A careful hour negotiating the side of the scarp brought them to the valley floor, home to the stony course of a quiescent stream, seasonal fluctuations marked in greenish algal dust upon its boulders.  The sheltered aspect harboured summer’s moribund remains, holding enough heat to raise a sweat under her fisherman’s hat.  Stands of giant, aromatic herbs spread their starry seed heads two feet over Susan’s own on fluted stems streaked with crimson and purple.  The oily scent of aniseed arose from the monstrous plants like a spoken protest as she walked through them, the boulders rocking and cracking together under her boots.  Dragonflies and ragged-looking moths, their wings like slubbed linen, fled the umbels swaying in her wake.  William's shirt hung from her pack, its green cloth trailing him faithfully, collecting burs and thistledown while the polished brightness of his shoulders prompted her to again consider his body in the light that had coloured so much since her arrival.  As he walked his fingers wandered through a private scale, the rhythm running from the smallest digit inward and taken up by the opposing thumb.  The urge to seize his hands and push them under her clothing threatened to articulate itself, and she blew a hot breath, attempting to dispel the compulsion.  He paused, turned back and pushed aside the herbage between them.  

“Smell.” he advised suddenly, and she did so, frowning.  “Dirt, wet leaves... still water.  Don't waste time looking for this if you're thirsty... you want something moving.  It smells of stone and air, or ice... like clouds and broken rocks."

Susan took off her hat, pressing it to her shiny forehead.

"Hate to think what I smell like at the moment."  

He closed his eyes.

“Girl... summer girl, rosemary leaves, new clothes, tent, salt, lavender... and rahat loukoum.” he decided, frowning slightly.  “You’re sweating Turkish delight.”

She bared her small teeth in a grin while a moth circled her face.

“I ate a whole box in Frankfurt.  I'm surprised you can smell anything over the five tonnes of garlic I downed in the last three weeks... that must be fantastic.”  They began to walk on through the towering weeds.
“I’ll take you however I can get you, avai’sahdi.”  

Susan clucked at the endearment, waving the breeze toward herself.

“Think Lilian’s alright?"
“I don't know, and there's nothing we can do if she isn't.  I've lost count of the times I’ve tried to kick sense into someone who’s sat down and stuck their fingers in their ears... sai a' sai'inae ith'ya simayun... she is her own creature."

The stream bed led them in a leisurely undulation, past the face of the forest stretching back over the tall ridge to the east, inset at intervals with secreted, umbrageous couloir that opened out like overgrown gates before walled gardens.  Where the river had, at its spring peak, bitten a low curve into the hem of the hill, William turned and offered his hand to her, pointing out a rill spilling over the edge of the bank onto the stones.  He pulled her up the grade alongside it.  

“That's a bit mad.” Susan observed, standing before a row of flat river cobbles that appeared to have been matched and leveled in the ground, their deliberate line washed over by the stream, though still alluding directly to the cleft-like valley from which it issued.  He devoted a moment to the strange construct, his gaze rising from the antique path to consider the oaks beyond, before glancing down at the plain silver ring on her hand, unshouldering her pack and carrying it toward the trees.

A flash of white was whispered to her by the chuckling water when she bent low beneath a sweep of fleur-de-lys leaves at the edge of the grove, dumping her tote and sinking to one knee in order to reach the strange foiled shape, the water breaking around her fingers.  Their immersion was arrested by her companion's grasp; he lifted her hand slowly and retrieved the shining object himself.  It proved a thin strip of beaten silver the size of her finger, pounded flat and still wearing the curving shapes struck by the mallet.  He shook his head.

“Don’t pick them up.” he confided to her surprise.  “It could be taken the wrong way.”  

Her questing gaze followed the shaded stream and picked out more of the eccentric treasure in the water, banked in silver shoals around the stones and half-buried in the doe-brown silt.  William ducked under the recumbent boughs that formed the skirts of a giant doyenne oak, its half-barked bole twisted down into a knotted, pachydermic mass under the vast weight of its canopy, roots arching from the mounds of bloomy moss like vast protean arms.  It had sprouted immemorially from a fissure in the hillside, sharing this obscure nascence with the stream, the water sliding, glasslike, between its buttresses in making its way from the glade.  The silver tokens gleamed untarnished on the lowest branches, some half-eaten by the swelling bark since their dedication, others having fallen, or been thrown, into the spring, where they lay undisturbed as though coalesced from the water’s own silky, argent qualities.  Daylight filtered through the weary leaves; she closed her eyes against its random fulmination, too conscious of the volume of her voice beneath the branches to question him.  He had sat down in the leaves and pushed an arm into her pack, producing a little bar of hotel soap and flipping it toward her.

“I can’t.” Susan whispered.  “I feel... like someone’s watching.”
"We are." he sighed, lying down with an arm beneath his head.  When she stood unmoving, he sighed again and rose, kicking off his trousers and walking past her into the waist-deep spring at the foot of the tree.  She began to unlace her boots.
“When do you think people stopped coming here?” 
“Can't tell... old ways die hard.”
“Why silver?”
"Trees don’t like gold.”

She pulled her T-shirt over her head and gazed down at the pendant that lay almost forgotten around her neck, holding it up to him with a smile that he returned, laying his head on a stone at the edge of the pool and regarding her from under somnolent lids, eyes borrowing the colours of the fallen leaves beside him.  

