I'm the hat on the bed, I'm the coffee instead

1. My poem "Strike a Light" has been accepted by Through the Gate. It is based on a comment ashlyme made about Peter Strickland's radio adaptation of The Stone Tape (2015), observing that its plot could easily accommodate the foley artist protagonist of his earlier film Berberian Sound Studio (2012), so I wrote that. It is dedicated to Toby Jones, who played Gilderoy. I hope he's not weirded out if he ever runs across it.

2. While my insomnia has not improved (I went to bed early last night, which earned me absolutely bupkes in terms of a better sleep schedule), my capacity for long-form dreams seems to be coming back online, frustratingly accompanied by my inability to remember them completely. The first was a weird horror set at a British aerodrome during World War I, located somewhere much more mountainous and remote than I believe any airbases really were in that war; there were cold forests everywhere outside the perimeter of the airfield, autumn leaves blowing onto the runway. Flyers sent out on ordinary missions weren't coming back. Some of the ones who did were reporting things that didn't sound at all like German dogfighters—silent spaces in the sky where the lift dropped out from under their wings, cloudless slices of air where flyers close enough for a visible thumbs-up only a moment ago just vanished. Nobody can get an answer from headquarters and everybody's afraid of sounding crazy if they talk about it. The hotshot of the squadron is handling it worst, where everyone would expect him to grin through a spook story with the same careless glamour as a barrel roll through bullets. I found him at the far edge of the airfield, a big man in his shoulder-belted RFC khaki, hunched over crying into his hands. "They're taking too many," he kept saying. "I didn't give them so many." I asked what he was talking about; he was silent for a long time while I shivered and the air smelled dryly of snow. He said finally, "I gave them Todd." He meant his best friend, his daredevil rival, who had died months ago in what looked at the time like a stupid competitive stunt between keyed-up, overstrained flyers; the others were the price and now the rest of us couldn't stop paying it. His one impulse of envy was eating the rest of the squadron alive. Awake, this looks like some hellish mashup of The Dawn Patrol (1938) and "The Last Flight" (1960), but it had the feel of a novel rather than a contemporary movie while I was dreaming it. The second dream was much less involved; there was a carnival and I was supposed to fight someone, which I did the first time with unlikely success and the second time negotiated with my opponent to take down the third-party organizer. Almost everyone around me was not human, but I don't remember it making a difference. Being surprised while dressing by a rusalka who wants the shower is about as awkward whether the other person needs the water for their continued survival or just wants to wash their hair.

3. In partnership with the Library of America, the Film Forum in New York City is running—Friday through Thursday—a series of mostly noir based on the novels of women crime writers. I feel unfairly tantalized. rushthatspeaks and I were just talking about Laura (1944) and Don't Bother to Knock (1952). I've been curious about Purple Noon (1950) for years because it stars Alain Delon as Highsmith's Ripley and about Ride the Pink Horse (1947) since last week because it was produced by Joan Harrison and netted oft-supporting Thomas Gomez his only Oscar nomination. Some of these movies I'd never even heard of, like Bedelia (1946), but the internet tells me its title character is Gillian Anderson's namesake on Hannibal. I have plans this weekend and upcoming week that don't allow for an extended trip, but damn it, I wish I had that teleporter. As a consolation prize, for everyone I have been recommending it to, it looks like Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's The Blank Wall (1947) has been very nicely reprinted.

Today I start making a lot of fruitcake.