Alleys
“Consider the nature of a city. It is a vast repository of time, the discarded times of all the men and women who have lived, worked, dreamed and died in the streets which grow like a willfully organic thing, unfurl like petals of a mired rose and yet lack evanescence so entirely that they preserve the past in haphazard layers, so this alley is old while the avenue that runs beside it is newly built but nevertheless has been built over the deep-down, dead-in-the-ground relics of the older, perhaps the original, huddle of alleys which germinated the entire quarter.”
– Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Yesterday I Might Have Made a Joke and Other Stuff
Yesterday I was at the beach. A lovely place, it overlooks a giant steam-spewing steel mill. They light it up with neon at night. When the flames shoot out it looks just like Bladerunner. Someone I had never met before was telling a story about someone I didn’t know.
Guy: He’s like Daniel Craig if Daniel Craig was a pale fat Canadian…
Me: So like if Daniel Craig looked more like John Candy?
Guy: Yeah.
At some point later I ended up filling out Driver Safety Evaluation forms for Hyundai. (The person was supposed to have done them during a business trip but didn’t, though judging from the questions I can imagine truck drivers didn’t want to bother.) I’ve never had a driver’s license in my life and have been behind the wheel of a car on less than five occasions. The best part was making up the names to put on the forms. After that I made sure my handwriting was as illegible as possible.
Don’t blame me if/when your car bursts into flames.
Shimmer Magazine posted question two in their Five Authors/Five Questions series:
“How do you go about choosing a title for the story? Do titles present themselves before the work begins, or when it’s complete?”
Yesterweird 