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The Blackthorn Orphans Serialization:  Dakhma 7

29/1/2019

 
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The dumb acceptance conferred by sleep relieved little of the disgust Josephine felt for the conscript's ruined and brutalized faces.  Rain that had begun as shiftless mist condensed the smell soaking the timbers of the structure around them and it could scarcely have done more to discourage occupation.  The forest without had affirmed her worst suspicions as she returned from watch, no wind stirring the branches that dripped so ponderously onto the leaking thatch, the weeping trees destructing the silence of the grove like colluding militants.  

The binocular elements over her eyes painted Shaw in pointilistic green against the gable wall.  He looked up over his shoulder from the crouch he had assumed to plumb the contents of her pack, holding perfectly still for an elastic moment before shifting a hand toward the assault rifle on the floor beside him.  She covered the movement with her own weapon and he abandoned it, sitting on his haunches.  Pushing back her visor slowly, Josephine stood in the glow of the night light hanging from the rafters while the rain dripped from her fatigues and he awaited the subtle easement of her posture that would allow him to rise.  She looked instead at the sleeping figure on the floor nearby and kicked at its legs.  

“A One...” she muttered.  “Get up.”

Two hours squatting in a bed of gleaming briar canes had deadened Josephine’s feet to the point where she could barely own their presence.  Beside her, hunkered amid their weapons, Shaw and the four conscripts watched the second eidiré through the same barbed tracery, the treeless midst of the surrounding glade guarded by one half of the remaining C corps.  Any loyalty they felt toward their isolated compatriot had proved soluble in rain and darkness; the smoke drawn from his cigarette drifted toward them, the slow precipitation blurring his shape and hissing as it struck the solitary ember.  Shaw experienced his vulnerability as a constriction of his throat.  The sentry opened the fly of his camouflage trousers and released a steaming stream onto the rank, bowed grass.    

Behind him, the vapour lying stagnant under the trees began to drift, curling around the corners of the longhouse and creeping forth between its stout, drab piles.  Josephine sank further and dropped the visor to her eyes as the figures she awaited began to coalesce beneath the eidiré, gathering black materia from the obscuring mist and drawing it into determinate shapes, their stares flashing like coin silver in the darkness.  An arrant, dreamlike silence bore them out into the rain and two broke from the incursive party, passing through the grass toward the oblivious sentry as he stood wiping his hand on the leg of his pants.  They closed on him from either side, so unhurried that his notice seemed assured until they seized and gagged their victim in a smooth, wordless accord, slicing open the great vessels in his thighs with dripping blades before he could utter a syllable.  

While he bled out, the remaining the alujha turned back toward the longhouse, Josephine's visor casting them in cold, tarnished relief through the pluvial static until they were lost to observation.  That they had somehow ascended into its interior was betrayed by the cries escaping it, then stuttering volleys of automatic fire crashing wildly through the thin plank walls.  Two inmates struggled from the doorway, lost their footing and fell in a tangle, Wessner kicking free from his subordinate before they were both snatched up and dispatched like cattle drafted onto a killing floor.  The percussive speed and terse perfunction of their deaths worked on the hidden conscripts; they shuffled thickly, altering their grasp upon their weapons and working their jaws so that only the rain preserved their concealment.  Familiarity had muted Shaw’s own reaction, the same dull principle warning him of the decapitations that were an inevitable sequel, that they would be performed with no particular efficiencies or flourishes.  From doubling over the corpses, the alujha rose in turn with smirks greased red, swallowing down the morsels they hacked out of and sliced from their victims, grunting over their division.  They had set down the choice munitions and equipment looted from the eidiré; with their trophies consumed, it was examined and re-packed, then passed amongst their number.  Saplings cut from the edge of the forest were replanted in the glade, their denuded crowns replaced with the slack-jawed heads of the slain, their labile fluids oozing thickly down the smooth bark.

When they had disappeared into the southward trees the conscripts remained within their crouching silence while Shaw examined the glade through two sets of visors.  Declaring it clear, he rose and gave the signal to advance, only to look back to find he had stepped out alone and that the men had lain down and writhed amid the thorns, clutching their heads.  He strode toward their tormentor.

"What the hell are you doing?" he hissed, snatching at the fob in Josephine's hand.  "We are done.  We walk out, right now."

Her victims climbed back onto their feet, shedding the wet debris gathered from the ground by their clothing, still too impressed by their erstwhile adversaries to audibly deplore their treatment.

