went to Clophill Church to put up satanic graffitti and sacrifice animals was because the church was physically tied to the alegedly haunted priory. So why no Chicksands Priory? It's not about accessibility. You can arrange a tour of the Priory with the non-profit that cares for it. I don't get the ommission.

I won't spend much time on the other one, The Devil's Quoits, in Oxfordshire. Sure, it's hard to find (my wife and I got lost looking for it at first), but it's a beautiful megalithic structure that has been researched rather well. maybe it's because the archaeological dig that revealed the full scale of the Quoits was only done in 1945, so it doesn't have the old magical associations that, say, the Rollright Stones do? Again, I don't fully understand.

Perhaps one can slip index cards in with one's own entries where the Hellebore guide is missing them?

Still, it is enough. Not complete, but enough. If you are lucky enough to live in the UK, you really should buy a copy. And if you're visiting and looking for the magic of the isles, you definitely need to take this with you to read on the plane flight over. It's a long flight, trust me. Be prepared.



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Asterix und die Goten

 

Asterix und die Goten by René Goscinny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a kid, I grew up with Asterix, having discovered him when we moved to Italy in 1975. Asterix and the Goths was one of my absolute favorites. They're all great, but there was something about all the factional infighting among the various tribes of Goths that I found hilarious.

Fast forward to 2019, when my wife and I take a long-anticipated trip to Europe. A large part of that time was spent in Austria, with a couple of days in Germany (Frankfurt and Munich). We stopped in multiple bookstores, including a comic book store in Vienna and a used bookstore in Munich. I was specifically looking for this Asterix book auf Deutsch, but I could not for the life of me find it. Several stores had ALL of the Asterix books in German, except this one. Then I remembered that one of the speech bubbles had a Goth chieftain, who had just been thumped on the head with a club, swearing up a long string of explicatives (I thought of my German-swearing grandmother when I saw this). The swear words were represented by lots of different symbols, including (gasp) a swastika.

Then it dawned on me: the book had been banned because it has a Nazi symbol in it.

Germany, Austria, I love you, but . . . seriously? I'm all about punching nazis, but really?

Anyway, I eventually found a copy . . . on Ebay. I bought it right up because who knows how many of these will survive?

It's kind of strange how things turn. Banning books, in particular . . .

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Waystations of the Deep Night

 

Waystations of the Deep Night by Marcel Brion
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recall a night. It was probably 1982, if I've triangulated correctly. In Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. My friend Ray and I were staying at our friend Shawn's house. Shawn's dad was kind of a celebrity to us. He had a killer conversion van (though, unfortunately, no barbarians painted on the side), a copy of Rush's 2112 in the tape deck, and he knew the guitar player from REO Speedwagon. Pretty cool to us 13 year olds!

Back then, young teenagers were pretty "free range". I recall Saturdays and summer days where I would ride my bike for hours, covering many miles, just sort of going from place to place, running into friends, creating adventures. There were no helicopter parents back then. At least I didn't know any. Needless to say, Shawn's dad was not a helicopter parent. We stayed out in the conversion van, listening to Rush while playing Tunnels & Trolls, with no adult influence whatsoever. It was bliss.

When it comes to exact details of that night, I can only recall a couple. After finishing our T&T session, we went out for a nighttime stroll. It was one of those strangely surreal nights where the three of us seemed like the only people out on the streets. We went to Top Dog Hot Dog for the arcade games as much as for the hot dogs. I recall playing Moon Patrol, Zaxxon (I still suck at that game), and then playing the Centaur pinball game (still my favorite board) until they closed at about 11 PM.

Then, we wandered. I can't tell you where all we went and what all we did, though I am certain involved a lot of trespassing and maybe some breaking and entering.

What I can tell you about is the feeling I had. Did I mention that we had stayed awake the entire night before that night? No? It's true, we had been awake for close to 36 hours straight before the night began. For those of you who have done this, first of all, don't continue. I have first-hand experience of a loved one becoming temporarily psychotic and having to be hospitalized in the psych-clinic due to lack of sleep. It's terrifying to see from the outside. I wonder if I hadn't experienced something similar that night. How could I know? When you're in the middle of psychosis, your thoughts seem pretty logical (even hyper-logical, to coin a term) to you.