"What would happen if we didn't have any silver?"
"Something terrible." he replied.  His attention slowed her hands on her underwear, the warm thoughts it confided conspiring with those that were already so insistent, the subtle, thaumaturgical persuasion recalling the earth against her back and his tireless flesh inside her own.  
"Has no one ever tried to burn you at the stake?” she chuckled, the pool swaying as he made room for her.  She dropped into the water like a stone; its cold knocked the breath from her lungs, chasing her out, and she stood, clutching arms to her chest while it ran from her into the moss underfoot.  His gaze stroked her like the back of a hand and she looked down over her shoulder at him, hair dripping as she lowered herself onto her hands and knees at the edge of the spring.  She found the winter-blue flavour of the water in the cool depths of his mouth, leaning over the pool in an invitation that drew him from it, then throwing him onto the ground, smoothing her face over his skin in an avid and ravenous transport.  On her back, the sinuous weight of his body devolved to her own and spread through her bones like sunlight soaking into stone.  At first his ardour required nothing more from her than the perfect abandon of receipt, and she lay with her arms thrown to the ground in wordless, irradiant delight, while he spoke in the floating words of his own tongue and sucked pink circles to the damp skin of her neck and breasts.  She closed an arm around him and pushed him onto his side, where he drew her thigh over himself, slowing in accordance with the indolent details of her kiss.  She spoke in the small, rose-red space between them, her eyes closed.

“Getting off the plane I thought... I’m in this strange place, with no money, nothing... but all I could think about was dragging you into the bushes and fucking you stupidly.  I’m turning into a knickerless sex addict.”
"Admitting you have a problem is the first step."

She laughed, her hand sliding over his eyes so that he could not see where she employed the other; he consented in deference to her relict modesty, though all such reticence proved temporary and he moved to satisfy her whispered urging, turning onto his back and exclaiming at the slow roll of her hips.  Their soft, cushioned width welcomed his hands and he rose with their slide from her waist to her breasts, their velvet skin scattered with tea-coloured freckles where the sun had strayed through the fabric of her summer dresses.  She closed an arm around him, legs shuddering beneath her as she dropped into silent freefall, her breath as warm as afternoon upon his neck as her chin settled on his shoulder.

He lay back with her amid the roots of the oak, her slow return immeasurably sweetened by the hand he stroked over her spine, sensation looping outward through her buried, glowing courses and circling inside her chest.  When he moved again in her the pleasure had suffused and shifted deeper, like imbued opiates, his love of her flesh recounted on his face like an offering in kind.

The tiny loaf of honeysuckle soap was such a rude intruder into the harmonies of scent and hue beneath the trees that Susan almost returned it to her pack, reluctant to apply its bland, industrialized smell to her skin.  William caught her hand at the edge of the spring and sucked the ring from her finger, flipping it into the water on her behalf before climbing into his trousers.  

“Am I the only one who has to tip?” she complained, eyeing him suspiciously.  “Because there’s something about this place that makes me feel as though you know the manager.”
"I'm a hillbilly, not a treehumper." 
“Well, they’ve gotten their money’s worth.”  While she spoke the youngest branches overhead began to move as though with a shift in the breeze, the disturbance expressed in the shimmer of their ornamenting silver.  Looking up at them, she shook her head and began a cursory ablution while he backed out of the grove and studied the open sky.  “How many girls in three weeks?" she called.  "And don't say none.”
“There’s not a Susan Christabel in Baku who can walk straight.”  
"Gideon said you were a crap liar."
"Slut kryptonite, poupée.  I couldn't pass it around now, even if I wanted to.  How many times did you think about Heathrow?”  
“Never.” she laughed.  "I told you, I've got cock on the brain.  Aren't we supposed to be meeting your brother somewhere?"

He grimaced and clapped his teeth together as he stepped back under the tree.   

“Alas, the er, booty call of the wild seems to have erm... taken precedence..."
“How far uphill is this place, because at the moment I just want a cup of tea and a lie down.”  
“Christabel... you’re practically jailbait.  Where’s your l'exubérance de la jeunesse?"  She draped the length of her lime-green tramping towel over her head and lit the cigarette dangling from her lip as she scowled at him, squinting with one eye.

“I have an old soul.  It's dragging its arse on the ground."

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

We reside beside the sea and enjoy taxidermy, and if our lives or at least our collective bent could be expressed in a single intersection, stuffed fish wouldn't be too bad a choice.  Piscine taxidermy has always intrigued; I am leery of penetrating its silvery mysteries but still the question remains- is that fish skin or are they just from-scratch reproductions?  

Blink once for yes.     

BELOW: ANTICLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT  Puffer fish have everything sorted.  Fuck with them and they'll inflate themselves to 10 xs life size and then what, fool?  Exactly.  As fugu, they can send you into comprehensive paralysis if you eat them after your chef has argued with his jump-off on the phone while gutting their slippery little carcasses, courtesy of tetrodotoxin.  NEXT  I think this is an orange roughy. 

CENTRE  This is a juvenile Dealfish, the Oarfish's less glamorous cousin.  You know- one of those 'seas monster' fish that get dragged from the shallows by hooting mouthbreathers convinced of their status as plesiosaur and/or herald of the Rapture. Someone always immortalises that shit on the front page of the local rag between accounts of youths smoking drugs/fornicating in sand dunes and Councilor X denying reports he ever supplied methamphetamines to youths during parties at his summer house in return for sexual favours because he's a highly-respected member of the community and regularly plays golf with a lot of those teenagers' parents.  BELOW RIGHT A gurnard, I presume, although they're not this lurid in life.  Gurnard are beautiful both inside and out, particularly in beer batter. 

