But Carthage may rise again one day

[sovay]

I cannot express my happiness on discovering that a queer classics student reblogged my ghost poem for Lucan on the occasion of the poet's yahrzeit; this is exactly the kind of tradition I want to be part of. Have some links!

1. In which my plan to stress-buy a zillion waistcoats is vindicated by literature: Samuel Rutter, "A Dandy's Guide to Decadent Self-Isolation."

2. Courtesy of handful_ofdust: the value of practical effects in the case of the Cottingley Fairies.

3. Adam Bolivar, whose rhyming marionette theater I had the privilege of enjoying last summer at NecronomiCon 2019, has recorded his Rhysling Award-winning ballad "The Rime of the Eldritch Mariner" as performed by H.P. Lovecraft Theobald Craftwell. I also recommend checking out the self-introduction of dapper, skeletal Solomon Scratch.

4. Frankly, the history of the Pearl of Lao-Tzu makes Steinbeck's The Pearl (1947) look like a tea cozy.

5. The storyboards of The Ballet of the Red Shoes, from Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948), are just great.

In case I forgot to mention, my short story "Where the Sky Is Silver and the Earth Is Brass" is reprinted in the latest issue of Uncanny Magazine. It won't be free to read online until June, but you can always buy an e-book.

Comments

[asakiyume]

re: what your eye will persuade you of---when I was in grad school there was a particular bathroom stall in which the matte paint of the flat plywood door, and the ambient light, and the effect of the floor combined so that if I let myself stare at the bottom of the door, my brain flipped what I was seeing so that it looked as if the floor ended at the door, and then there was empty space--like a cliff face, indeed. It looked super real. It was weird. And I knew for a fact that wasn't what I was seeing.

[sovay]

combined so that if I let myself stare at the bottom of the door, my brain flipped what I was seeing so that it looked as if the floor ended at the door, and then there was empty space--like a cliff face, indeed.

That's incredibly cool.