#me when i make another collection of vignettes instead of being a normal person and maybe writing a linear storyline

[nomazee]

what ppl don't tell you about writing is that it's half having zero ideas whatsoever and not knowing what to write & half having too many ideas and not knowing which ones to pick

[runawaymarbles]

Good omens fic rec

A Letter from “Crawly” to Azirapil by mostlydeadlanguages | 500 Words | G

This remarkable letter of unknown provenance surfaced recently in the cuneiform collection of the University of West Wessex. Addressed to Azirapil from a Mr. “Crawly,” it appears to be begging for the other’s return to Ur from a western journey with another individual, Abiraham. The relationship between the two (brothers? business partners? friends?) is unknown.

404 Email Not Found by Dacelin | 700 words | G

The first the Metatron knew about Armageddon was when Aziraphale contacted him to beg for it to be called off. Being a professional, the Metatron murmured soothing things about it all being part of the plan and rerouted the call elsewhere instead of admitting he had no idea what the principality was talking about.

my black eye casts no shadow by gyzym | 1.5k | Not Rated, probably M 

If you cut humanity to the quick, split it open, found its soul, it would have dark red hair and bright wild eyes.

So You Need To Get Into A.Z. Fell & Co.; Now What? (A Guide For Unfortunate Bookworms) by arkhamcycle | 1.8k | G

London’s antique enthusiasts and rare lit nerds alike know that if you’re looking for a specific vintage or antique book, you have a good chance of ending up in A.Z. Fell & Co. as a last resort. And if you’ve ever been in (or are currently in) this predicament, you know how much of an absolute nightmare it is trying to even get in the door. Luckily, this handy guide, the fruit of a months-long collaborative effort to create the perfect formula for gaming the A.Z. Fell system, will tell you everything you need to know, complete with a comprehensive breakdown of what, exactly, the opening hours are. Compiled by pageknight and inky of the Rare Antique Forums.

Quiet Light by drawlight | 2k | T |

There are rules. The trouble with hearts is that they play by none of them.

between the shadow and the soul by absopositivelutely | 2k | NR

(alternatively: it takes 6000 years for crowley to realize that aziraphale could love him too.)

i just happen to like apples (i am not afraid of snakes) by gyzym | 2k | Not Rated

Written for the following prompt: "Someone write me Crowley the bitter lesbian who only gave Eve the apple because she thought feminism should be there from day one." As such, please be warned that this story contains some fairly radical reinterpretations of Biblical stories and themes; if that sort of thing is not for you, please give this tale a pass.

Secret Agent Man by Emamel | 2.3k | G | 

Edward was very good at two things: noticing things, and not being noticed in return. It was the sort of qualities that made you a good spy. These two never got the memo.

Ten Fathoms Deep On the Road to Hell by BuggreAlleThis | 2.5k | G

Aziraphale is given an assignment as a Captain in the Royal Navy and finds life at sea miserable. Crowley, on the other hand, is having plenty of fun as the Captain of a motley pirate crew.

Untitled Goose Fic by rattatatosk | 3k | T

It's a lovely week in the South Downs, and Crowley is at war with a Horrible Goose.

Anthony J. Crowley, Retired Demon and Airbnb Superhost by TheOldAquarian | 3k | G 

What are you supposed to do when you've been fired from your sweet job in Hell for thwarting the schemes of Satan, you've got a swanky flat in Mayfair, and you're looking for an excuse to spend all your time in someone else's bookshop? Obviously, you turn to the dubious world of short-term vacation rentals. The resulting Airbnb property has been variously described as "an instagram trap," "a vampire den but make it botanical," and "the weirdest bed and breakfast in the shared history of beds and breakfasting."

Salinity (And Other Measurements of Brackish Water) by drawlight | 3k | T | 

It's an odd thing, getting on after the End of the World. Crowley takes to sea-watching.

Stopgap by RC_McLachlan | 3k | T | 

"Can you imagine ruining something so frustratingly perfect just to get a leg up with Management?" Crowley then remembers who he's talking to and why he's here in the first place. "Sorry, bad example, of course you can." A missing scene from Episode 6.

Wednesdays Are for This by magpiespirit | 3k | T

"D'you think we should have sex," he asks idly, pressing post on his addition to the exclusive How to Summon and Bind Demons forum. This one, he's sure, will both give Hell several annoying headaches and make a dent in the problem of demonology rising in the incel community. Bless, he loves having free time. "I think," Aziraphale replies frankly, giving Crowley a really, now look over the rims of his stupid glasses and the top of a first edition of something that probably uses a hundred words to say what could be said in five, "that should is a word best left to Heaven and Hell." And Crowley, who was only looking to fluster the angel a little, belatedly remembers that he's gotten commendations for Aziraphale's temptations.

build me a city, call it jerusalem by gyzym | 3.5k | T | 

Man begets man begets The Tales of Men, and there's nothing godly in that; Those Above and Them Below haven't any need for the stories humans have been hungry for since the snake and the Angel with the flaming sword.

The Plantom Menace by theinkwell33 | 3.6k | G 

There is an urban legend well known in this area regarding The Plant Man. Footage exists, blurry and ill-lit, of the trespassing fiend, but it never provides a good look at his face. He exists only as a rumor; a giggled whisper in someone’s ear at the pub, an inside joke at uni, and a viral sensation. None of these things mean he is not real. That being said, the only person who can corroborate the truth about the Plant Man is the man himself. And unfortunately, Anthony J. Crowley has no idea that it’s him.

get religion quick (cause you're looking divine) by brinnanza | 4k | G |

So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing. It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop.

to carthage then i came by Lvslie | 4k | T | 

‘You’re difficult to follow sometimes.’ ‘Difficult?’ Crowley echoes, feeling hollow. ‘Am I too fast? Am I going—’ And just like that, there’s something new in the silence between them, a tightening. The glass almost slips from his grasp, sliding from between languid fingers. His vision clouds. —too fast for you?’

Snakes and Stones (Never Broke My Bones) by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee | 4.5k | G

No one wants to say it, but the residents of Dorm A, floor 3, are collectively convinced Aziraphale Fell’s boyfriend does not exist. This is their story.

as the poets say by nikkiRA | 4.6k | T

Crowley takes a long drink of his wine and then says, before he can chicken out, “Aziraphale, I have always been sure about you.”

Re-Recalled by Jennistar | 5k | T |

Halfway through an argument, Aziraphale gets accidentally discorporated and doesn't come back. Crowley does the sensible thing and panics.

the bookshop nemesis witch by FlipSpring | 5k | G

The life and times of Nicole Percival Castings, Witch. Featuring: her ongoing love/rivalry with a particular magical bookstore, an Eccentric(TM) shopkeeper who keeps a huge snake in aforementioned bookstore, finding oneself and one's magical power, the cyclicality of life.

your smile speaks books to me by laiqualaurelote | 5k | T 

Aziraphale's bookshop becomes accidentally famous on Instagram, to his great distress. Since Crowley invented Instagram, it's also his problem.

it's a new craze by attheborder | 5.5k | G | 

CROWLEY: I try not to make a habit of gratitude, but I must give our appreciation to everyone out there who’s been listening and subscribing to The Ineffable Plan. AZIRAPHALE: Ooh, yes, we’ve become quite popular, haven’t we?CROWLEY: Yeah, just hit number eight on the advice charts … No advertising at all.  AZIRAPHALE: Mm. How … miraculous. CROWLEY: … Aziraphale. You did not.

your apple-eating heathen by katarzi | G | 5.7k

History is written without them, and Crowley’s no lady.

the blues have run the game by indigostohelit | 6k | NC-17 (more of an M)

Halfway between the Beginning and the Apocalypse, Crowley visits the court of King Saul, and runs into a prince, a war camp, and a songbook. 

the earth has never felt this old by brawlite | 6k | T

Crowley has a long history with holy places.

TwoFish by Grindylowe | 6k | T | 

A love story about angels and demons. Also, fish

A Nice and Accurate Lesbian Herstory Archive by badwig | T | 6.6k

More or less just the opening montage from 'Hard Times' but they're lesbians - a series of vignettes from the Garden to now.

parable of shepherds by Lvslie | 6k | T |

‘Aziraphale, you need to stop telling that goddamned story to everyone we stumble upon,’ she hisses. ‘I’m serious. You keep it up much longer, everyone’s gonna think we’ve gone and murdered that alleged husband of mine. ‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale says blithely, a serene smile plastered to her face as a familiar-looking man passes by, ‘Dear. That’s what I want them to think.’

Nothing Like The Sun by mirawonderfulstar | 6k | T |

One tended to go through a number bodies in six thousand years, even if one was as cautious or sturdy as Aziraphale. Crowley, who was neither cautious nor sturdy, had gone through a large number. He’d changed appearance so many times that in Aziraphale’s memory he was often just his eyes, for no matter if Crowley was tall or short, lithe or stocky, blond or raven-haired, his eyes stayed the same. 

Blessed/Cursed Retirement by DictionaryWrites | 7k | T

Liam Buttersby, a very normal, nine-year-old boy, makes a friend in the retiree who has recently moved to his village in the South Downs. The retiree in question claims to hate it, and is a liar.

the technology is neutral by Deputychairman | 7k | NC-17 | 

“Stand up?” he echoed, incredulous but too undone by sensation to express the full force of his disbelief. “I can barely even remember my own name after that, and you want me to stand up?” “Your name is Anthony J Crowley, apparently, although you never did tell me what the J stood for so I can’t help you there,” he said, not hiding his smile. “Do stand up, I promise you’ll like it.”