ABOVE  The actual Oarfish, which do tend to wash up into the shallows throughout Otago and end up in the meaty paws of passing mouthbreathers (see above).  Their flesh is apparently gelatinous and unappetising but who the fuck eats an Oarfish?

Apologia: some of these images are a wee bit out of focus but the light sucked, we didn't have a tripod and the place was swarming with unsupervised juveniles; blame the parents.

I might have been the most stunning hominid that particular Cypselurus pinnatibarbatus had ever laid eyes on. Or I might just have been slightly less evil than a spanish mackerel, slightly more evil than a moonfish. 

BELOW  This is a moonfish.  I love the moonfish per se and this image, which I cannot stop using in the sidebar.  

Very occasionally some dickhead will manage to get a Marlin's bill stuck in them somewhere- social Darwinism, righteous karmic effectuation or mere arbitrary thermodynamic exposition?  I like them all but favour the first option closely followed by the second because of values best expressed in the equation Marlin > dickhead.   

Took this around Back Beach the other day.  

Something so prickly morphing into something this silky has an analogue in people, I have found.
Biters sometimes become purrers, if you are patient.  And if you stroke them the right way.

Wolf Hall. There's been so much breathless wank in the press about this fucking series that I almost couldn't bring myself to watch it.  We both hate trying to make something out through three crusty kilos of critical cumshots so my opinion may be a little jaundiced, but here 'tis- I sat happily enough through Wolf Hall without being swept off my evaluative feet.  The Lovely R was a bit more impressed and his opinion might be a little closer to the general consensus which means he's probably wrong.  

Oh don't listen to me; it was good enough.  Not overlit, which is one of our screaming pet hates in regard to period pieces.  There was a refreshing lack of visible genitalia.  They cast some actual Holbein-looking mofos instead of stuffing 16th C England with porn boobs and overplucking twinks and let Damien Lewis be as ginger as a tyre fire viewed through a handful of prawn shells.  The BBC did great things with what looked like two darn rugs (I have a beady eye for migrating props- see if you can spot the one I'm talking about) and a modest quantity of recycled stoat.

Despite its noble tilt at the fluff and cheese that passes for adult viewing these days, sobriety isn't synonymous with beyond reproach.  The uneven dialogue doth poke one in the taint from time to time.  It is sometimes boringly repetitive.  And still with the chicks being tragic frockstuffing and/or nutty cockwallets, despite an historical record that indicates their rather extensive political engagement and brilliant interpersonal machinations in a system designed to atomise them at the drop of a few choice words.  I agree with Schama (for once, lol) that Cromwell was much more of a snaky prick than is represented therein because we are what we do, his deeds were recorded by a wide variety of sources and lo, they be fucked, by and large.

Come on now.  That she played H8 so long in the chaos of his emergence as a vicious high-functioning loon should earn her more than the shallow, one-sided shrift she gets in Wolf Hall.  
Anne is the boss golem of internalised misogyny.  

But you know she'd bust some sick moves to this shit here.

Because we don't have to shovel it :)   See them  H E R E

Someone had long ago dumped white paint over the boulder marking the end of the airstrip in one of the few measures ever taken to improve its safety, the great stone having rolled down from the steep, spruce-clothed hill behind it of its own accord.  A dozen winters had diminished that limited utility and the Ilyushin aircraft jogged to a halt with a few short metres to spare, its vodka-numbed pilots throwing off the freight webbing that secured them and lurching down the cluttered aisle in their determination to precede their passengers from the vehicle.  Susan leant back in her seat and clutched her bag to her stomach in her relief, despite the crowd of migrant workers and furloughed mercenaries that jostled her, the former encumbered with tightly-strapped shopping bags full of children’s gifts, cartons of cigarettes and other dutiful remittance, the latter entirely unconcerned with her opinion of their spatial entitlement, stinking of Black Sea devushkas and counterfeit cologne.  She waited for them to struggle to their feet while two youths in oversized fatigues pushed a painting ladder wired to a mechanic’s dolly from the shipping container that served as both cargo bay and terminal.  They begged cigarettes from the pilots; when the plane had emptied, she dragged her pack from the floor and braved the ladder on her own, tossing her bags down onto the dirt and refusing the boys who offered themselves as bearers.  Her voice attracted the frowning notice of the contractors still within earshot, and they questioned each other tersely in regard to her as they walked away.

Beyond the shipping container sat a group of small lorries and utilities daubed with house paint, waiting in phlegmatic silence for the inbound men, representing the human presence absent from the view through her dirty window during their descent.  She discerned at a glance that none of the vehicles were intended for her; several of her fellow passengers looked back at her solitary presence on the runway, even more suspicious of her in retrospect.  Susan turned from their scowls and sat down on her pack, contenting herself with a view of the hills.  