“Toss their bunks.” she told them.  Shaw put out a hand to stay the remaining corps, but they looked to Josephine, and pushed on into the glade.


CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce.


​

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Remembering Dreams

27/1/2019

 
I was walking alone in this sort of infinite Art Deco planate landscape, matte and bone coloured and sort of polished concrete-esque with no visible landmarks.  I was uncomfortable about wearing a strange set of silky moss-green pants with a straight, ribbon-like waistband that didn't sit right, and over my shoulders was this wide cloak of white fur that was incredibly light and cloud-like.  

I knew someone was running behind me and at first this felt hostile, but I turned around to see a man with polar bear feet and it was immediately apparent that he was intent on something else as he ran past me.  He was sort of faintly ochre-coloured and looked vaguely metallic, as though he had been rubbed with some micaceous mineral.  I noticed he was chasing another figure who had pulled ahead of me, and in a sudden shift of perspective I stood on the opposite side of a long rectangular pool with stepped edges as the polar bear-footed man drove the second figure into an evasive dive.  

​As the latter threw themselves forward, they split into a hundred similar figures in a fanned array that spread out in a neat arc; it was my task to hit as many as possible with a bow and arrow and I managed to do so as they plunged into the water, which incidentally was bright and colourless.

This dream was super-unusual for me because of its weirdly coherent Deco aesthetic and holistic symbolism; my dreams as usually much more chaotic.  No idea where the whole polar bear motif came from as I haven't been thinking about that stuff; the whole thing had an Arctic feel, as though the entire environment had been condensed down into this abstracted representation, utilising its arid colours as a signifier.  The figure that split into a hundred versions of itself and rained down into the pool was a gobsmacking visual; I felt no particular hostility as I shot them, only that crystalline, egoless content that comes from dream achievement.

I had another linear dream last night that was much darker, involving an oily-coloured rocky shoreline, talking dogs, nocturnal wharves, amphibious shark-creatures, concealment and a feeling of inevitable discovery and some sort of confinement.  As I've gotten older, I've become convinced of the freaky and yet somehow entirely plausible notion that these sorts of dreams result from the entanglement of various animal consciousnesses; that sleep is a porous, low-density medium in which the floating Ursidae, Hominid and Carcharodon consort, the whole suffused by their various experiences and perceptions.  

​It would explain a lot of things.

liked the Tiger and the Dragon by David Sossella

24/1/2019

 
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Nice drafting and composition.
See the rest here.

Blackthorn Rose Review: Golden Celebration (David Austin)

15/1/2019

 
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I have some hard things to say about David Austin roses.  While his innovative breeding program has served up some ravishing aesthetics, those visual fruits have withered on the vine of practical reality too often for me to respond with anything more than a slow clap.  

​I know how to grow a damn rose by now and furthermore I garden in New Zealand i.e. premium fantasy rose territory; moderate temps and a low pest burden.  And still so many of his creations fail to thrive here.  WTF, David? 
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​His program's recent redirect toward more spray-free vigour is both overdue and admirable.  Just keep those problematic legacy genes in mind whilst losing your shit over a tag pic and don't get schooled the expensive and frustrating way.  It took me a while to catch on.
​
On a happier note
, Golden Celebration, as you can probably see from the pics, is one of Austin's top shelf efforts and there will always be a place in my garden for her.

GC is a yellow rose for yellow rose haters.  I used to be one of them and GC pretty much converted me.  She suffers none of the unpleasantness that so often afflicts them, boasting a bloom of gloriously buxom aspect that lasts as well as any other and doesn't bleach out to pallid toilet paper ickiness.  Ignore the white fade apparent in some of these images; it's mostly just an artefact of photography.  GC keeps her buttery goodness til the last minute.  
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​It's sometimes argued that Austin only intended his lines for British conditions and if so, he should have articulated that before marketing them the world over.  In the end, his roses' failings boil down to a fundamental selection process that was skewed toward flower form over everything else, especially in his earlier efforts. 
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This colour isn't one you really expect to find in a natural flower- a rich, custardy tempera gold rather than the cooler dilute lemon of yore.  It's like saffron rice or Baltic amber, its richesse upheld by the thickness of the petals and a bloom that is both graceful and pneumatic.