Part of the Plan by HardlyFair | 7k | T |

In which things do not return to the exact way they were Before.

Where Thou Art by Mottlemoth | 7.5k | M | 

A late-night bus to London, a few human comforts, and a long overdue confession... nothing will ever be the same for an angel and his demon.

The Ark by rfsmiley | 7k | T 

We’ve all been assuming that it takes them 6,000 years to figure it out, but what if it takes 6,300?

Or: the ineffable husbands evacuate a dying Earth.

Ad Astra by drawlight | 8K | NC-17

Some things can only be said in the dark.

except you enthrall me, never shall be free by curtaincall | 8k | T

It's a classic story: Angel meets knight. Angel volunteers to get beheaded by knight. Knight turns out to be angel's demon frenemy. Somehow, there is kissing. Based on the Middle English ballad Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Falling Rain by Aria | 8k | T |

Once upon a time, an angel and a demon hitched a ride on the Ark.

such surpassing brightness by Handful_of_Silence | 8k | G | 

The revelation that Aziraphale might have been in love with him for thousands of years is surprising. The fact that literal books have been written on the subject comes as even more of a shock.

Without Creativity by htebazytook | 8k | NC-17 |

Another Crowley and Aziraphale through the ages fic, with some heavy symbolism thrown in for good measure.

Exit Wounds by racketghost | 8k | T

“At least they were together for a time,” Crowley says, staring at the lit end of his cigarette, “maybe that’s enough.”

On The Matter Of Touch by Somedrunkpirate | 9k | T

“On the matter of touch,” Crowley begins, waving his teaspoon in what he hopes passes for idle curiosity. “Thoughts?”

and, so on by PaintedVanilla | 9k | M | 

Crowley doesn’t remember heaven, but Aziraphale remembers him.

Going Home by Daegaer | 9k | G | 

Aziraphale is recalled to Heaven, Crowley isn't impressed.

The future's going to break through by nieded | 10k | T

My take on South Downs: Aziraphale and Crowley decide to become professors. This is inspired by the headcanon that Crowley has 20 different degrees. He is the Serpent of the Tree of Knowledge after all.

Wings and How to Hide Them by triedunture | M | 10k 

Crowley's been annoyingly in love for six thousand years. What's another lifetime between friends? Or: Aziraphale definitely fucks and isn't that just perfect?

The Gospel of Crowley by gutterandthestars | 10k | T

Crowley tempts Jesus in the wilderness! Turns out Jesus gives as good as he gets. Also Crowley pines over Aziraphale and has Big Gay Angsty Feelings because, well. Because Crowley.

A Nanny? In MY Summoning Circle? by pukner | 10k | Not Rated

(it's more likely than you think) Warlock "Lockie" Dowling summons a demon. Or, he buys a book off a suspiciously familiar bookseller and is convinced into demon summoning. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

damn.nation, now available on itunes by antistar_e (kaikamahine) | 10k | T

When lowly tempt-pusher Amphora (formerly of Stairwell 7B North, before she Fell,) gets the notice that end times are nigh, she gleefully quits her job and cancels her Netflix subscription and takes her place among the legions of hell. This, it turns out, was a bad plan.

Lie Back And Think Of Dinner by jessthereckless | 11k | M |

"Crowley, this is a disaster. This is everything I ever wanted. We’re in love. And there’s a picnic. And we don’t seem to be able to get…amorous without causing earthquakes.” Aziraphale attempts subterfuge. Crowley sees right through him.

Something to do with these sacred words by Solshine | 11k | T

Crowley confesses early, and Crowley confesses often. Aziraphale never knows quite what to say.

A Resurrection of Whales, and Other Omens of Varying Goodness by Margo_Kim | 11k | WIP | T

After the end of the world doesn't end anything, Heaven and Hell send replacements to Earth while the old representatives try to figure out their new normal.

Serpentine by sergeant_smudge | 11k | G |

Five ways in which Crowley is a snake. *And one more thing.

what's to come by PepperPrints, restlesslikeme | 11k | T 

Post-Apocalyptic AU. Even without the Antichrist, both Heaven and Hell insist on Armageddon. Aziraphale is missing and Crowley sets out to find him, driving through a scorched Earth with a witch in his passenger seat.

Basking by bomberqueen17 | 15k | NC-17

Crowley is extremely confused about how or whether celestial beings can experience physical sexual desire. He's also not fantastic at using his words. Things go all... snake-shaped.

Nanny Knows Best by DictionaryWrites | 17k | M

Being a nanny, that should be simple. Simple. Easy as pie. Crowley wished that were true.

One Night In Bangor (And the World's Your Oyster) by Atalan | 17k | NC-17

"All right, I know I'm going to regret asking this," Aziraphale says. "What exactly does this wager entail?” Crowley grins like the cat that not only got the cream but has absconded with the entire cow. He grabs the bottle and swigs straight from it despite Aziraphale's tut of disapproval. "The pot goes to whichever demon can get an angel into bed by the end of the evening."

Soft (A Love Story in Three Bites) by mia_ugly | 18.3k | NC-17

Crowley was an angel, once. Before she fell. Aziraphale was a warrior (she fell too. It just took a little longer.)

The Persephone Clause by Zetared | 20k | T |

When Crowley is forcibly recalled to home office, Aziraphale conspires with a denounced saint and strikes a deal with the agents of Hell to get him back.

in search of the wind by drawlight | 27k | NC-17

After the World Doesn't End, Aziraphale is not returned to his body. Crowley tries to find a way to get to Heaven's fast-shut gates. Aziraphale tries to find his way back from the sky (and back in time).

And So We Come Full Circle by Hekateras | 30k | T | 

"Angel. You know it's gonna be really bad, this time around," Crowley says slowly. "When the times comes, I want you to-"

Mirror, Mirror by ImprobableDreams900 | 44k | T

Adam, Eve, and Crawly flee Eden through the Western Gate, and it turns out that that simple decision makes all the difference in the world...

Slow Show by mia_ugly | 90k | NC-17

In which temptations are accomplished, grand romantic gestures are made, and two ineffable co-stars only take four seasons of an award-winning television program to realize they’re on their own side (at last, at last.)

Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm | 100k | T

What Aubrey Thyme, a professional, thought, upon first seeing her new client was: you’re going to be a fun one, aren’t you?

Eden!verse by ImprobableDreams900 | 550k | T-M

When Crowley gets captured by angels and dragged up to Heaven, Aziraphale knows he has to rescue him—no matter the consequences.

[abigailzimmer]

Favorite Reads of 2020

In this year of slowness, thank god for books to make the world a little larger again. I read several classics for the first time—Shelley’s Frankenstein and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day—all of which felt important to return to the source material, to see how these books shaped those that came after them. And I delved into new books from favorite authors whose words I will always seek out—like Kelly Schirmann’s The New World and Heather Christle’s The Crying Book—and I branched out into mystery and romance books because they kept pages turning and tidied everything up so neatly at the end, which if not my usual fare, was sorely needed in this strange year. But since I do love a list, here are the books that sung to me / inspired me / shaped me:

1. Exquisitely told and inventive in form, Women Talking by Miriam Toews centers on a group of Mennonite women in South America who discover they're being drugged and raped during the night by the men in their community. While the men are away, the women meet to decide whether they will stay and forgive their attackers, as their community’s religious leaders ask them to, or leave the colony and start anew. Their conversation over the course of two days questions the role of women, what freedom and forgiveness really mean, how to fulfill one’s calling as a woman, mother, and believer, whether one must choose one thing over another, and whether staying or leaving carries the greater risk. It’s a thoughtful and creative approach to hard questions and the complicated reasons why there’s never a right answer.

2. Ilya Kaminsky's collection, Dancing in Odessa, was one of the first books of contemporary poetry I ever read, lent to me by a friend in college, and I remember being stunned at what poetry could be and do. Deaf Republic stuns in the same way. The poems are incredibly cinematic, telling the story of an occupied town and its people and a couple who fall in love. When a young, deaf boy is shot by the soldiers, the entire town pretends deafness in rebellion, finding excuses to not understand the soldiers. They bear witness to the boy’s death and honor his life. Though a fictional town, the call to political action, to really see those who are being oppressed and stand for justice with them, is resonant for any time and place. Plus, Ilya writes the most beautiful love poems.

3. Another cinematically-inclined poetry book is GennaRose Nethercott’s The Lumberjack’s Dove. In this long poem/myth/fable, a lumberjack accidentally cuts off his hand, which turns into a dove, and then a story parts ways. The lumberjack is not just a lumberjack and the hand-turned-dove is not just a hand-turned-dove, and the story visits both an operating room and a witch, and the story, of course, is one you've heard before and one that brings surprise and wonder to the telling. I simply adored it.

"Living creatures believe they own something as soon as they love it. They refuse to believe otherwise, no matter how many times a beloved vanishes."

4. I fell in love—hard—with The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and her exquisite, queer love story between Achilles and Patroclus. Miller’s writing is wonderful and after reading her novel Circe as well—another fantastic retelling of Greek myths—I spent the remainder of the year searching for a novel that compared.