The wind in her ears began to replace the ghosting sound of the propellors that had laboured alongside her, sweeping the smell of mist and unfamiliar trees along the ground, the two elements crowding the walls of the valley around her and the sky overhead.  Her water bottle tasted stale and clunked as she squeezed it idly, loathe to empty it onto the gravel for fear of the local alternative.  A glance toward the mare-grey sun informed her that it was already midway through the afternoon.  From her mirrored tote she took some care to extract a fresh fig, angelica-green and rose-blushed, still immured in its fluted skirt of cellophane; it had suffered a degree of lateral compression but remained the voluptuous Parisian speciality that had attracted her forty eight hours before.  The smell of Gideon’s laundry puffed up from her collar as she zipped her parka closed, the austere, masculine elements of lavendin evoking a regret that surprised her.  By the time her gaze had wandered back toward the container, the trucks had pulled away and disappeared into the trees that seemed bent on reclaiming the airstrip, rendering her its sole occupant.  Though she could not have imagined William standing patiently amid the rustic vehicles, his absence was difficult to rationalize, given the painstaking detail of her itinerary.  She tapped her toes inside her boots and leant over, scuffing a hole into the quartzite gravel until her shadow stretched out along the ground at some exotic behest, replacing her shape with another.  Its owner looked down on her with a smile.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked.

“Twelve.” Susan replied, her own smile opening into an astonished peal of laughter as William walked around her.  He stood in a narrow, long-sleeved shirt of stiff, featureless khaki, buttoned to the throat and tucked into the high waist of his army-issue trousers, hair reduced to a neat black crop by a recent and complete depilation; he took a plastic comb from his pocket, smoothed it conscientiously and performed a short robot break.  The sight of him so dismayed her for a moment that she could frame no meaningful response as she accepted his embrace.  “My god, what do you look like?” she exclaimed.  Half-forgotten in her grasp, the gift she had so carefully husbanded crinkled in its wrapping beneath his ear, and she slid down with it, shaking her head.

“Christabel... you give a fig.” he laughed.

“That’s all the way from Paris on flying shitboxes, so don’t... eat it all at once...” she sighed, to no effect.  He stuffed the cellophane into his pocket.
"Sorry about the ride... now you can say you survived not just any dodgy old Crate, but one that should have been parted out ten years ago... come on, that’s rock and roll.”  
“It was five hours of sausage-breath and wet farts.  What happened to you?”
“I’m in disguise.  This is eastern Europe, baby...” he said, patting his waist.  “Belts aren’t just for knocking the attitude out of your childbride, and midnite madder is for ladies." 
“Undo the top button before I fucking choke to death.” Susan complained.  He exhaled heavily, sagging from his affected posture and dragging his shirt from the waist of his pants, forcing them down on his hips and stooping to pick up her backpack.  “Those horrible XYY dicks on the plane have been looking at me the wrong way since Odessa.  I nearly had a bloody heart attack when we landed there... I could have come straight from Frankfurt, you know.”  They walked together past the container and into a dirt-paved clearing that served as a car park amid the scuffed trunks.  “Is this really Romania?”

He shrugged.

“This bit still is.  Think those army guys were onto you?”

She shrugged.

“I wouldn't really know.”  They stood enjoying the sight of each other, his smile reinstating her own and she seized him again, grasping his rump and sighing against his chest.  "My god I missed you.  You have no idea."
"I've got plenty fucking idea.  If I could have made Kala'amātya put on a dress and nag me at gunpoint, I would have."  A filthy green dirt bike stood against a tree in the dead grass at the edge of the clearing and he led her to it, her pack dangling from his arm.  “We’re going through town, so you should probably change, and keep that on...” he advised, nodding at the helmet on the back of the bike.  She stared, lips moving slowly as they formed unspoken words, her gaze making several involved passes over his person, at which William smiled again, half-uncertainly, and set down her bag. 

“I'd almost forgotten." Susan admitted, addressing her own preoccupation obliquely.  "I should... have a wee.”  She carried her distraction into the trees while he sat down on the bike.   
“How was Gideon?”  
“Fantastic.  Great cook... knows the filthiest jokes... taught me how to bone a pheasant...”
“You’re lucky.  All I got at Chateau Aubergine was alcoholic poisoning... and a few pearl necklaces...”
"Thanks for that." she groaned.  "To tell you the truth I was quite surprised by his gigantic penis, but then you never really know what you’re going to get, do you?  And Étienne... I think I could watch somebody spraying him with a hose all day.” she confessed as she emerged.  
“So that was an I fucked a French guy fig...”
“He only asked three times, and he was just being polite."  The breeze swept the sweetly green scent of his skin back to her beneath the powdery smell of his virgin army surplus, making her reluctant to pull the helmet over her head.  Climbing onto the seat behind him she shuffled forward, setting her bag in her lap and granting her hands the freedom they so desired, reaching up to stroke his head with both.  His shoulders flexed in appreciation of the gesture, and she spoke softly.  "Now I can see your neck... I’ll be at you all the time.” 
"And all I had to do was go away and get a haircut."
"Why did you take so long to send for me?”
“I wanted to give you a chance to go home... then I was too scared to find out if you had."  William stood up to kick start the bike and she passed her arms under his own.

The tree-lined trail had been so deeply rutted by trucks that he was forced to pilot them along its narrow verge, the shadows flicking past her eyes while she held on to his belt.  The view through the shade of her helmet scarcely exaggerated the tea-stained patina of the trees crowding tightly around the hovels set back from their route, half of them derelict, looking like the basis for some baleful nursery tale with their steep roofs and tiny, heavy-browed windows, stacked to their chins with stove wood.  Christmas red and green had curled and flaked from their weathered flourishes; women bowed by age and heavy labour sat on the steps of their porches slicing the product of their gardens into bowls of cold well water, slim wheaten dogs lying beside them in a shared appreciation of what little warmth the afternoon could spare.  They came to a lean vein of village, the houses butting the stricken tarmac like boats about a wharf.  Two bunker-like concrete structures formed depressing nuclei, one selling the various staples of rural life alongside bales of smuggled and traded luxuries, the other staffed by the region’s disgraced daughters, making desultory offer of the local liquors and their indifferent persons.  Masculine idlers clustered outside, the gazes shaded by felt hats following the bike as it wove between sluggish clots of local vehicles.  The faces blurred as their figures receded; William slowed as they cleared the edge of the town and she pushed back her visor, raising her voice over his shoulder.