I want to say there was a dulling of the senses, but "dulling" doesn't describe what I felt. It was more a compartmentalizing of the senses. The "I" in "me" was one step removed. I heard things, but it was as if it was from a distance. Vision came as if from a television or movie screen. Even my own voice felt like it emanated from somewhere outside or "behind" me. It was summer, but my skin felt numbed. A high-pitched whining continually sounded from the back of my skull.

And I felt like anything was possible. Everything, though one step removed from my senses, was alive and full of potential. I wouldn't have been surprised by a miracle, and wouldn't have been taken aback by the end of the world.

Since then, I've had a few other experiences late, late at night that I won't detail here. There is some kind of physiological and psychological reaction to the deep night that makes each of those experiences to feel "of a piece," as they say. And the same is true of the stories in Marcel Brion's excellent Waystations of the Deep Night.

The title story is exactly what you would expect from such a title: an oneiric tale straight out of a de Chirico painting. I'm honestly shocked that the Brothers Quay haven't done a short film based on this story. It would be a perfect fit, as Brion's painterly prose is beautifully imagistic. Or is that magicistic? Borderline majestic. It's everything I hoped for, judging by the title. Dark and refulgent, at once.

"The Field Marshal of Fear" is a quiet, somber piece, but steady as marching feet. The short, simple sentences, however, do not fail to evoke a stupendous sadness, an eternal drudgery experienced by the dead veterans of wars long since won or lost. A graveside sleepwalk, full of night's heaviness.

In "The Fire Sonata," Brion's voice reminds me of Calvino, but with a sinister edge much sharper and darker than anything the Italian master wrote. I had to split this story into two readings, and I had high expectations for the concluding read. My expectations were met and then some! This could have been an episode of the Twilight Zone that Rod Serling would have been proud of. That's the highest praise, coming from me, as TZ is my favorite shoe of all time.

I would swear David Lynch had written "Incident on a Journey," had I not read it in this collection. The ending came as no surprise, but the inevitability of the tale made it all the more uncomfortable and awkward, like you know you're walking into a trap, but there is no way to avoid it, so you take in every excruciating detail and just watch in desperate silence as the void closes in on you, closer and closer.

Though it could be read merely as a fabulously well-written eerie tale (in the Fisherian sense), "Dead Waters" is, pardon the pun, much deeper than that. It's a story primarily about agency, manipulation, creation, and causality, with many of the characters being potentially marionettes or God Himself, or neither. There are no clear answers, but plenty of compelling questions about what transpires on dark streets. This was the most blatantly "dreamlike" story in the collection, and a deeply-intriguing read.

"La Capitana" is a child's long, slow fading into a dream-world of potential adventure beyond the seas. It is simultaneously happy and sad, bittersweet, full of hope and, yet, utterly hopeless. Imagine your eight-year-old self on a boring, sunny afternoon, given the power to disappear into mysterious dreams of exotic lands on a ship named "La Capitana," a name that you gave the ship, because it is yours, in dream.

"The Glass Organ" was every bit as ephemeral and strange as the object in the title implies. It is a multi-faceted story, but tenuous, images slipping onto one another, transforming into a world that may or may not exist.

"The Lost Street" is a more traditional ghost story. I use the word "more" intentionally, as it is not a fully-traditional ghost story. There are enough more surreal elements that take this beyond the realm of, say M.R. James and approach Bruno Schulz by way of Dali.

Overall, Brion's stories evoked a visceral familiarity within me, feelings I've felt mostly when I've had too little sleep (day or night) and some of the oddities of life in the deep night. Here's sampling of what I mean - Brion describes it much better than I do, from the story "The Glass Organ":

That nocturnal stroll through a park that merged imperceptibly with the forest - certain domestic trees having recovered their wild freedom - already contained within it the qualities of a labyrinth. I didn't choose paths. When several opened before me, I accepted now the darkest, with the childlike hope of encountering a marvelous creature, now the brightest, for the pleasing reward of a downpour of moonlight like a narrow stream between the serried darkness of the trees. Concerns about time or direction would have diminished the sense of the unreal that I received from the night. To let myself be carried along by it, to consent to the paths it offered me, ah! the sheer bliss of no longer choosing. What did it matter if dawn overtook me in the middle of the forest or at the first houses of a distant village? The joy of abandoning myself to the indefinite character that moonlight bestows on deeds and things ruled out any directed action on my part. There was nothing I sought, nothing I fled. For several hours I was at peace with myself, relinquishing both desire and regret, indifferent to wherever, in the end, I must inevitably arrive, not caring whether that place was one of fulfillment or one of oblivion.