5. Some books meet you in the right moment. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a slow and attentive book on small things, which in 2020’s period of waiting and uprootedness was a gift. Due to chronic illness, Bailey finds herself confined to a bed with little to do. Her friend brings her a potted plant and a snail whose pace of life, matching her own, becomes a comfort and lessons her loneliness. As she watches, she learns intimately the snail's eating and sleeping habits, its daily adventures, and the conditions it best thrives in. Later she delves into the literature and science of gastropods and weaves her notes in with her own observations and stories of the snail. Her writing is light and funny and holds such tenderness for this very small creature.

"In the History of Animals, Aristotle noted that snail teeth are 'sharp, and small, and delicate.' My snail possessed around 2,640 teeth, so I'd add the word plentiful to Aristotle's description....With only thirty-two adult teeth, which had to last the rest of my life, I found myself experiencing tooth envy toward my gastropod companion. It seemed far more sensible to belong to a species that had evolved natural tooth replacement than to belong to one that had developed the dental profession. Nonetheless, dental appointments were one of my favorite adventures, as I could count on being recumbent. I could see myself settling into the dental chair, opening my mouth for my dentist, and surprising him with a human-sized radula."

6. Insecurity System by Sara Wainscott was one of my favorite books published in 2020. The poems in it make up four crowns—a series of sonnets in which the last line of each poem becomes the first line (or an echo of it) of the next. The playfulness of the form as well as the topics give the book an energy: Sara muses on time travel, levitation, memory, flowers ("people who read poems know a rose / is how the poet drags in genitalia"), motherhood, Mars, and mythical transformations (children tell their mothers they have turned to seals “and it is true”). Sara is funny and wry, and yet she also captures some difficult emotions of grief and depression, a struggle with complacency amid daily obligations “Sentences become drawn out affairs / but I am doing what I can / to answer one word each day.” The poems move from the mundane to a hard feeling and then onward to wonder and a bit of the fantastical, which I guess is just how life goes—I love how these emotions are all rolled together and always shifting.

7. Asiya Wadud’s powerful long poem Syncope is one I’ve returned to often throughout the year. She tells the story of 72 refugees who fled Tripoli in an inflatable boat in 2011 and were stranded for 14 days, despite the presence of 38 maritime vessels who could have rescued them, but didn’t. Instead, only 11 passengers survived. Syncope is both an indictment against those who did not act and a eulogy for the dead, returning humanity to people who were deemed not worth saving but who were “luminous in that / we were each born under the / fabled light of some star.”

“We began as 72 ascendants by that I mean we were a collective many each bound for greatness merely in the fact that we were each still living”

8. Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had is a thoughtful and exploratory conversation about capitalism and its effects on what we do and how we think. In a series of short vignettes, Eula picks apart what consumption, work, accounting, and investment mean on a personal and everyday level (albeit a white, middle class level). Who defines value among boys trading Pokemon cards and how did Monopoly's origins in economic injustice shift to pride in bankrupting players and if one of Eula's favorite things about being a new house owner is easy access to a laundry machine, is her house merely a $400,000 container for one washer and dryer? Her essays bounce from work that is valued, unseen or shamed; the perceptions and realities of being poor or rich; our approach to gift-giving and art-making and pleasure—weaving together research, observations, and conversations with friends.

9. In Grief Sequence, poet Prageeta Sharma’s grieves the loss of her husband in a kind of journal, tracing the memories of his diagnosis, the hard and normal days, the days before diagnosis, and the days after he is gone during which she tries to make sense of her new reality: “How gauche it is to be in this body being unseen by you now,” she writes. “You are not you anymore and I am trying to understand how a human with feelings has disappeared.” Her writing is excellent but it is hard to sit with and next to her pain, and it makes me wonder: when does one read such a book? When you’ve also lost a beloved to cancer? To be in conversation with someone who has, with Prageeta? Do you read for the sake of the living or to honor a body who was once here? Prageeta writes, “Poetry and grief are the same: you are taught to care about it when it happens to you.” I don’t know who to recommend this book to, but it spoke to me, and I’m glad she wrote it, as a monument, of sorts, to a specific togetherness and to a person.

10. The Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis is a strange and sweet book about a race of genetically-engineered dogs, created initially to be soldiers, who move to New York in the ‘90s while still holding onto the customs and dress of nineteenth-century Prussia, which is to say: I don't know if I ever would have picked this book up had a friend not recommended it. Told through news clippings, letters, journal entries, an opera(!), and the first-person account of a human who befriends them, their story has echoes of Frankenstein as the monster dogs reflect on their creator and what it is to be human, to have purpose and hope, to wrestle with a clouded past and an uncertain future. "It's a terrible thing to be a dog and know it," writes one monster dog scholar after some of the dogs begin to revert back to their primal state. I loved the varied forms, the piecing together of the dog’s history, and the surreal mark they left in the book’s world and my world.

For more books throughout the year, follow along on Instagram at book.wreck.

[barryhuff]

Nostalgiaholic - The Remix

When I used to look up at the night sky alone as a child, I imagined a sinister, infinite, black, blanket sprinkled with glitter. Although, when my eyes followed the tip of my Uncle Jon’s finger, as he both traced celestial, stick-figures in the same sky and narrated their mythic, Greek stories, space always transformed from that lifeless blanket and into a destination to be explored. 

Jon, at times, was so inspired by space and space travel, he filled canvases dedicated to the filtered visuals he discerned.  As a dedicated science-fiction nerd, his paintings certainly had their share of stylized spaceships, laser beams, and explosions.  But as an equal part, planetarium-loving, star chart-studying, telescope-owning, amateur astronomer, Jon’s celestial backgrounds were wild, bubbling layers of greens, whites, blues, and reds, instead of a simple, flat, all-consuming blackness. Those paintings showed the cosmos as a tangible, topographic map ready to be explored, and not a deep, infinite sea of loneliness. 

That being said, I used to daily study a picture Jon painted of an astronaut floating upside down in the aurora borealis lights of Jon’s interpretation of space.  The figure held tight to the lifeline coming from his spacesuit at the waist with his left hand.  However, the same lifeline extended from the suit like a piece of floating spaghetti getting smaller, until it vanished in the distant horizon.  His right hand (so big that it appeared to explode from the canvas), desperately reached out for salvation.  

The reflective shield on the helmet hinted at the impending doom of the astronaut.  The reflection didn’t show a ship or even another hand reaching back, instead there were simply more endless miles of lively, colorful flashes of the space setting to die alone in.

No matter how much I wanted to imagine hope for the character, there was none… at least for him.

I often wonder if Jon’s painting was inspired by one of his favorite movies, the 1968 Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.   When it finally, came on network T.V. one Saturday afternoon in the 1980s, I was excited to see it.  Hell, if Jon liked it, I would certainly like it.

False.  It turns out there were two barriers to me enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey --  Star Wars and silence. 

One summer, my brother and I bragged about watching Star Wars 47 times on HBO.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Bar Scene".  Especially the part in which a handsome, tanned, mischievous Han Solo (brown, feathered hair parted evenly in the middle) tried in vain to smooth-talk the twitchy-trigger-fingered, reptilian, green-faced, bug eyed, intergalactic thug Greedo (bald head).

Shit, reciting Greedo’s opening line to Han for anyone who’d listen (“Oo-nah too-tah, Solo?”) is still one of my favorite past-times.

In Star Wars, everyone could cover vast distances in the dark, dusty, intensely cold, INFINITE vacuum of space. It’s as easy as a con-artist pulling a few levers, confidently bellowing the order, “Punch it, Chewie”, and going faster than light without having to even buckle a seatbelt.

In reality, distances in outer space were not so easily traversed.

The Earth’s moon is 238,000 miles away. It took Neil Armstrong and the fellas six days to get from Earth, to the moon, and back, all while being cooped up in basically a large, flying port-a-potty. Their spacesuits looked about as comfortable as wearing every outfit in the average American’s good-credit-infused, stuffed closet AT ONCE.

This detail of space travel was not lost ‘Stanley Kubrick’s flick.  Even though there are a beautiful array of stunning special effects, it often felt like the audience traveled each second of the 365 million mile trip from the Moon to Jupiter.  There were no visual cues of a blurring landscape to both gage speed and generate a sense of movement.  The stars are perched in the background like apathetic teenagers forced to sit at the table during dinner, when they’d rather be in the solitude of their own rooms.

Body movements and conversations in the film were also slowed, as if everyone was walking in a filled swimming pool.  Mix in a relaxing soundtrack of orchestral music, and it’s the perfect lullaby capable of depowering my movie-watching enthusiasm.  In fact, the first five times I tried to watch the movie, I would fall asleep at an early scene featuring a space stewardess silently laboring down the aisle in her gravity “grip shoes” on her way to ultimately retrieve a floating pen for a sleeping passenger while composer Johann Strauss’s famous waltz, The Blue Danube, rhythmically chants in the background.

A few years ago, I tried one final time to watch the movie. And this time with the help of a streaming video platform, I was able to pause, re-group, pause, re-group, pause, re-group, and finally watch the movie my uncle loved.  