“Everyone looks pissed off.”

“Communism, now capitalism, run by cannibals." he called.

“Where are we going?”  He nodded toward the forest that rose over the northern edge of the village on the shoulder of a foothill, its conifers enlivened by the rusted and golden heads of beech and alder.

At the end of the bike’s ability to negotiate the goat tracks winding up into the wood, William killed the motor and put out both feet to steady them on the uncomfortable slope.  She slid down into a fern-swathed hollow and stood watching while he lifted the machine from the track and dumped it against the hillside, climbing a little way then returning with a rifle on his shoulder and a shopping bag, from which he shook out a square of green tarpaulin.

“It’ll grow back.” he promised, conscious of her attention to his head.  She watched him cover the bike with the plastic and set dead branches over its narrow shape, looking as though he had absconded from the ranks of some eldritch militia.  William held up two flat packets bearing pictures of slightly differing single-berth tents, one camouflage print, the other plain green.  “Ladies’ choice.”

“I hate those things.  They’re like sitting in a bloody jiffy bag.” Susan complained.  “Camo, I suppose, and do not joke about pitching one in any way.”  Disappointed, he hid the rejected item beneath the tarpaulin, handing her the firearm.  Taking the slope at a run, he swung up into one of the alders and climbed to a vantage that offered a view of the valley below toward the distant airstrip.  

“It’s loaded and I took the safety out so don’t... you know... floss with it.” he told her in regard to the weapon, swinging down when he was satisfied they were not followed.

“How far are we going?”  The sight of his gaze wending away prompted her to shake her head.  “Don’t give me a gun and then decide to be vague.  Where's your brother?”

“Around here somewhere...”  William sat down in the bracken and unlaced his boots, blessing their removal before hoisting her pack once more on his shoulders.  “Today there’s just this hill to get over, and maybe an hour up another valley.  We won’t see anyone so it should be cool.  What?”  She said nothing; he lit a cigarette and threw the packet back to her, shrugging.  “Three weeks with werewolves would make me cranky too.” he conceded.

"Ferme ta... C'est des... was it... conneries?" Susan sighed.  "Merde.  I learnt so much swearing and now it's gone."  She swung the rifle around toward him and lowered her eye to its sight.  "Never mind."




The cool gloom against her face was damp and clean and perfumed by both the brand new fabric of her tent and the spruce needles pressed flat beneath her sleeping bag.  Her breathing sounded loudly in the close confines; Susan yawned and crawled through the narrow flap to stand on the gentle slope amid the trees, gazing down upon a deer trail barely wider than her hand.  One of its creators had lain down and died in the hollow and left an elegant skull to the elements, its antlers pitched sideways, pearled tines half-buried in the clay, and she was more than pleased to share its pellucid grave in the bell-like silence.  William had left no sign of himself nor indication of his intentions and she looked both ways along the curving track.  The sun might have climbed over the horizon behind the modest stand of intervening mountains, but the sky lay dormant behind drifts of cloud.  

White feet descended from the branch overhead, their long toes venturing into her tangled hair, and she hunched and grimaced as they found the warm edges of her ears.  A bar of Swiss chocolate wrapped in gilded paper fell from the tree and bounced at her feet.

“If this was Gévaudan, that would be a full English, with chorizos and mushrooms and fried tomatoes and basil and relish, and amazing coffee.  And croissants.” Susan remarked, turning to see him sitting on a narrow limb with his rifle beside him.  "Aren't you going to say anything about sausages?  Sausages in the morning?"  The black hood of his sweatshirt framed his smile but he demurred.  She sat on a thick mat of needles and bit a corner from the chocolate while he slid down to stand with his back to the sky; a pale volley of bleating fowl beat heavily out of the north and passed behind his look of dubious inquiry.  

“So... how much do you hate this already?”
“I don’t hate it.  It’s nice and quiet.”
“So's Gévaudan.”
“This is peaceful quiet.  At Gideon's there were more looks and unexplained black eyes than on the bloody bus at four in the morning."  She wrapped up the chocolate and threw it back to him.  “Hide that or I'll eat it all.  If I didn’t want to be here I wouldn’t have gotten on that vintage death bucket in the first place, but I've found out that I will travel for cock, alright?  Now I even sound like you.”  Susan walked with him to the tent and watched him let down its spidery framework.  “I was wrong about that thing... it’s not like sleeping in a jiffy bag, it’s like sleeping between two picnic plates taped together.” 
“Sexy.” he laughed.
“Claustrophobic.” she assured him, stooping to gather her sleeping bag.  “And there’d better be water around here somewhere because I feel like... god, like a sweaty bumcrack.”

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

PREVIOUS CHAPTER NOW AVAILABLE TO READ ONSITE IN ITS ENTIRETY

actegratuit / ithankthevirgin

I don't get any bleeding into lines, even on a bare mouth.  To summarise: in a lot of poorly exposed/cameraphone shots, Photo can look like that deep milky neutral you may have been after, but if that's your aim, go for MAC Del Rio or Nars Walkyrie Velvet Matte, because this shiz is straight-up unapologetic brown and that's... well, not for everyone.  

