Un shpilt zhe mir, klezmorimlekh, dos zelbike, nor sheyner
My short story "Where the Sky Is Silver and the Earth Is Brass," written for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie and originally published in Machinations and Mesmerism: Tales Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann (ed. Farah Rose Smith, Ulthar Press 2019), has been accepted for reprint by Uncanny Magazine. This is the one with the Jewish demon and the ex-partisan in the West End of Boston in 1949; especially since its original release was confounded by the sudden death of its publisher, I am so glad that it will be available to a wider audience.
spatch and I did not see Knives Out (2019) at the Somerville tonight because the Red Line decided it would prefer not to, but we did at least have dinner beforehand at the Smoke Shop in Kendall Square, which furnished us with blackstrap collards and sea-salt-buttered cornbread and sweet ribs and soft brisket and some kind of ridiculously caramelized pork belly that may or may not have been the pulled pork we originally ordered and if it was, good grief. Earlier in the afternoon I continued my investigations of Broad Canal, which since last week has hardened into an opaque pane of cormorant-black ice chipped and splintered like tesserae with refreezing; along the edges of the channel it was cloudy green as a pond, with the remains of older piers standing up like snags. Apparently the proper name of the power plant which was built in 1949 as the Cambridge Electric Company's Kendall Station is now the Kendall Cogeneration Station. I don't know how much traffic it receives by water these days, but there are still two small loading docks at canal-level with signs and handrails and a garbage can on the rust-brown catwalk and one of them had a sodium light burning over its doorway which got Kipling's "Poor Honest Men" (But a light on each quarter / Low down on the water) stuck in my head for the rest of the walk. The other light had a greenish, Basidiumite glow under its metal shade, so I suspect mercury vapor. The canal itself dates to 1806, according to the local history plaque of which I forgot to take a picture; until the 1960's, remnants of the system to which it belonged still ran as far as Sixth Street. What a city of water we still live in, imperfectly filled. The neighborhood at the other end of Broad Canal is so new and glassy and glossy, it doesn't even look like it's on speaking terms with the bricks and black iron girders and long industrial grids of the windows of the power station. I took some pictures, once again on my phone because I have not internalized that I should just leave the camera in my computer bag. I am most pleased with this one: I think I may have accidentally achieved Charles Sheeler.
The afternoon was so overcast that I saw the fogged smudge of the sun over my shoulder as I crossed the Longfellow Bridge and couldn't stop thinking of Casting the Runes (1979). Later, on my way back across the bridge to meet Rob, I took a picture of the night river and all the lights of Lechmere and Storrow Drive doing their best Whistler.
I'm going back to collapsing now.
selkie and originally published in Machinations and Mesmerism: Tales Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann (ed. Farah Rose Smith, Ulthar Press 2019), has been accepted for reprint by Uncanny Magazine. This is the one with the Jewish demon and the ex-partisan in the West End of Boston in 1949; especially since its original release was confounded by the sudden death of its publisher, I am so glad that it will be available to a wider audience.spatch and I did not see Knives Out (2019) at the Somerville tonight because the Red Line decided it would prefer not to, but we did at least have dinner beforehand at the Smoke Shop in Kendall Square, which furnished us with blackstrap collards and sea-salt-buttered cornbread and sweet ribs and soft brisket and some kind of ridiculously caramelized pork belly that may or may not have been the pulled pork we originally ordered and if it was, good grief. Earlier in the afternoon I continued my investigations of Broad Canal, which since last week has hardened into an opaque pane of cormorant-black ice chipped and splintered like tesserae with refreezing; along the edges of the channel it was cloudy green as a pond, with the remains of older piers standing up like snags. Apparently the proper name of the power plant which was built in 1949 as the Cambridge Electric Company's Kendall Station is now the Kendall Cogeneration Station. I don't know how much traffic it receives by water these days, but there are still two small loading docks at canal-level with signs and handrails and a garbage can on the rust-brown catwalk and one of them had a sodium light burning over its doorway which got Kipling's "Poor Honest Men" (But a light on each quarter / Low down on the water) stuck in my head for the rest of the walk. The other light had a greenish, Basidiumite glow under its metal shade, so I suspect mercury vapor. The canal itself dates to 1806, according to the local history plaque of which I forgot to take a picture; until the 1960's, remnants of the system to which it belonged still ran as far as Sixth Street. What a city of water we still live in, imperfectly filled. The neighborhood at the other end of Broad Canal is so new and glassy and glossy, it doesn't even look like it's on speaking terms with the bricks and black iron girders and long industrial grids of the windows of the power station. I took some pictures, once again on my phone because I have not internalized that I should just leave the camera in my computer bag. I am most pleased with this one: I think I may have accidentally achieved Charles Sheeler.