The striking thing about the movie is how quiet it actually was.  For much of the movie, there are no musical cues to warn of danger or intrigue.  Dialogue was conducted over the subtle drone of machines simply doing their mundane jobs of keeping the enormous spacecraft running during its long flight to Jupiter.   Life and death sequences were not given intense music accompaniment like traditional horror movies.  It’s as if Kubrick was saying, “People’s lives aren’t being scored by some musician to bookmark key events.  Life is merely something that happens -- even in space.”

It’s this absence of audible hints that makes 2001: A Space Odyssey uncomfortably realistic, as if the audience was watching a livestream of a computer gaining sentience, refusing to die (be turned off) and fighting off his oppressors (the flight crew).  

I’ve read that when a “vacuum” exists, somehow all of nature rushes to fill that empty hole.  So it’s funny that many science experiments happen in conditions that closely resemble a vacuum, in an effort to ensure results unweighted by additional stimuli.  Interestingly enough, because the movie is set in the vast, unforgiving, vacuum of space, Kubrick’s storytelling, in essence, becomes an experiment to determine if audiences will stay engaged without the traditional musical trappings.  Indeed, this stark story about the thrilling birth of strange, other-worldly life injected energy into overall science fiction mythology, and also into my young uncle.

Over the past 11 years, I have written a fairly regular Facebook post titled Reasons I Know I’m Getting Old.  When I started this, Facebook seemed to simply be a 21st century photo album, in which many people posted similar, stiff, smiling, posed pictures and inspiring quotes which suggested my extended online community was living their own collective happily ever afters.

But it was boring...

I mean, I loved my kids too, but were only my kids getting whoopings and other childhood punishments?  My wife was awesome too, but was I the only person still having trouble translating to her the humor in my daily fart symphonies?  Was no one else dealing with the often deflating, drudgery of the work-place?  Was parenting a lifelong crap-shoot for me only?  Because there was no connection to what I was seeing on my finger strolls on my phone, I was having a hard time wanting to even own a Facebook account.

Therefore, on April 14, 2009, I conducted an experiment:  How would my friends respond to a post that showed some dissatisfaction?  Nothing political or religious, just everyday grumblings.  I wrote:

“[Barry Huff] is dragging in from coaching his daughter's basketball team only to be greeted by Cap'n Crunch and a [sic] yet another pile of papers to grade!”

It received nine comments (four of those were my own).  And one of those commenters hinted that they understood the challenge of managing the grading paperload.

Facebook soon became a sliver into my reality normally hidden, when I walked into my home and shut the door for anyone who wanted to see access.  Initially, reposting fill-in-the blank lists, or other people’s videos, didn’t interest me.  I just wanted folks to know it was okay to not have all the answers.  Here I was, boogers and all.

But the experiment gathered a more scientific component in March 2020 -- the addition of an actual vacuum.  

In March 2020, the United States of America instituted a national quarantine in the hope of limiting the possibility of infection from the rapidly spreading “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”, shortened simply to the “Coronavirus”.   I suspect that the horrified wails of a certain mexican beer company sharing part of the same name as the virus (after having carefully crafted years of popular commercials associating its product with serene, relaxing beach scenes) are still heard by masked customers now filling their shopping carts with other adult beverages.  Thus ensuring (at least in a few inebriated minds) binge drinking episodes without sudden, beer-birthed, pockets of community spread.

During this quarantine, the noise of my life (reporting to a building to teach, side-hustles, sporting events, car travel, movies, fast food) disappeared.  And with that sudden vacuum, came the desire to collect and revise the writings I posted about the uncertainty of navigating adulthood.

And while I still worry if I have the skill to create something that gives a clearer picture of my true self to my wife and kids, each vignette is a piece of the mosaic of my humanity.  And hopefully, this collection of blessed fallibility won’t be unnecessarily camouflaged during the stories told at my funeral one day, as attendees gulp down heaping portions of smothered pork steak, collard greens, macaroni, and apple pie piled on their sagging, disposable plates.

[shieldcodex]

Codex Judicium (2017, 2018-current)

The third and final arc of the SHIELD Codex, because my brain wouldn’t leave me alone. Continues the story directly after An Ocean Deep and Cold, however this arc returns to the original arc’s method of building to a central antagonist and finale. These antagonists (The Children of Thanos, or his Generals, interchangeably) were foreshadowed at the end of the original Codex series, back when I had no idea they’d end up in the dang movies.

This arc is, plot-wise, a little self indulgent (OCs, flerkens, and a lot of worldbuilding headcanon I wanted to play with) and revisits a lot of previous Codex events to build up to its planned finish. These connections will be listed in the notes. This is also the arc where we say goodbye to AOS series canon. The Codex fully diverges after the Framework arc of the show, and, annoyingly on my part, the Codex talks about that arc only in past tense.

The Shadows of Asgard

Synopsis:

Trapped by memories of his past and haunting his own present, Loki, the shadow king of Asgard, finds himself hunted by something far more deadly than any ghost. Without allies or any friendly word to help him, he must figure out why he’s not the hunter’s sole target - and what any chance of surviving his stolen throne might have to do with his buried youth.

Notes: On the one hand, it’s a stand-alone story set previous to the Codex and can be read without ever touching another Codex fic. On the other, I’ve built it into Codex canon and made it part of the basis for the final arc. Although this fic is about a brief, almost romantic part of Loki’s life, the resolution of this fic establishes that relationship as distant, conflicted, and probably platonic from here. While a character introduced will become recurring, the Codex will never change its listing from genfic to OC/Loki.

The Sand Knows Its Purity

Synopsis:

As Kamar-Taj's chief librarian, Wong feels love and responsibility for every sacred book in the world. Leaving the rural Chinese province of his childhood on the way towards safety for his latest rediscovered ancient artifact, Wong thinks a little about the past, about being lost, and about how much it all meant to his future.

Notes: A purely Wong-centric vignette themed after Journey To the West. Wong becomes a moderately important supporting character to the arc (I love Benedict Wong, okay?) and this fic introduces a unique character who returns in Turn the Page.

Fresh Ground

Synopsis: 

Where everyone knows your name is a fine thing if you're a middle-class drudge looking for a drink, Ted Danson, and a guy named Norm. But when you work in Stark Tower - or worse, are an Avenger - sometimes all you want is a coffeeshop that's going to treat you like a normal person.

Notes: Having never done a coffeeshop AU before, this is a coffeeshop short that accidentally ended up foreshadowing the next Halloween fic and thus became a Codex short.

The Ritual of Chud

Synopsis: 

The harvest season always brings with it a sense of ritual to pave the way for the future. It's with this in mind that Doctor Strange and Loki left Wong with a single gentle, but unusual, request: Throw a small Halloween party. Invite a handful of magical guests. Spend the evening telling tales and growing closer together. But why?

Notes: 2018′s Halloween Codex is another story within a story collection with several supporting magical characters (Wanda, Wong, Aggie Harkness, and introducing Pandora Peters of Loki’s WAND division) telling sad or spooky holiday tales. The overall story introduces the first clue to this arc’s set of villains - Ebony Maw.

Offhand

Synopsis: 

The season of greetings and merriment has come around - for Asgard, whose princes are still children easily bored by pageantry. But when Loki has to face a pack of bullies without his brother to back him up, he ends up beginning something that will change his life forever. Meanwhile, in the future, an adult Loki takes in some holiday cheer among his friends, and makes an admission he hadn't wanted to just yet.

Notes: The first winter holiday short fic since Bleak Midwinter, Offhand has a nice but standalone flashback to Loki’s troubles with the palace weapons trainer. There is some foreshadowing about what’s to come next.

Escape Velocity

Synopsis: 

When news comes to Wakanda of a mysterious cache of vibranium destined to hit the international arms market, King T'Challa realizes his efforts to reach out to the world could complicate his role in trying to stop disaster. Instead, he sends an envoy to SHIELD to help pick up where his warriors left off - and asks a reluctant Agent Everett Ross to assist them on his behalf.

Notes: The synopsis is a swerve. Set up as a standard SHIELD op, it ends with space battles and poor Ross helping to pilot a starship. As of 2020, he’s not the first new character to return from this fic - Captain Tam is introduced, Kara is hinted at, and more suspicions about the Children of Thanos are set up. The Grandmaster is also revealed to have ties here, a plot built up from the original arc’s Darwin’s Dragon.

Cat Dads!

Synopsis: 

Minding his own business one spring afternoon, Loki finds himself approached by Nick Fury, who brings with him a most curious situation in need of advice.

It turns out that Goose is carrying a whole, uh, kit and caboodle of trouble inside her.

Notes: Arguably the most popular Codex short whether you read the series or not, Nick Fury as a cat daddy was an irresistible setup. This fic introduces flerkens into the Codex, though, with both Loki and Nebula gaining flerkittens that will become part of later stories.

Turn the Page

Synopsis: 

Torn from one nightmare and tossed into another, Loki isn't touched to discover he's Stephen Strange's first choice to run to when magical attacks strike the New York Sanctum. The goal of this assault? Reclaiming the Darkhold, held prisoner by Strange for the last few years.

Notes: The Darkhold has been the focus point of a sub-sub arc throughout the three series, from the very first Codex story, to Season of the Witch, and finally, at damn last, ending here. Aggie Harkness returns, and some old plot threads from The Janus Paradox get tied off in this one. The epilogue also builds on a hint from Escape Velocity and introduces us formally to another member of the Children of Thanos.