I know I'm going to regret saying this in about oh... two months' time, but bloody hell I am well over summer, especially the kind of late summer weather that drags on into autumn down here.  Sick of the still enough UV to burn you days, sick of too hot for blankets/too cool for just sheets nights, sick of the groggy worn-out arsehole little bushflies that invade and settle on everything whenever you open the windows, sick of the zit-o-genic humidity.  I hate the way this weather fucks with my popcorn yield.  Autumn needs to get off my lawn and we're only half a month into it.  Be winter, or GTFO.

This week in music- Portishead, Only You.  Love it but it fucks me up every time, to the extent that I can only tolerate it in summer when it doesn't collude with any seasonal affective bullshit.  I've learnt this the hard way about a number of things that are dear to me.  This is the Roseland live version (I apologise in advance for all the industry douchebags in the crowd here) because the awesome Chris Cunningham video isn't on Youtube, fuck it all. 
You can see it on Vimeo, though.  It's worth a look if you haven't already.

I love the way Beth holds herself.  She makes me believe.

Been staring at this composition for years now without ever actually seeing what I was looking at.
Seeing is almost everything.  

I love cameras.

Frost settled on the Paint Horse Trailer Park and its environs, lacing sagging awnings and the flat roofs of immobile mobile homes at the death of twilight.  Dogs sheltered in shuffling huddles at the feet of faded tin walls while pregnant women chainsmoked in doorways, their sour, shiny faces limned by light thrown down from lamp posts.  Trent’s narrow trailer had been his home for the decade that had passed since his surrender of the marital house to his former wife and her store clerk boyfriend.  Its low structure was a powdery, flaking white without and paneled with bowed faux wood within; the sink was buried in dishes grown pungent with neglect, but a tall pile of khaki tottered on the olive velour bench beside the TV table, folded conscientiously.  The glare from the street outside invaded through small barred apertures like stripes of poisoned vapour.  A clicking fan unit circulated overheated air; Trent lay slumped before the television, a dying joint hanging from his parched lip, ash sifting onto his chequered shirt.  

The park was quiet save for sporadic canine yapping and the canned laughter accompanying the shifting glow of stolen cable programming.  The insects inhabiting the grass alongside the asphalt no longer sang, quieted by the premature cold.  To Trent, their silence was a deep relief, their shrilling recalling such kindred songs from distant lands as he did not care to remember.  Despite their abeyance he had drifted into sleep amid visions of purpuric equatorial sunsets, in which the heads of forest palms thrashed in the draft of a descending helicopter as he leant out over its skids, staring downward into rippling, lukewarm darkness.

The water he was dropped into rose waist-high, thick with coffee-hued silt and jungle leaves, hemmed by rafts of water hyacinth.  He lifted his rifle clear of the river and began to wade against the sluggish current, surrounded by the burps and growls of invisible amphibians.  His captain was dropped into point upstream; he waited for him to turn and beckon before falling in at the designated distance.  The monsoon had poured the river out over its banks into the forest beyond, creating a vast, serpentine marsh plumed with the twining dragon shapes of rattan, moonlight fractured on their drooping fronds.  Long after dark the heat lay febrile over the water, heavy with the ferrous stink of living mud and fermenting leaves and choked with mosquitoes, whining in both his ears and blundering into every orifice.  He shook them from his head and waded onward, ducking branches, marking the shaggy garland of foliage that decked his leader’s helmet.  

Trent ran screeds of aerial photography through his head, dismayed to find no convincing correlations in his viscid surrounds; cutting across an oxbow in his haste, he stepped into a sinkhole, the water rising suddenly past his chin.  The log spanning the channel offered no assistance, dead bark coming away in his hands like rotted flesh as he grasped it, seeking elusive purchase underfoot.

“Sounds like you’re giving it to a fucking buffalo back here.” his leader hissed, teeth gleaming in his darkly-greased face as he dragged Trent from the hollow.
“This’s bullshit... we got the wrong fuckin ditch.” the latter murmured, climbing up onto the spongy bank.  “Nothin round here makes sense... we bug out now and go back d...”
“The intel’s the size of your mom's dick... sustained activity, one click north.”
“Who gives a fuck if someone’s bagging up old gook shit out there?” 
“One click north, so find your balls and fall in, asshole.”

Allowing his leader to drift too far ahead seemed like a tiny, crippled victory while he shoved through a guard of olive bamboo.  Looking back, he glimpsed an ordered shape amid the undergrowth, lifting the canes to reveal a carved stone block stained black by the water.  The curling feet of some clawed, half-avian figure confirmed their entry into the decrepit temple precinct that had inspired the speculative deviation from their martial purpose; he shook his head again, spat on the toppled block and turned upstream.  

A lone night heron voiced its croaking discontent.  The loss of contact with his captain perturbed him until he discovered the latter’s garlanded silhouette poised on a fallen teak spanning the channel.  He paused, awaiting instruction, and was rewarded with a manual direction; a ripple curved around his waist as he complied, moving further out into the river, his captain beckoning him toward himself and directly into another unseen hole.  Trent gasped and thrust his rifle over his head as he went under, sleighed out into the depths by sucking, sloping mud.  Through flooded eyes he saw his companion as a black blur upon the teak, overlaid again by shifting clouds of insects, relinquishing his rifle and coughing out a half-drowned call for help.  Upon the distant tree the figure looked down into the water, inclining its head in a moment that slowed Trent’s struggle until only the sound of his own laboured breathing scored its fluid descent from the bole; it was eaten wholly by the river, garlanded helmet drifting slowly downstream toward him.

