Triangle, Virginia
I got a spam phone call from Triangle, Virginia, and I was taken by the cold beancounter romanticism that name evokes; like Paris, Texas, but a place with concrete federal buildings and mildewed corners, rather than dry air and dead grass burned out in the sun.
If anyone happens to be in the UK: on Friday, Failed States, “a journal of indeterminate geographies,” is celebrating its third issue at The Chateau in South London. The event will include a performance of a short story I contributed. (That is an exciting sentence for me to type.) The editor reached out to me last year after coming across a little piece of experimental writing I published—a story, I didn't expect to find much of an audience, but was fun for me to write. A pleasant surprise. It was a great, encouraging experience, and I'm pleased with what's come out of it; and especially honored that my story should appear in a publication that is doing exciting things. The story is called The Newcomer. It's not online yet, but I'll share it when I can.
I wish I could make it. I also wish I could have made it to see North Bergen High School's production of Alien: The Play. Thankfully, there is video.
The most beautiful thing I read all week — Laura Gilpin's poem "The Two-Headed Calf" — I read courtesy of one of Vincent D'Onofrio reply-guys, retweeted into my feed. Sometimes it is good that the world is weird.
Another thing retweeted into my feed was the Netflix account sharing images from Logan's Run. This is the first time—as far as I know—that twitter advertising has worked on me. It has been years since I watched it and I forgot how gorgeous it is—or maybe the production design failed to pop on the crummy VHS copy I must have seen before. The corridors!!! There is an exquisite iridescent building in the first five minutes —a scale model, and obviously so—and it is worth watching just for the five second shot of the shimmering city. And the carousel scene is straight up wild. One of the wildest scenes in all of sci-fi cinema. It happens ten minutes in. The movie doesn't not waste time (which is appropriate, given the dystopian premise of mandated death by age 30.) Unfortunately, just as I remembered, I lost interested when the story kicked in. Still worth it for the pearly scale models. Just look at this:
Thanks for reading.