The Queen’s Gambit

Synopsis:

Long ago, Odin All-Father buried the secret of his first two children. Baldur, who tragically never left his crib, and Hela, who rose to power under a deadly shadow. Now an exile on the world that gave her its name, Hela hatefully waits for a freedom she suspects will never come - only to find that a visitor has somehow arrived after all.

Notes: 2019′s Halloween fic is themed after Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and has Mistress Death swapping tales with Hela, herself a would-be incarnation of mortality. This fic builds on Odin’s tale as told at the end of Ocean Deep and Cold, and will return to importance in an upcoming fic.

The Family We Choose (ongoing 4/20)

Synopsis:

Loki has been contacted by Nebula, working on the fringes of the galaxy as an intelligence broker since the fall of Thanos, and he suspects that what news she has to share won't be anything pretty. But things begin to shift beyond his predictions before he catches up with her, as two human friends latch on for the ride.

Notes:

This is where previous plot threads are starting to pull together. Building on the events of The Shadows of Asgard, Darwin’s Dragon, Escape Velocity, Cat Dads, and the entire theme of Loki trying to rebuild his life as a whole person and not just a loner easily driven to madness, this fic is ongoing.

Upcoming:

All these listings are subject to future whims.

The One About Jotunheim - A civil war will threaten to tear apart the fragile peace Queen Farbauti has forged, while Loki, unmoored by the possible ramifications of that conflict, begins to work on another family alliance of his own. This is a tentative synopsis and may change.

1-2 possible shorts, including one with Captain Tam and Kara on Earth

The One About Kings - Odin prepares to pass on his crown at last, but as usual, there are intense conflicts.

The Children’s Crusade - the final showdown between Loki and the remaining Children of Thanos... and a few awful surprises.

The future light - one more postscript.

[driftwork]

Ten or Twelve years more or less and a woman in a hat flies from Tokyo to London... (1)

They know little or perhaps even nothing about what they are doing. The research they did not do would horrify them for days and months afterwards.  This  is Seo, leaving meetings, and heading towards the airport, to travel from one continent to another... This is the long month long moment when they completed the becoming major from gangsters to capitalists. She already understands herself, themselves as normal and define every difference from this as divergent from the norm. By the end of these hat stories she will be a normal woman of the state. She already is of course, but at this moment when she is leaving meetings and heading to the airport, to travel across continents,  she doesn’t know this. The transition did not mean that they were any less criminal at the end of the transition than at the beginning.  Everything that happened before this is excluded. At this starting moment  she and the world thought of her only as an upper class woman. An owner. There is no need for a preamble, after months of negotiation, analysis and the establishment of the prototypes. The draft documents are signed. The criminals watched the Chinese get into their car and stood in the doorway as they drove off, out of the drive and along the bay road. The cars headlights fading across the bay, the arc of the road, the shoreline and the cliffs of the nature reserves... She will be spend  a still unknown number of days in London. She is sitting in the plane, she has taken off her hat,  charcoal grey with colourful icons and chevrons.  my first mother said if I wore this hat, I should be certain to get off with the right sort of  man, Well, look where I am now, on a desert island, here I am now leaving Tokyo, my second mother may be causing me to die, wearing this hat... The first class cabin is mostly shades of grey and blue, the surrounds of the seats are beige, Neutral colours that hide the complex machinery from casual view. They fly out of Tokyo and are already cruising northwards. northwards.  Her two companions are already asleep. They are all exhausted after the last few days. She should be, but is living on her nerves.  The woman knows that neither her sister nor the man she lives with have left the locality in which they live for years.  Though she knows more about their everyday activities now than when she had first flown to London to see her, still they remain almost invisible.  The reason why they are visible at all does not  occur to her. This may seem unimportant in this story of a woman travelling from Tokyo to London, accompanied by the only two people she really trusts and loves in the world, but still, since, the purpose of the passage from Tokyo to London is to beg forgiveness and ask for favors it seems important to acknowledge how little she understood of what motivates her sister to stay constrained, imprisoned in one place rather than to vanish. So here we are its a nice day in September,  autumn will be approaching by the time she arrives in London and she is desperately hoping that the winter that follows doesn't end up with a long line of dead people stretching between London and Tokyo. Whilst at this moment the true scale of the disaster she is trying to avert is unknown to her, she will grow to understand this over the next few months.  She will wonder at the hubris of the person she was on the plane, imagining that she and her sister are still related in some way. She is laying in the half light, wishing she could sleep but instead is looking at the pale grey ceiling of the plane, the soft led daylights casting gentle shadows beneath the overhead lockers. The essential hum of machinery at 10,000 metres.  In/on/at the stopover in Frankfurt they will carry out a final check on the European finances, and to brief them  on the project they are about to be involved in.  On the plane they offered her a drink, over the sea flying northwards,  she took a glass of white wine, some water and some fruit juice.  They left the menus with her. She fell asleep somewhere over the coast of Russia and had stress dreams of chairs, flying, falling, horrible felt dresses which recognized as being her sisters, and worst of all being chased though a city, or is that a woods,  the office unfolding before her as she runs. She used to dream of having a child and a partner who stayed at home looking after the child. But these dreams had ended long ago.  Though she had begun to have occasional thoughts of having a child with the man asleep in the adjacent seat. She cannot imagine how anyone could think of them as capable of such things. She is dressed in jeans and a linen jacket over a soft grey tee shirt with multiple folds in the arms and across her chest. When she takes off the jacket to eat later the attendants will not be able to see the single headed dragon tattoo on her body.  The attendants rightly guessed that she and her two travelling companions are "senior business people"  but they mis-assume that the men are more important than the woman. Patriarchal fantasies are omnipresent in this world.  As she began to wake up she was aware that Sik was looking at her, holding her arm.  Are you OK he asked.  I dreamt of having a child again she said. Looking at her tired and stressed face. he said before he could stop himself. <We should, I would like that.> She realized he meant it. They ordered food from the menu,  more liquids to drink.  a peculiarly flavoured Ice cream for dessert. That's disgusting he told the attendant, can I have some more ?  She looked at the agendas for the next days meetings,  at the newspapers that were full of discussions of irrelevant political evasions, and some useful discussion of how to change Bourgeois property law in Japan...  She suddenly remembered that she hadn't brought any presents with her for the children and others. I left them at home she said to them.  I brought some for the children  - and I've brought a couple of birthday presents for Osaka, Sik added.  What did you get her ?  A mint 1923 Shklovsky A Sentimental Journey - first edition., and a 1929 edition...  She sighed,  Yukio said that they were her third memory, but she thought they were her first memory... Well at least something worked out she thought.  Sorry I didn't mean to forget she said to them.  Hours pass.  Yukio and Sik are playing go, she cannot tell who is winning. She reviews the business section and is surprised to see a note about Kwarbarti's property buying.   She wondered what it was that was making her feel more relaxed. She puts her hand on his shoulder,  Are you serious she asks. Yes I am. OK. It makes no difference, night or day, the shadows won't fade away.  Hours pass,  His hand has been resting on her on her body for an hour.  She left it there whilst watching an anodyne  HK action film, her unconscious thinks she would have killed them without speaking. People speak too much in movies whilst they hold guns.  She thought of the videos of Park  running across Tokyo. We should have financed a movie she thought.  The co-pilot announced they would be landing in two hours. and that something or other would be served.  She took her travel bag and went for a shower and a change of  underwear. The plane  eventually  began to descend,  they drank tea.  Talked about the hotel they staying in.  Tomorrow.  Frankfurt, the city and its suburbs  rose up to greet them as they  descended to the airport. They were very easy and quite charming  the attendants said of them. A message arrived during the descent,  There is a chauffeur waiting for you, Ms Seo at the exit.  (I put on my Hat, I button my coat, Life's little duties, precisely, at the very least, were finite to me) The familiar airport didn't look as grey and mechanical  as it usually did. Once she had looked  at pictures of the anonymous rich at global meetings in magazines,  curiously over the decade she no longer cared. The landscape greeted the wheels of the plane.

None of the names, places  and languages in this vignette are accurate. The events, sex and gender however are.

This is Seo leaving the plane, wearing her hat,  carrying hand luggage, going through the emigration desks speaking to them about why they had come. Afterwards collecting collecting the luggage from the conveyor belt and wheeling it through customs. Outside  they found the chauffeur  waiting with a sign that said  (Ms Seo and party.)  The driver took them from the airport to the hotel.  The three of them sat in the rear of the limousine  and discussed what to do in the evening.  They were staying in the Sofitel. It had the usual things that global hotels have,  restaurants, cafes, bars, a pool and gymnasium,  room services, suites, laundry services and shopping services. They had two suites next to one another.  Seo and Sik's  suite was neutral, soft browns and beige, engineered wooden floor over soundproofing and concrete, with  multi-coloured rugs. Yukio's was about the same size but slightly more colourful, a themed suite based around a mixture of Korean and Chinese colours and patterns. The hotel during the week was full of business travelers who always seemed to wanted to go somewhere.  In the evening  the three of them would sit down at the table in the restaurant and drinking, they would discuss  how they should brief the hedge fund people and venture capitalist investors about the project.  A day may not be enough in which case you should stay with them whilst they are doing the evaluation. She said looking at Yukio.  That's... Sik added, if we need to stay in London you should fly back to Tokyo to keep things running. Yukio looked between them.  Are you thinking of running ?  Sik nodded and Seo smiled at him. Only if we must,  the two of us might be able to follow a line of flight and escape the bullets. I know you can't do that Yukio, also at least one of us must survive this, and it should be you. Sik waved the waitress over and ordered three vodka martinis.  Could you not die please, I would miss you.  Yukio said finally, accepting the inevitable.  Eventually, a little drunk, she goes upstairs and puts on the TV, finding an IP channel with South East Asian dramas on with a choice of English or German subtitles. She finds a drama about prosecutors and their corruption and lets it run in the background, the actors are a mixture of pretty young things and serious older ones. She looks at the contraceptives in the bathroom and wonders what to do. Whilst the drama  plays in the background, she checks the weather  for tomorrow which seems to suggest it will be good weather for meetings. When she leaves the hotel she leaves the contraception in the wastebin in the bathroom... [Here the meetings that take place from eight in the morning until six in the evening  are deleted]

They know little or perhaps even nothing about what they are doing...