This is how it feels to flee into the deep night.

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Interzone

 Call me a punk, if you must. I love Zines. I recall the days way before the internet was public, when it was only used by the military (my father confirmed to me once that he was using it, in a more primitive form, as far back as the early '80s), when Zines were a primary form, no THE primary form of communication amongst the punk underground. They'd spring up at record stores and sometimes at concerts, usually given away for free, though I'm sure some enterprising young capitalists (i.e., not punks or were they so not punk that they were punk?) sold some for cash. Or Dead Kennedy's patches. Or something.

The thing about Zines is that they were (and can still be) inherently subversive. From the Samizdat of the Soviet Union to the backstreet record store Zines of Omaha, Nebraska, there was also a subtext of "screw the establishment" in these little handmade, stapled books of cardboard and paper. Remember, this was before photoshop, so you literally had to cut and paste and copy real photos (or copies of such) by hand. This was production outside of the publishing industry, and intentionally so. Distribution was likely by some kid carrying a few copies in the inside pocket of a trenchcoat asking the record store if they could leave a few copies. Communication between fans was facilitated by either snail mail or phone numbers typed or written in the back. Again, this was meant to avoid the scrutiny of "the man".

If our imaginary distributor was anything like me, this kid hopped fences, walked through piss-drenched back alleys, crossed abandoned lots on the edge of town, and generally ambled where others would not go. This sort of walking the seams of society was not limited to urban settings. I took great delight in wandering those areas of suburbia and even on the edge of the country where no one wanted to be. Where the sprawl of capitalism smashed up against the wilds of the country, where weeds grew up between old asphalt and tin roofs caved in on crumbling cinderblock buildings covered in graffiti, where Bad Things happened. 

It's a wonder that, in all my wanderings, I was not once mugged or murdered or worse. I had my fair share of confronting feral dogs (twice), stepping on rusty nails (took one right through my left foot, bloodying my bobos on the top), drinking water I shouldn't have (that hand-pump in Italy that had me hallucinating with a 108 degree fever - I will never forget those hallucinations . . . terrifying!), and generally just exploring these waysides where no one sane (or sanitary) went.

I love those places. I still do. I was on foot a lot more back then as I was too young to drive. But even now, if I make some time (and it has to be made, I don't just "have" the time anymore), I will take the circuitous route on foot to a destination, cutting through the abandoned parking lots and over the tracks (sometimes over the train's hitch itself) to get where I'm going. I prefer to live my life this way. I don't routinely trespass in places marked as private property. Notice that I use the word "routinely". Sometimes, I can hardly help myself.

Which brings us to this little Zine: Interzone:

Yeah, you'll have to pay for it. But you're a grownup now, you can probably afford it. But besides the start up cost, this little beaut has an incredibly punk aesthetic and it's philosophically as punk as it gets.

Was it all done on photocopiers? I doubt it. I mean, take advantage of technology if you can, says I. There's no shame in this. But it looks like it was done using the old cut and paste methods, replete with polaroid borders around the photos. Maybe it was all done with a polaroid and photostat, who's to know?

"What is this?" you're asking. It's an essay by Cormac Pentecost about what these areas between civilization and the wilds symbolize. I don't want to spoil it, but capitalism and its failures are at the center of the discussion, even as the places themselves are on the edges of throwaway society. Marion Shoard and Mark Fisher are quoted at length, which should be enough of a draw for those even mildly interested in hauntology and psychogeography. This essay straddles the tripartate line between history, philosophy, and activist politics. I am reminded of the later work of Michel Foucault, but with a decidedly less academic tone. In ways, it is a sort of elegy to times past, when such "edgelands" were more common, where late-stage capitalism hadn't quite subsumed everything in its path. But it's more than just a mawkish look backwards. Many of the insights hint at a ways forward, not just looking back at the loss, but providing a way through the loss via an examination of these edgelands and their features.

For those much younger than I (there are many more of you every day), if you want a glimpse into what life was like in the '70s and '80s for those of us who liked to adventure in these in-between spaces or if you're simply trying to get into why Generation X is the way it is, you might want to give this a spin. 

For everyone, I think that Interzone is a great reminder that those liminal spaces can be appreciated for what they are, where they are, and what they symbolize. They can be a motivator to do your little thing to make society a little bit better . . . and a lot weirder. Weird on!

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