The afternoon was so overcast that I saw the fogged smudge of the sun over my shoulder as I crossed the Longfellow Bridge and couldn't stop thinking of Casting the Runes (1979). Later, on my way back across the bridge to meet Rob, I took a picture of the night river and all the lights of Lechmere and Storrow Drive doing their best Whistler.
I'm going back to collapsing now.
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That meal sounds amazing.
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Thank you! I'm really happy about it.
That meal sounds amazing.
It was delicious. It was fancy barbecue rather than pile-o-meat, but we did not disdain: I vaporized those collards. Their banana pudding with vanilla wafers was two-person-sized and also very tasty.
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Thank you! It would have been nice to see the movie we'd planned on, but I think it wound up being all right; I finished a bunch of work and
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Thank you! It lined up beautifully.
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Congratulations on the reprint!
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My favorite dark green vegetable.
Congratulations on the reprint!
Thank you!
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I continued my investigations of Broad Canal, which since last week has hardened into an opaque pane of cormorant-black ice chipped and splintered like tesserae with refreezing ---mmmmmmmm, beautiful. I am loving your investigations and discoveries.
I don't know how much traffic it receives by water these days, but there are still two small loading docks at canal-level with signs and handrails and a garbage can on the rust-brown catwalk and one of them had a sodium light burning over its doorway --what an excellent otherworld/netherworld. Let's stop and think about the possibilities of cogeneration, too. Generating what? Power, you say? What type, exactly?
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Thank you!
I am loving your investigations and discoveries.
It's another case where something that I have passed on at least a weekly basis for the majority of my life has suddenly snapped into focus. Cities are fractal like that. Maybe places everywhere, too.
--what an excellent otherworld/netherworld.
All doorways are liminal, but doors by water, even more so.
Let's stop and think about the possibilities of cogeneration, too. Generating what? Power, you say? What type, exactly?
I don't know! Now I worry if it ever shuts down, we might hear a heartbeat stop.
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*an opaque pane of cormorant-black ice chipped and splintered like tesserae with refreezing; along the edges of the channel it was cloudy green as a pond, with the remains of older piers standing up like snags*
This is freaking gorgeous. I love the way you write about water. I also really love that first picture. I had to look up Charles Sheeler but you could use that as a set for a seventies SF movie.
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Thank you!
This is freaking gorgeous. I love the way you write about water.
It's endlessly describable. Thank you.
I am fascinated by all these little afterlives of engineering I keep running across. I can't believe we had a working canal system in this city and then we landfilled it. We just have these small scattered fossils, like the stub of Broad Canal or the similar leftovers of Lechmere Canal, which I should also photograph—it's the channel of a park that runs off the Museum of Science, which of course makes sense if I think about the Museum of Science as the site of the locks of the original Charles River Dam, but nowadays it's just a sort of river-linked urban pond with a dock where pleasure boats go out. I suspect I'm going to end up looking at maps.
I also really love that first picture. I had to look up Charles Sheeler but you could use that as a set for a seventies SF movie.
The color palette's even right!
(This is the sort of thing I was thinking of with Sheeler.)
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Oh my. Sheeler is very very good, isn't he? My favourite of the three is "Ore Into Iron". Not sure why but it looks like an industrialised Ravilious picture to me. Thank you!
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Everybody I know needs a time machine, even people who are dead!
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Please do take pictures of the "fossils" if you can - I'd love to see them.
I'll do my best! I know that any subject unfolds the more you study it, but the way cities do it starts to feel non-Euclidean.
Oh my. Sheeler is very very good, isn't he?
I visit him every time I go to the MFA. He was primarily a painter and later a photographer, but he was also one of the directors of Manhatta (1921) and it looks like his art in motion.
My favourite of the three is "Ore Into Iron". Not sure why but it looks like an industrialised Ravilious picture to me. Thank you!
Thank you for introducing me to Ravilious! How did I get Paul Nash but not him? (I don't think you're off base to think of him after Sheeler: he looks much more pastoral from an image search, but there is a similarity in the blocks of color and shadow.) What a wonderful adjectival name he had.
Re: Basidiumite
O my. Do a quick poll through your stroboscopic polarizing filter, see who else got that reference!
Re: Basidiumite
I should hope quite a lot of my friendlist! I grew up on the books.
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I am not allowed to eat collards. However, I accept many meat.
Also, felicitations on the reprint of the cutest story with the cutest sheydele dybbukele!
Everyone should read it!
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Before! I replenished my iron in the evening.
Also, felicitations on the reprint of the cutest story with the cutest sheydele dybbukele!
Thank you! It's important to me.
Everyone should read it!
I will tell them so! Print still comes first for me, but there are advantages to being on the internet where I can just point people at a thing.
Re: Nighr River
That would make a beautiful desktop wallpaper.
Re: Nighr River
Thanks!