The river flattened out like silk, welling against his legs and torso while he wrenched his boots free and was swept under, only to rise again some distance from the immuring hole.  He gasped, shadows lying heavy in his eyes, the river shaping his clothes against his body.  His breath rattled in his chest as he rolled and stroked downstream, glancing over his shoulder; something brushed against his thigh and he cried out, whirling backward into the fallen log that had impeded him before.  Bracing against it, his feet finding the bottom, he stood wide-eyed while in the silence the mosquitoes settled, blanketing the open stretch before him.  The heron boomed again; he ran his hand down over his belt and service pistol but had not worked it free before his legs were seized and his head sucked down under the log.  

He passed out of consciousness briefly, the water closing over his face and his skull struck by a branch stub on the underside of the decaying tree.  The blow worked with the burning eternity of submersion to enfeeble him, so that he barely knew he had been dragged free of the river and thrown onto mud like a carp flung from a net.  He groaned, and was dealt a blow that left him senseless.

Water lapped at his boots when he stirred, finding himself lying beside his commander’s body in time to watch white hands grasping its collar.  They turned the blade of a hunting knife in a circumnavigation of its neck, a gesture of almost magical swiftness that robbed the corpse of its head and left it so diminished that it seemed smaller by half to Trent’s deranged perception.  The stump slopped blood into the silt, trimmed with a thin stripe of nape and wet hair.  Gleaming red, the curving blade returned, sliding low past Trent’s eyes while a creature slit the corpse's sleeveless khakis and stroked a hand down over them, fingers tuned to the shapes hidden in the sodden garments, glowing so coldly in the moonlight that Trent attributed their number to the damage he could feel at the back of his skull.  His head lolled as his own body was treated in the same manner, every utile item stripped and pitched into the river.  He lay waiting for the hands to find his collar, croaking as they did, gravity drawing bloodied bubbles from the corner of his mouth into his ear.  The knife bit into his neck so easily that he lay still even as the blade was halted on his stiff thews.  

He looked up at its face, at its slick black mane and the long, golden eyes that stared, not at him, but away to the south.  Dropping him to the mud, it rose, taller than seemed possible, like something stepped down from the stones of the forgotten temple, symmetry surviving the hallucinatory embellishments imposed by his panic and loathing.  Turned down river from the narrow bank, the creature stood as though it had been called from that direction.  Trent screwed his eyes closed against the sight of the black shapes on its back; they moved, and yet did not, writhing like flames in negative with the water in his eyes.  It gave a looping whistle that echoed across the river, then stepped back into the water, leaving the bodies where they had fallen.  Trent lay with his blood oozing in a warm pool about his shoulders for twenty minutes before a murky noise, becoming percussive, then a slash of blinding light that jumped the river restlessly aroused him, thudding downdraft sweeping the floating vegetation against the shore and whipping at the palms.  

The worst part of the dream, aside from its historical reality, was that it revolved instead of resolving in a cycle of unblinking renewal.  Sweat soaked the back of Trent’s shirt while he saw the dusk once more, and the heads of the tall palms thrashed wildly as he gazed down from the skids of a helicopter until his plunge into the river was derailed by the sharp sound of a fist upon a door.  With his dry tongue clicking against his mouth his hand came down on an attenuated shotgun, duct-taped to the wall beside his chair, and he rolled onto his feet.

Josephine glanced at the movement darkening the glass beside the trailer door and tipped back her trucker cap.  She wore a coverall, her hair tucked into its collar; Trent scowled, glanced over his shoulder and swore to himself before admitting her.

She stood back from the doorway once inside, allowing him to press it closed behind her, sealing off the sound of barking dogs and cussing drunks.  The dry stink of the trailer hit her hard but she put the blunt snout of her handgun to the back of his balding skull before he could read the silence.  The shots flashed white and dropped him onto a stripe of plastic carpet protector.  

Stepping over his trembling body, she held his lighter flame to the edge of the velour squab and turned the fan upon the hungry little ember, watching it eat busily into the foam.  His skin was softer than she had imagined as she felt for a pulse beside the crescent scar on the side of his neck, scraped by some blunt razor and smelling faintly of laundry soap.  His heart still throbbed chaotically; she stepped back and put another round between his shoulder blades.  

In the bitter darkness outside she jerked her weight against the door handle, testing the lock, and stooped to pitch the pistol beneath the trailer.

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

THIS CHAPTER NOW AVAILABLE TO READ ONSITE

Whiplash.  A gifted jazz drummer attempts to negotiate the demands of an American university studio band, battling his father’s deadweight legacy, his own expectations and the punishing whims of a dictatorial instructor.

It’s a familiar scenario and not the kind of thing I would usually drag myself across town to see due to prejudices I will presently enumerate, but then, you know… universal acclaim, etc etc.  Is it good?  Yes and I have little hesitation in conceding that.  Did it deserve all those award noms?  Yes, and here comes the caveat- because most of them were technical.  From a technical POV, Whiplash should have slurped up every darn gong going because the photography was primo and the cut and flow were dense with the elegance and dynamism essential to the successful communication of so many non-visual elements.  The thing is paced with the kind of brilliantly reactive, staccato precision you might expect from a gifted musician, testament to the obviously polymathic vision of Chazelle- he penned + directed this off the back of his own experiences- and the tightarse talent of his crew.  There is very little narrative flab and the arc is okay as far as its conventionality allows.  Whiplash is a slick and solid view, I doubt you’ll regret your investment in its 106m minutes and I say that as someone who fucking hates jazz (at least the kind pursued herein). 