[findmyhouse]

DANI LEE PEARCE - PETRICHOR (2016): 9/10

Who's ready for a blast from the past? The first article I ever wrote for this cute little album review series was one about the self-titled debut album by Dani Lee Pearce, which I published exactly one year after the album's release. At the time I felt compelled to write a review out of disappointment with the lack of attention for an album whose intelligently written and produced music intrigued and inspired me. Therefore, I believe it's appropriate to repeat this principle now, a year and a half later, writing a review for Ms. Pearce's fifth album, which was released on the 8th of November 2016 and which has brought me even more joy, inspiration and endearment. 

The last time we saw Dani Lee Pearce on this blog was in 2016, when only three albums credited to her name had been released. Her debut album, which I covered at the time, was a collection of proggy instrumentals in a chiptune-ish environment. Petrichor, released a year and a half after her debut, was still produced entirely by digital means (except for the vocals) but certainly cannot be called electronica by its normal definition. The chiptune and synthpop elements are now mostly gone, and although synth- and other keyboard-like instruments still dominate the sound, the instrumentation on this album notably adheres more to rock conventions, with sampled guitars, percussion, strings and woodwinds, and of course Pearce's vocals, which have been featured prominently on all of her albums from 2016 onward. The music instead takes more influence from folk rock and dream pop and overall sets up a gentle, pastoral mood. The songs themselves are also more traditionally structured, with more recognizable verses and choruses, and aren't based on very fast or unusual rhythms.

On the other hand, the harmonies are still lovably eccentric and still reveal Dani Lee Pearce's idiosyncrasy, and most of the melodies are very catchy. And here's a fact that ought to please any fan of progressive rock (as well as discourage anyone who's thinking about accusing the artist of "selling out"): Petrichor is a 90-minute long concept album centred around an epic storyline with fantasy and science fiction themes. This story isn't too keen on revealing itself: the description on Bandcamp is quite convoluted and uses a lot of obscure jargon, while the lyrics are generally cryptic and leave a lot open to personal interpretation. To the best of my understanding, the story is a series of vignettes that together paint a picture of a mystical fantasy world, the people that inhabit it and the conflicts that take place in it. In any case, the lyrics themselves are well-written and don’t resort to clichés, and they’re sung in a dreamlike, almost whispering tone that fits both the music and the images being described. The only exception to this vocal style is “Masqueraders”, a hilarious tune which I can only assume to be dedicated to a group of space pirates and which is sung in a fittingly malicious manner (I especially like the first couple of verses, which reveal that the Masqueraders in question are pirates in more than one meaning of the word).

The other vocal tracks in the first half of the album range from passable to stunning. The album opens with "... And The Leaves That Fell That Day There", a folkish ballad that's dominated by samples of chimes and acoustic guitars and features a nice instrumental bridge featuring an electronic string orchestra. "I Am The Sand Girl" is a delightfully catchy pop song with a quiet, soothing coda ("This Tree"). "Over My Wall" is a really strange but also really cool little tune with an odd melody and a singing performance that slowly devolves into arrhythmic mumbling throughout the song's duration. That just leaves "From Young Unknowing Eyes", an organ- and glockenspiel-led ballad with a not too interesting chord progression, as the only track in this category that just sort of passes by unnoticed whenever I listen to the album.

However, the track that makes this first half shine most of all is an instrumental: “Purity And Disarray”. The melancholic chord progression, the distant-sounding Mellotron-like strings and the distorted, slightly detuned electric piano melody together create an impression of wandering alone lost in space, endlessly searching for something that can't be found. Two other instrumentals ("The Ember Leaf" and "The Lone Survivor") are more straight-forward and not as memorable but still good.

Now, while “Purity And Disarray” is probably my single favourite track on the album, I actually think the album’s second half is more consistent than the first overall. The only track on it that does nothing for me is “The Hill Of Mist”, which is little more than a lengthy ambient soundscape accompanied by electronically altered voices (although the lyrics, which seem to describe a euthanasia ritual, might be the most beautiful on the album). The tracks that surround it are excellent: "Down In Evergreene", the album's lead single, is another beautiful folk ballad and "Where The Ashes Go" is a wonderful ethereal instrumental with a koto sample as its lead instrument. The next track, "I Hope It Doesn't Rain When I See You Today" puzzles me to no end. It's a dreamy, lullaby-like tune that's really overly sweet and sentimental, yet it somehow works and is genuinely moving. For me, at least. Call it a guilty pleasure if you want.

From this point onward in the album, the story seems to focus around one specific character and set of occurrences, which makes all of the remaining tracks directly connected to each other thematically, and, appropriately, they all segue into each other as well. This suite (if you will) seems to be the album's pièce de résistance. We first get three more proggy instrumentals: the solemn, organ-led "Silver Tree's Mixtress", the playful "Candy Necklaces", and the cheery, optimistic "Twig Parade". This is followed by "Lute-Bird Calls", which is technically instrumental but features samples of people talking and reciting poetry excerpts, so I guess the proper term would be semi-instrumental? In any case, the song is little more than a melody being repeated over and over again, but the excellent production, the multiple melodic trinkets and background instruments and the dreamy, reverby vocals help bring the already great melody to life and create a truly beautiful atmosphere. Finally, the majestic, dream-poppy "Monsters And Rainclouds" serves as a climactic showstopper before the brief "Cast Your Sleep Spell" closes the album with the same chime noises that it started with.

The individual songs on Petrichor are strong enough, but listening to the album in its entirety has a strange effect on me that's hard to put into words. The progression of the story corresponds perfectly with the way in which the music has been ordered and paced, and together creates the feeling of a journey: After listening to the full album, thinking back to the first track feels similar to thinking about the moment you got up in the morning before you went on a long travel by plane or car. Off the top of my head, the only other albums I can think of that give me the same feeling are Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and National Health’s debut album. It's an album that makes you feel like something meaningful was accomplished by the end, and if you take it in as a whole you too can hopefully overlook the few weak spots that are bound to appear on an album of this length, and be enchanted by the magic of the music and the world it's created.

Best song: “PURITY” AND “DISARRAY”

Listen to the album here. Seriously.

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: CAPSULE REVIEWS: 5th annual Irish American Movie Hooley

As an Chicagoan of strong Irish descent myself, let me step in and play the part of “good authority.” I have it on good authority that the annual Irish American Movie Hooley is a boisterous event with a trio of buried treasure movies that normally wouldn’t grace American screens. Just as the event’s name translates: “When a party gets rowdy, the Irish call it a ‘hooley.’” You need to join the 5th edition of this artistic autumnal party at The Gene Siskel Film Center over the weekend of September 27–29. Come for the scene. Consume some friendly and fascinating culture.

Barbara Scharres, the Director of Programming for The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and Irish American radio personality Mike Houlihan recently announced the three choice selections for the upcoming fifth annual mini-festival. All three are making their Chicago premiere with one American premiere to close the weekend slate.

MISTY BUTTON

(Image: imdb.com)

Misty Button shows us that the whole “starving artist” trope of creative individuals being lousy f–kups with commitment issues is not solely an American pitfall.  It bites the Irish too. The protagonist matching these well-worn traits is James, played by Cillian O’Sullivan. To say he lands in a pickle in Misty Button would be an understatement.  It’s more like an inescapable vice tightening so hard the soaked-in whiskey squirts out of his pores in this slow-building dark comedy caper.

James and his uncorrected troubles reside in the far northern Bronx neighborhood of Woodlawn, known for its “Emerald Isle” turf of Irish-American heritage.  He meets the burdens of his working class life with a triple-dipped punch of groans, signs, and bursts of profanity. In the course of a single day after finding the bottom of another bottle of Jameson, James is canned from his bar job and living single when his wife Hayley (Hannah Jane McMurry) tosses her rings out the window.  Naturally, the impulsive James stoked his own fire to burn every bridge in each of these transpired events. When doesn’t lament in a shot glass, he does so seated at a typewriter trying to write something that gets him discovered.  

James and his friends Declan (Patrick Scherrer) and Eoin (Shaun Kennedy) get their ears bent by little rants emanating from Timmy Thomas, a loquacious bard of a man played by John Keating (recognized from last year’s Hooley entry Emerald City), sitting in the same tavern.  The twitchy, orange-eating middle-aged man propositions James and Eoin to do the legwork of placing a $10,000 bet on a 35-1 local racehorse named Misty Button.  When the two mates blow some of the money on drugs and miss the betting window, they now find themselves in debt to a local crime bully Alonzo (Bret Lada). Worst of all, instead of owing just the $10,000, they owe 35 times that because the titular longshot ended up winning the race, costing all involved a tremendously larger windfall of cash.

