a creative-type exercise

ʿAtā was evil without reason. An invisible acid filled the void he created, eating away. ʿAtā freely and imaginatively practiced, and The Sorcerer considers him among the worst of all time just because he did not have to be.

For ʿAtā, standing next to Marut in the end was unbearable. Marut started burning the air in consumption. Just burning it into himself.

Another flip of the coin, and we would be sport for evil, evil for fun, evil for the purpose of sport.

 

Think about it. Think by rational numbers about that kind of evil in context to what the textbooks tell you. The logic of allowing it to live and those that built it to exist.

Can you put that evil into context? Not until you meet it from a non-linear perspective. Not until you realize the math inside the word. And not until Marut makes you understand what it means to be physically and mentally and arithmetically and literally evil.

 

about "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave"

Dracula, dying alone, gasping, clawing at the skies, clawing at the cross behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Hammer released "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" in 1968. I saw it when I was a little kid. This ending made an impression.

something about the novel "Dracula"

I saw and loved 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." The movie, as its name suggests, was supposed to stay true to the 1897 novel. It's pretty close!

And, still, I was pleasantly surprised recently as I read Dracula for the first time.

Stoker's way of telling the story through letters, diary entries, memos, notes, transcripts, and newspaper articles worked better than I expected. It provides instant insights into the the characters and gives the story a sense of motion and authenticity.

I noted some comparisons between the book and '92 movie.

In the book, Dracula proudly describes to Harker his bloodline's warrior tradition, repelling and waging insurgencies against invaders over the centuries. Now he seems contemptuous of peace. I enjoyed this part of the novel. The ’92 film acknowledges Dracula’s identity as a warrior but portrays him as a Crusader (while also inventing a fateful connection to Mina). Very few other depictions of the character ever hint at the Dracula warrior tradition.

I was surprised at how scary the original Dracula is. He makes the Christopher Lee/Hammer films' Draculas look pretty tame. The '92 film captures a lot of what is frightening about the monster. But it also makes him sympathetic—Mina loves him in the movie; in the book, aside from a moment of pity, she hates him.

I also enjoyed some of the prose. The novel has a few exceptionally beautiful descriptions of the outdoors (see below). I really enjoyed reading it.

I once heard that the novel Dracula was comment on a dying aristocracy, offering a kind of critique of the past, whereas Frankenstein expressed a fear of the future and technology. Dracula’s way of conducting business is pretty conspicuous in the novel—Dracula contracts directly with different service providers so that no single office or person knows what other business he has going. His hunters eventually realize this strategy helps Dracula avoid scrutiny. And there is a weird scene in which Harker slashes at Dracula, the vampire jumps back, and the knife rips Dracula’s pocket and he freaks out as a bunch of money and gold falls out. His hunters later even comment about how he must really love and need money.

Notes:

• I re-watched the film. Gary Oldman is perfection—the centuries-old lust that stirs when he scolds, "We Draculs have a right to be proud! What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?!" And then the derision when he regains composure, "Blood is too precious a thing in these times. The warlike days are over. The victories of my great race are but a tale to be told. I am the last of my kind."
• I noted that American actors Ryder and Reeves played British, and British actors Hopkins and Oldman played Dutch and Romanian. I also like that Dr. Seward is a secret morphine addict.
• Here are two examples of solid prose:
  

... I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road—a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of night.

• Second example:

The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.

 

Note: Dracula and vampires are ubiquitous in the culture; vampire hunters, too, get star treatment. For a while, though, zombies have been ascendant.

another version of October sunsets in Texas

My last night in Dallas, the setting sun's light breezed through the kitchen window. It was so familiar. I felt my heart twist as the late afternoon gold mixed with shadows, and then the last rays slipped past and ran fingers through the treetops.

 

 

Note: Original post at https://damonwrites.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-texas-sunsets-in-october.html

about a couple songs by a Salt Lake City thrash metal band

Deathblow throws a shoulder into the mosh pit with an early-1980s hardcore punk sound on “Rotten Trajectory,” the opening and titular track of the band’s new EP. This song re-energizes the sounds of Minor Threat and Circle Jerks with truly deft playing, especially the drums.

“Pounder” swaps punk for thrash, which is really Deathblow’s department. The song charges ahead. “Pounder” and “In Plain Sight,” the third and final song, follow the traditions of '80s thrash bands like D.R.I., Overkill, and even Slayer.

For 10 years, Salt Lake City’s Deathblow has thrown down a very denim and high-tops sound—raw and amped-up '80s hardcore traditions cherry-topped by some burning guitar solos. The new EP arrived September 29th via Sewer Mouth Records and is advertised as an “appetizer for the full metal meal coming in the near future!”

a scene from a story about me and Sadie

She said, “They remember you. They can’t have you around.”