However.  Whiplash also made me seriously want to vandalise a place of learning.  My personal reaction to a flying chair from a peremptory instructor would comprise immediate cabinetry-based escalation, and if your respect for the judgements and hierarchies of a creative establishment are as deficient as mine, you’re not going to come in your pants over the dynamics detailed here, despite the bilateral nature of the struggle.  

Andrew the percussive arsehole is well documented and probably honestly intended.  But arseholes are like flint; ubiquitous, and whilst you’ll sometimes get a spark from knocking two of them together, you might just have known one too many of the buggers (talented and otherwise) to really care about this Andrew or his piano bar bête noire.  The flipside of that is my enduring distaste for the popular artist-as-tortured-douchecanoe trope, pandering to audience expectation and nourishing destructive notions about the talented- that they are somehow infernal, that marginalisation and exploitation are their due and even their masochistic intent.  Every artist feels that blowback to some extent. I may be oversensitive about that shit, but fuck, whatever, man.  *flips desk and storms out*

Neither Teller’s nor Simmons’ performances moved my sympathy or insight needle, despite the feting they’ve both enjoyed, the latter in particular serving up the kind of watchful, slightly greasy polish that slid a little bit past apposite and a few feet into stock.  Luckily they did more than enough to shade out Paul Reiser's droopy dad, because that shit was a cheap blot on the proceedings and god, just horribly cheesy.  Melissa Benoist's girl-as-garnish bit part was shiny and engaging and may have been even moreso had she been given enough to work with.  Should have been born a dude, I suppose.

Pecking at something so roundly praised can sound like pure contrarianism but Whiplash really isn't a glistening nugget of spotless perfection and it falls to the sturdy independent reviewer to point that out.  If it was reaching for a wee bit of subversion in the midst of all those band aids and sweaty deference, it ended up punking out, and for the worst reason- a tidy denouement, the restoration of an equilibrium without ever seriously questioning the value of that balance.  Which is why I regard it as something lying a little south of brilliant.  It did make me sit through a fucking lengthy freestyle drum solo, though, and for that reason alone I look forward to Chazelle's future work.

'Nature in action in the city. Some things are simply a joy for no real reason at all. And that is just fine.'
Paul
Paul Kalbfleisch  (artunderus.tumblr.com)

I'd never grown them because they're so nana, but darn, the bulbs are so beautiful up close, covered in this amazing lacquer-like bronze and bruise-coloured parchment.  The ones I chose at the nursery turned out to be completely different colours to those promised, which led me to abandon my gladioli fancy in a fit of pique. They flower away regardless, turning up all peach and mauve (dry heaves) in the fullness of time.

There are worse things, I suppose.

Stopping the tourist driver and confiscating the keys of their rental vehicle has been trending here in New Zealand of late, driven by a local media more than willing to conflate statistics and stoke xenophobia in their search for relevance.  You probably won't hear about it overseas because hobbits, but yes, you read that first bit right and you should know about it if you're thinking of heading here on a driving holiday.  

Is tourist ineptitude and arrogance really a thing?  Fuck yes, and we've seen some horrific examples ourselves, but that same arrogant ineptitude is in evidence every. fucking. day. from local arseclowns.  Our accident stats testify on their behalf.

We drive on the left.  New Zealand's roads are narrow and often dangerously substandard with sparse, confusing signage, unposted surface changes and challenging topography.  New Zealand drivers are an often unsophisticated and pretty passive-aggressive cohort seething with hostility toward cyclists, pedestrians, (our virtually nonexistent) public transport and anyone doing .5 of a click below the prevailing speed limit.  Travel at anything less than 100 kph on the open road and in the minds of a scary percentage of your fellow vehicle operators you're a dangerously incompetent aged homosexual/female/Asian.  Luckily you're surrounded by right-thinking bravehearts who'll manfully overtake you, on a blind corner if they have to, for the sake of freedom and personal responsibility.  These same fuckwits corner and strand 'tourists' (almost always Asians in campervans or rental cars) for the kind of shit they perpetrate themselves and then declaim- so modestly and for the general good- on social media, to the edification of the renowned thinkers and ethicists so heavily represented on Facebook.  Problem solved, one foreigner at a time.

But when it comes to shitty driving, New Zealanders need to sit down and shut the fuck up, because we're a bunch of half-competent pricks behind the wheel, too.  Half-competent and racist, apparently.

That felt good.  I love blogging.  You can get that shit right off your chest and make a bunch of trolls sizzle.   More people should try it :) 

Speaking of trolls, here's some Pixies.  I always felt like Frank was trolling the fuck out of everyone with this stuff and it made me mad at him at first.  Buuuuut I got older and looser.  Hey is one of my favourite things and gets sung against its will in the shower all the time (chaiiiined ch-a-aaaained cha-aaaaaay-ahaaaained chained)  and it's one of the few bass parts I can play... well, not well, but um you know... at all.  
Wish there was a video.  The fan-made ones are shite.

Enjoy your week.  No idea what I'll be posting but you'll be the first to know, boo.

While I could never wear or sanction non-vintage fur (it was present, but nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is everywhere else this year), this was a really beautiful collection, luxe and slightly fucked up without being vulgar.
The peacock dresses um num num num num.
See it in the NYT  H E R E