The hijinks that ensue from the script and direction of filmmaker Seanie Surgue (making his feature debut after an emerging career in short films) put James, Eoin, and Timmy Thomas through a bungled wringer.  Barstool banter turns into double-crosses. Swindles turn into smash-and-grab heists. Roughed up bumps and bruises meant to teach a lesson or two turn into murder. O’Sullivan, often looking and sounding like Colin Farrell Lite, smolders and shouts his way through these increasing obstacles.  The scene-stealer is always the wiry Keating. The line delivery and physical quirks of his yarns are infectious.  

This is, admittedly for a long stretch, a meandering way to encircle a drain of comeuppance. Misty Button is low on its expressions of suspense and does not employ a musical score to define any consistent tone.  You have to hang on words and narrative beats. Not all of that meshes smoothly or free from head-scratching character choices.

Just when Misty Button seems like it runs out calamities to justify where it’s going, the double-crosses emerging from the previously mentioned banter flip the movie (and you) on its ear. The wild third act twists are a saving grace that redeem what was messy and turns it into a clever hustle primed to be backed often by “The Rocky Road to Dublin” by The Dubliners. Come to be pleasantly surprised.

MILD RECOMMENDATION

THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY

(Image: youtube.com)

COMING SOON!

CUMAR: A GALWAY RHAPSODY

(Image: siskelfilmcenter.org)

Annually and without fail, the Irish American Movie Holley delivers a gorgeously appointed documentary among the trio of features that either fascinates with an affecting citizen testimony or astonishes us with the natural beauty of the Emerald Isle.  Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody is a poetic and dazzling example of the later sample of non-fiction art.  With soaring cinematography across streets, surf, and sky, every inch of this documentary drips with the heavenly chemistry of its fine and proud home country.

Directed by Aodh O Coileain, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody chronicles the layers of culture and natural wonders in and around the western city of its title.  Galway, the sixth most populous city of the country, will be the year-long title-holder of the European City of Culture next year in 2020, and this film shows many of the rich reasons why it was sought for that distinction.  A collection of six artists perform and explore the cultural nuance alongside the flowing stream of visuals.  

Those featured artists include writer Mike McCormack, poet Rita Ann Higgins, singer Róisín Seoighe, street theatre director Noeline Kavanagh, visual artist Pádraic Reaney and musician Máirtín O’Connor. A seventh comes from the narration of comedian Tommy Tiernan which adds context and character to the scenes observed.  The last topping bow of auditory presentation comes from composer Jake Morgan and music from Matthew Berrill and Nicola Geddes.  

The title word “cumar” translates to “confluence.”  In its most natural definition, confluence refers to where multiple waters converge.  In Galway’s case, that matches the River Corrib and the churning bays washed by the Atlantic Ocean.  Through labeled sections, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody one of those artists is highlighted and the various sub-definitions of cumar and confluence preface each vignette.  Some of those thematic pinpoints include cumar as “the accord between the artist and his tools, the energy that binds the ensemble, the influence of a place on the human spirit, and the unity that stems from a gathering of people.

With this draping chapters, Cumar: A Galway Rhapsody is well-paced and patient with unwrapping its historical notes and asides. Each chapter is an anecdote to the soul of the people.  Parallel to the human element, each chapter, as well, is an earthly sermon to the land and sea. This is a fine credit to O Coileain and his editing team which included Conall de Cleir and Oisin Misteil.    

The true feast of this documentary is the serene photography.  Fast and slow, the blend of urban and domestic landscapes is observational and pastoral.  Near and far, the film is lifted even greater by the wondrous aerial photography captured by Roman Bugovskiy and fleet of cameras.  Theatrical screens will fill with this imagery and evoke dreams of reaching out and touching these divine treasures. That is an impressive treat and feat to enjoy at the Irish American Movie Hooley.

HIGH RECOMMENDATION

Paddy’s Irish Whiskey will offer a sampling station in the lobby of the Gene Siskel Film Center before each screening, and also hold a free “whiskey raffle” after each screening and award a complimentary bottle of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey to the winner. After the Misty Button screening, director Seanie Sugrue will be in attendance for a talkback. As an added perk, the welcome audience is invited to an opening night reception at The Emerald Loop Bar and Grill, 216 N. Wabash Ave., immediately after the film, with complimentary Paddy’s Irish Whiskey.

For more information about the Movie Hooley, visit: http://moviehooley.org

All screenings and events are at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, located at 164 N. State St.

Tickets to each screening — unless stated otherwise — are $12/general admission, $7/students, $6/Film Center members, and $5/Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) staff and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) faculty, staff, and students. All tickets may be purchased at the Film Center Box Office. Both general admission and Film Center member tickets are available through the Gene Siskel Film Center’s website.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED

Permalink

from REVIEW BLOG – Every Movie Has a Lesson https://ift.tt/2mOxma0 via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2lSuQzF via IFTTT

[katebushwick]