GC's gigantic flowers really are a perfect combination of substance and structure, with just the right boop of raunchy informality.  They are broad, semi-pirate-ruffled and medium-rise once open.  Despite their size and weight they sit proud on the bush and handle rain incredibly well, never balling or rotting out, even in our maritime spring.  They are a better picking prospect than most DA roses and you might get three days in the vase before they break.  Though she is intensely theatrical in full spate, somehow, rather inexplicably, the total impression is more dignified than the sum of her parts, just in case my description is giving you the willies.  

​You might have noticed by now that 
Golden Celebration is also endlessly photogenic.  If I ever lose R, I usually find him hovering around this rose with a wide angle in some sort of fugue state.
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Here she is in a vase with Summer Song.​  GC is an easier fit in a mixed situation than you might imagine, finding analogues in hot, thick pinks, sweaty reds and heavy sunset colours.  I have her alongside other saucy hos like Darcey Bussell and Rose de Rêscht, for example.  Scarlet poppies and deep purple or crimson clematis make truly heavenly accompaniments.  Just remember she is a potent wig-snatcher in the wrong setting and eats lesser yellows for breakfast, so it's best to avoid an unfair contest.
​
By mid-morning t
here is just enough of a low tea scent  (last night's dried out cognac glass + broken packing crate) to qualify as an olfactory experience but I wouldn't buy this plant on that basis.  The 'sauternes and strawberry' claims on the DA site are IMO hyperbolic and by that I mean complete bullshit.
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Here's Graham Thomas (left) compared with Golden Celebration.  GT is slightly more entirely self-yellow.
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The foliage is probably as median-rose as anything out there; middle green, sort of matte without really giving that overall impression and large in scale.  Thankfully it is dense enough to cover the fuuucking awkward architecture that so often lies beneath.  ​ 

That's right.  I ugly-shamed her undercarriage.  Welcome to the darker side of Golden Celebration.
How do I say this nicely?  There is... some monsterism.  GC is the strangest rose, build-wise, her waxy, exuberant canes leaning out at weird angles, half powering away into octopoid madness while others extend in whippy little tendrils to offer a single bud at their terminus.  I do not understand her structure.
I've grown this rose for about 10 years as a graft.  Unlike many other DA numbers, she can go without a drink for some time and never looks thirsty.  Half a day of shade doesn't bother her and she is both reliably floriferous and infallibly vigorous.  We've been through some pretty gnarly plague seasons so I'd rate her constitution around 7/10 in that she will power through blackspot without getting naked and remain rust and mildew free in our dense plantings and humidity.  

​In this respect she is remarkably contrary to one of her parents, Graham Thomas.  That guy is a leprous little coffin-dodger I should have nuked from orbit years ago.  Abraham Darby is the other daddy; he is nothing if not sturdy so GC must favour that side.
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In Zone-9 areas like this, GC will split her pants and blow out into an enormous (thankfully fairly thornless) Cthuloid abnormality in the blink of an unwary eye.  In the pic above right she is at about 1.5m after leafing out and is getting ready to explode in all directions after her first flush; at this point, I pounce with the secateurs in an effort to contain her.  Then you are confronted with deciding where and when to prune her, which is a nightmare you never wake from.  Her bud spacing and general morphology defeat the conventional approach so I tend to take long stems when cutting for the vase, behead the monster-canes as they emerge and then brutally lop the whole plant down to knee height in winter, chainsaw-style.  That final step makes for a tragic spectacle, though to be honest, I'm almost grateful there's so little you can do to influence her final expression.  Every year she ignores my hapless curtailment and boofs right back out into the big-boned heaux she was before.  You should definitely find a spot for her.
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Photos du Jour: Chaffinch chick

11/1/2019

 
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So cute it makes my teeth ache.  Thanks Lovely R

Photos du Jour: Otago Harbour pics

8/1/2019

 
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Shopped up a couple of harbour pics.
​The single cloud one might need to lose some artefacts and detail but these will be cool huge prints I think.

Happy New Year feat. Pygmaeocereus akersii KK1124 flowering for the first time motherfuckers

2/1/2019

 
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My delightful nascent colony.  Opens in the later afternoon for nocturnal moth pollination.  Looks like a maternal bohemian darlek.  Smells like boiled-down jungle honey, gingery vodka and alien varnish.

A pleasant ​MMXIX to you all.  Yes I had to google the numerals.  I am wasted.  what do you want from me

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