“Am I in their mind? Are they screaming?”

Quantum memory attacks by throwing weapons or weapons-generated debris or explosions but memory is now entirely a machine-based phenomenon. Virus-aligned implants man the machine weapon.

I opened the door with force. “Did you know I was in here?,” she asked.

“I knew someone was. I hoped it was you.”

My legs started moving but it was too late. Purple shrapnel tears apart my body, and tearing righteously even once is me physically throwing power away. This sentence recreates an act of absolute public murder. So close to dead but not close enough—or too dead to me now to go on. But a man shape, still.

In her mind she was three different serial killers, one of which is still nameless, famous, and free.

something about "Cold Spring" Harbor by Richard Yates

Evan is a strapping but slightly dull young man; he lacks confidence, discipline, and ambition. At 24, he already has a failed marriage behind him. His father, Charles, a retired army officer, feels unfulfilled, having missed his chance to shine in the fighting of World War I and married to a long-suffering, self-isolating alcoholic.

Evan remarries, this time to Rachel, a nice young woman who lives with her mother, Gloria, a nervous divorcee and compulsive talker, and Phil, Rachel's cynical 15-year-old brother. Cold Spring Harbor, the final novel by the stellar American author Richard Yates, handles the tepid, incongruous relationships between the two small families and the constellation of characters that orbit them.

Yates' characters grow quietly desperate as they stumble down any path that might lead them to what's missing. They are stung by resentment and disappointment, seemingly doomed to forever reckon with the disconnect between reality and the life they had imagined. Sexist and patriarchal norms blossom in the foreground of this novel, which was published in 1986.

Here are two of my favorite passages. First, after the Army rejects him because of his perforated eardrums, Evan begins to worry about his social standing as America prepares to enter World War II:

Well, but still, other men were saying goodbye to their wives all over the world. Other men were caught up in a profoundly hazardous adventure now, unable to guess how long it might last and not even caring. None of them were ready to die but they all knew their death was entirely possible; that was what would invigorate every waking moment of their lives.

And when they came back, these other men—or when most of them did they would all have a decided advantage over Evan Shephard. They might look at him as if he were scarcely worth bothering with, the way the cops had looked at him the night he was booked for disorderly conduct. If they talked to him at all it would be in tones of condescension, rarely waiting to hear his replies. And whatever elaborate peaceful structures they might manage to build in the world, after the war, would always seem to be there for no other purpose than to shut him out.

One thing, therefore, was clear; they had better not find him like this. Evan Shephard was damned if they'd find him punching a factory time clock, fondling his thermos bottle of coffee and his little brown paper bag of lunch, doing mindless, underling things all day then driving home in an absurdly cheap old car to this absurdly expensive place.

And, later in the novel, Evan and his brother-in-law, Phil, set out on a driving lesson. It is a chance to bond; Evan has always loved driving, and Phil is a lonely teenager eager to mature. But the lesson fizzles out in frustration.

That was how the lesson went until darkness began to fall—nothing really taught, nothing really learned—and when Evan drove them silently home he appeared to be sulking, as though he'd been offended by the afternoon. It was clear now that there would be no further driving lessons unless Rachel could find some agreeable way of encouraging them; it seemed too, from the set of Evan's handsome profile, that he might now be thinking of ways to let her know, tonight, what a hopeless fucking idiot her brother was.

And Phil knew there might not be much profit or future in hating your brother-in-law, but that didn't mean you couldn't figure him out and see him plain. This dumb bastard would never get into college. This ignorant, inarticulate, car-driving son of a bitch would never even be promoted to a halfway decent job. This asshole was going to spend the rest of his life on the factory floor with all the other slobs, and it would serve him right. Fuck him.

Phil also imagined how his approaching chance to enter the service and the war would give him the advantage over blue-collar Evan.

Phil Drake might not be much bigger or heavier at eighteen, but he'd be stronger and smarter and hardly ever silly any more. Except for a few widely scattered Irving School boys there would be nobody to remember what a jerk he'd been, and so the army might be the making of him; it might be the time of his life. Just before going overseas he would come home on furlough, wearing a uniform that could only make Evan Shepard weak with envy, and he'd say "Well, how're things going at the plant, Evan?"

Or, to be fair, Evan might have found his way into some second-rate engineering school by then, years older than any of his classmates, with Rachel at some menial daily work to make ends meet. But even a line like "How's college, Evan?" would be good enough, coming from a soldier in wartime. It would take care of the situation; it would do the job.

I first read this book in May 2021 and then reread it in May 2022. It was even better the second time.