Taken in October of 2013 in Delhi
DAILY PHOTO: Jama Masjid, Delhi
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Author Archives: B Gourley
POEM: Baudrillard’s World
What’s it take to turn a symbol into something which is something [rather than symbolic of something?]
Treasuries turn high-rag paper and indelible ink into slips for which people will give one a shirt or a bicycle.
-Paper and pot metal as symbol of value
Admen turn color and font into a dollar more per kilo of a chemically-identical product. [The dollar can be used for someone’s ill-advised gas station hot dog.]
-Brand as symbol of value
Countries are defended by the potential to use weapons — not by their actual use.
-WMD as symbol of defense
Social media presents a lot of talking and the illusion of listening.
-Screaming into a dark forest as symbol of communication
Stories and verse get turned into potent chemical reactions in the body.
-Vicarious living as symbol of living
The letters of this post are symbolic of philosophy, which — in turn — is symbolic of something meaningful, which — in turn –… which — in turn –… which — in turn–…
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POEM: Fantastical Forest
Rounding a mountain forest trail
from lee to the wet side,
I walk amid mossy branches
draped thick enough to hide
an ogre, troll, or a dark elf —
let ‘lone the old oak’s eyes.
So many hidden paths diverge,
and me without a guide.
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DAILY PHOTO: Ridges, Himachal Pradesh
Taken in June of 2015 in the Great Himalayan National Park
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POEM: Locusts Gone Biblical
Photo Source: Jonathan Hornung (via Wikipedia)
Locusts, you were supposed to come
after the hail-fire storm.
The winged-buses got ambitious
in their desire to swarm.
Of course, pestilence of livestock
queue-jumped the frogs and gnats,
but that’s just ’cause a few people
think livestock includes bats.
Maybe it’s too late for this chain
of disasters to work.
Perhaps, we should call them all off…
[cue “Three Days in the Dark”]
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DAILY PHOTO: Two Views from Inside Kalyana Mahal
DAILY PHOTO: Backwater Birds
POEM: Hypnagogia
I lie falling asleep —
purple Rorschach blobs
forming,
transforming,
& unforming
on the black field of my inner eyelids.
The veneer of reality felt thinner,
but my efforts to poke a finger through
shoved me back into the warm, soft reality of my bed.
[I’d so wanted to “Here’s Johnny!” my way into
an alternate dimension.]
And, once more, I’m a prisoner to reflexes
that snatch away subtle worlds.
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BOOK REVIEW: 30 Days of Night, Vol. 1 by Steve Niles
30 Days of Night, Vol. 1 by Steve Niles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This story takes the run-of-the-mill vampire tale into more chilling territory by setting it in Barrow (a town on the northern end of Alaska that sits within the Arctic Circle) in the dead of winter when weeks pass without sunlight. The vampires, thus, figure they have a month to feed without having to hide from the light, or risk being staked to death in their sleep.
On the day of Barrow’s final sunset of the year, the Vampires send in a scout to destroy all communications – starting by stealing and burning all of the residents’ cell phones. As I thought about this after reading, it was one of several points that strained credulity, but I have to say the visceral setup these people being trapped in darkness while being hunted kept me from being too skeptical at first reading. (I don’t know what cell service is like in Barrow but it seems like eliminating a tower would be more probable means of success than steeling a huge number of individual phones. To be fair, the scout does knock out the central communication hub as well, and maybe the reader psychology of being without personal communication (a cell phone) in the world we’ve grown accustomed to makes this course more intense – if absurd.)
The vampires, literally, chew through most of the population in short order. We do get some sense of the futile resistance put up by locals – particularly the protagonist and sheriff. [I would assume in a town like Barrow everyone over six-months-old possesses at least one firearm, and that likelihood is not disregarded, which makes the inconsequential resistance more chilling.] While the pacing feels slightly fast, it does get the scenario down to a manageable few to be hiding out together in a single building. (There is another major vein of strained credulity with regards to the people hiding out while maintaining core temperature, but – again – it was engrossing enough that I wasn’t much distracted at the time.)
I give the resolution high marks for being clever and gripping, but I will say that it felt to me like it unfolded too quickly and was too easy. I suspect that that may have to do with this being a serialized story. While I will say that the story is successfully wrapped up as a stand-alone arc (no mean feat as this is often a fail in serialized graphic novels or comic books,) the one eye toward setting up the continuing story arc may have contributed to this ending’s rushed feel. (Or maybe it was too much story for the allotted pages.)
I found this to be an intense and riveting read. If you like vampire horror, you’ll probably enjoy it.
