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.
no subject
That meal sounds amazing.
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
Congratulations on the reprint!
(no subject)
no subject
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?
(no subject)
no subject
*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.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Re: Basidiumite
O my. Do a quick poll through your stroboscopic polarizing filter, see who else got that reference!
Re: Basidiumite
no subject
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!
(no subject)
Re: Nighr River
That would make a beautiful desktop wallpaper.
Re: Nighr River