The Perfidy of Gaze and the Pain of Uncertainty: Anthropological Theory and the Search for Closure Why should we care about the promises that can be made or broken through gaze, when one person looks into another’s eyes? We begin to answer this question by stepping back into the setting of Carroll Lewin’s essay in this volume—a Polish ghetto during the Holocaust: In April, Tory confronts Miller about the slaughter of five thousand Jews from Vilna who were supposed to have been transported to Kovno but instead were taken to Ponary and killed. Tory wants ‘‘an open, human conversation’’; he knows that when Miller ‘‘is not angry, and is alone with me in the room, he is capable of speaking as one human being to another.’’ Miller is elusive, but, when pressed by Tory, he shifts the responsibility for the slaughter of the Vilna group to the Gestapo. Tory reads this as an ‘‘unspoken admission’’ and concludes that ‘‘under his Nazi uniform there is some spark of humanity.’’ Miller continues ‘‘with eyes cast downward’’ and reassures Tory that nothing will happen to Kovno ghetto: ‘‘I give you my promise.’’ Fifteen months later, Kovno ghetto is liquidated. (Lewin, this volume, 54) This haunting vignette captures a profound and painful dilemma, one with which anthropologists and others are still struggling—a fundamental conundrum that defies the tools of rationalist theory and traditional social science method. On what can we rely in drawing conclusions about other human beings? If we cannot impute some core regularities or structures, some fundamental humanity, some measure of certainty to the external indicia we are given, then how is any kind of social connection or understanding possible? In this exchange between Jewish leader and Nazi, it is not only the social order that has been turned upside down but the very fabric of human connections—the minute-to-minute communicative signals and gestures upon which sociality itself depends. Desperate for some certainty in an increasingly violent and insane situation, Tory searches Miller’s face and voice for indications of humanity, for the signals that permit any shared understandings to emerge in human communica- 356 Elizabeth Mertz tion. In retrospect it may be tempting to respond with scorn to such naïveté: given the situation, surely it was folly to expect any of the usual conventions or signals to hold. Tory’s search for certainty, for structure—for his people’s survival—did indeed hang upon very slender threads: on a downcast gaze, on a tone of voice, on the words ‘‘I promise.’’ Yet it is upon just such slender threads, woven together in a multitude of daily interactions, that the fabric of human interaction and sociability is built. It is through regularities of experience with just such minute cues that children build the growing understandings and expectations that permit them to become members of families and social groups.∞ What, then, do we make of an adult’s attempt to make order out of life-threatening chaos by clinging mistakenly to such small, important signals—and what do we take from the failure of this attempt and many others like it? In 1973 two bank robbers in Stockholm held four people hostage in a bank for almost a week (Strentz 1982:149–50). During that time the robbers threatened the lives of their hostages many times but also showed them occasional kindnesses. For example, when one of the women attempted to call her children and was unable to reach them, she began to cry; her captor ‘‘touched her cheek’’ in a consoling manner and urged her, ‘‘Try again, don’t give up’’ (Graham, Rawlings, and Rigsby 1994:2). By the end of the siege, the hostages had developed tender feelings for the robbers and antagonistic feelings toward the police who were attempting to save them. In the wake of this event, scholars studying trauma have noted similar reactions in other victims and have tracked what came to be known as the ‘‘Stockholm Syndrome’’ among survivors of a number of terrifying situations, including concentration camp victims, battered women, and abused children (31). Interestingly, among the factors researchers have identified as contributing to the development of this syndrome are the degree to which the hostage and captor make eye contact, the amount of general contact and communication between them, and the extent to which the hostage is dependent on the captor for survival over extended periods of time (25). It has been suggested that this bonding arises out of a hostage’s need to survive and that it provides a person who is living under the high stress of a life-threatening situation with a way to keep functioning (Strentz 1982:150–52; Herman 1992).≤ In the process, the perpetrator of violence is viewed as a savior; bonds of trust with those who might The Perfidy of Gaze 357 down in the service of hope. This is a phenomenon frequently noted among children from abusive homes, who must somehow reconcile the harsh reality of family abuse with the necessity of trusting and relying upon some primary caretaker for survival (see Courtois 1988; Freyd 1996). Warren presents an intriguing parallel in her discussion of the tactics used by terrorist states: the ‘‘creation of divided realities, the exploitation of radically di√erent rationalities, and the blurring of victimizer and victim’’ that are used to discourage organized resistance by undermining ‘‘the bond of trust between citizens, community members, and close family relatives’’ (Warren, this volume, 385). At a very fundamental level, then, these cases demonstrate how people struggle to impose meaningful structures and pictures of reality on the situation when ordinary and predictable ways of interacting disappear—how far they will strain to avoid the pain of acknowledging the potential perfidy of the ordinary cues and signals upon which they have always relied.≥ A warped vision that provides reassurance and continuity, it would seem, is sometimes preferable to a more accurate assessment that acknowledges the dangers, chaos, and untamed uncertainties of volatile situations—and perhaps, to a lesser extent, of human existence generally. Or, to view it through a di√erent lens, these victims are rejecting an accurate vision of themselves as lacking much real agency, refusing to accept that they are in imminent danger of annihilation and powerless to do much about it. To accomplish this rejection, they must imagine themselves inhabiting a world in which there is some hope, in which there is some possibility of reaching, reasoning, or connecting with the people who hold the power of life and death. As Greenhouse has eloquently explained in this volume, ethnographies of political instability force us along with our subjects to rethink many key ideas, including our conceptions of agency. What sort of agency is this, then, that refuses to acknowledge its own powerlessness—that insists on finding a ‘‘normal order’’ where none exists, a ‘‘human’’ response where inhumanity is prevailing, safety where there is danger? It might be tempting here to romanticize such denials, pointing to the spirit it takes to assert even such residual agentive force (that is, exercising the power to refuse to acknowledge a lack of agency). Or one could note, in a social constructionist vein, that perhaps such denials can make themselves true in some cases—that by refusing to accept powerlessness, people give themselves the hope that is needed if they are to go on struggling to live. Indeed, this observation is in part accurate. And yet 358 Elizabeth Mertz we also encounter in these cases a limit to such a social constructionist vision: no matter what ‘‘reality’’ these victims constructed to evade their lack of power, many of them would die and su√er terribly at the hands of those who controlled their fates. If, for some, denial of the danger was a life-saving psychological move, for others it may have been a trick that took away any last opportunities for resistance or struggle.∂ As Warren (this volume, 386) notes, the conflicting rationalities within which Jewish leaders struggled ‘‘at once made life livable and left intact structures of control that would take it away.’’ It is precisely these kinds of conundrums and paradoxes that animate this collection of essays on life in unstable and changing states. If, instead of turning away from these di≈cult dilemmas, we rise to the challenges they pose, we find our own categories and models shifting and at times exploding. This is a turn toward complexity and away from easy answers. Victims can at times ‘‘construct’’ their ways into survival but at other times, to their own detriment, conceal from themselves the truth about the dangers they face. The same act of denial can be an assertion of agency (indeed, a means to survival) and a delivery of ultimate power into the hands of aggressors. As Greenhouse’s introduction to this volume explains, it is precisely when society is being remade, when states are dissolving and transforming, when at-times violent change is underway, that we see most clearly the dynamic, improvisatory, and performative aspects of the cultures, societies, and lives that anthropologists have always studied. And, at the same time, the limits and underlying commitments of social science concepts and methods are revealed and brought into question—as, for example, when we find notions of social construction both crucial and inadequate to mapping what is happening. De Nike’s analysis of postunification attacks on East German judges, prosecutors, and law professors ‘‘finds individual and collective phenomena seeming at once to confirm and undermine the analytical utility of Habermas’s behavioral and dialogic model of ‘intersubjectively shared traditions’ of ‘cultural values’ ’’ (this volume, 105). Or, taking another example, Greenhouse has argued powerfully for a new ‘‘uncoupling’’ of structure and agency in order to take better account of the way the ‘‘illusion of . . . concreteness’’ of society is always being remade in interaction. As in the work of Jean and John Comaro√, these articles attempt to capture both ‘‘a constantly unfolding, mutating, unruly process and an infinitely intricate order of evanescent, often enigmatic, relations’’ (Comaro√ and Comaro√ 1997: 19). The Perfidy of Gaze 359 Reacting to the di≈cult ambiguities that emerge from this kind of research, these authors have also turned to reflexivity—not as a flourish, but as a brass-tacks methodological necessity. In a sense, here we see anthropology pressed to its core, as the women and men who perform the ethnography find themselves asking not only about the role of their own concepts and cultures in their research, but side-by-side with their subjects, digging down to examine the very constitution of selves, agency, and society as it occurs from minute to minute in action and interaction. In Zabusky’s words, ‘‘[a]s I rode the gyres with [my informants] . . . I realized that I was trapped as well, trapped in an iron cage of my own making, but from which, nonetheless, there could be no escape’’ (this volume, 139–40). Drawing on her own field research in Guatemala as well as the articles in this volume, Warren incisively delineates the reflexive challenge posed for anthropologists when they are ‘‘not exempt from the cultures of terror [they] seek to describe,’’ and yet must ‘‘position themselves so that they can narrate the interplay of . . . conflicting rationalities’’ involved (this volume, 386). The Pain of Uncertainty and the Search for Closure If the essays in this volume uncover conceptual and methodological challenges that arise from studying social transformation, they also centrally confront the ethical and emotional aspects of things falling apart or changing beyond recognition.∑ We have seen that victims of violence at times turn away from confronting their lack of control over their fate. Faced with potentially paralyzing uncertainty as to whether they will live or die, and with no means to influence the outcome, they force certainty, create knowable parameters, imagine closure and order where none exist. But, as a number of the authors in this volume indicate, this response is not limited to the subjects of anthropological studies: social scientists, too, have sometimes balked at uncertainty, reaching for relatively fixed concepts of rationality and structure to capture lived realities that may be far more fluid and unpredictable.∏ Greenhouse discusses the challenges to the anthropological imagination posed by ‘‘modern uncertainties.’’ Warren warns that ‘‘the question for engaged ethnographers is how to resist becoming complicit in the misrepresentation of normative (nationalistic) politics as stable systems’’ (this volume, 381). And Lewin notes that social scientists have often avoided facing the ‘‘unambiguous trauma and terror of the Holocaust’’ 360 Elizabeth Mertz (this volume, 37) in part because it might defy the closure that is an accustomed part of taming events through explaining them in social science categories. Drawing on the work of Zygmunt Bauman, Lewin goes on to discuss the related problem that such events fit poorly with models of progressive rationalization or order in society: ‘‘if we, as anthropologists seek to reject muteness on evil such as that epitomized in the Nazi genocide . . . [w]e need to jettison the idea that this genocide was an aberration or failure, rather than a product of modernity’’ (this volume, 37). In a strikingly parallel vein, feminists have argued that in order to confront adequately ‘‘the reality and extent of sexual violence,’’ it will be necessary for social scientists to move beyond a frequent characterization of such violence as aberrant or unusual—a kind of denial that, these feminist authors argue, reflects an ‘‘unwillingness to believe that ‘normal’ healthy human beings can be, without their own complicity, so frequently and so severely victimized by men who appear ‘normal’ ’’ (Fitzgerald, Lonsway, and Payne n.d.:3; Meier 1993:1311).π This is a theme taken up by the activists with whom Elizabeth Faier worked, who complain that it is di≈cult to upset the settled picture held by many people of rape as unusual. Here resistance to domination takes the form of resisting a false security—a security based upon the comforting image of society as a fundamentally safe and orderly space for women. Like the social scientists criticized by feminist scholars, many laypeople seem to prefer the certainty promised by such settled and orderly models of human existence. And acceptance of these orderly visions undercuts urgent calls for change, denying the need for social reforms. We can hear then, in some of this scholarship, grounds for an indictment of social science for its inability to confront pain, uncertainty, lack of closure, and, perhaps in a more controversial vein, for its unwillingness to face what Lewin calls ‘‘evil.’’ Psychologists studying violence have echoed this indictment: The study of psychological trauma has a curious history—one of episodic amnesia. . . . This intermittent amnesia is not the result of . . . lack of interest. . . . To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature. . . . [W]hen the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossi- The Perfidy of Gaze 361 ble to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to choose sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. (Herman 1992:7). And perhaps it is not only the lay bystander who struggles over accepting this burden, but social scientists as well. Another psychologist points to the di≈culty for many in facing humankind’s fundamental vulnerability to betrayal by others, and she coins the phrase ‘‘betrayal trauma’’ to describe the problem: Betrayal is the violation of implicit or explicit trust. The closer and more necessary the relationship, the greater the degree of betrayal. Extensive betrayal is traumatic. . . . Betrayal trauma theory posits that under certain conditions, betrayals necessitate a certain ‘‘betrayal blindness.’’ . . . (Freyd 1996:9) Again, as with the ‘‘Stockholm Syndrome’’ or the Jewish leader, Tory, we see the di≈cult and painful character of acknowledging the real frailty of the social connections, structures, and signals that permit trust and sociality to develop; and we see the reasons why it might be tempting to turn away from instabilities and unpredictabilities that, while strikingly visible in more dramatic moments of human experience, actually render everyone vulnerable in frightening ways. How much more comforting it is to theorize a world in which structure and predictability reign—in which injustice, violence, and betrayals of key social norms are exceptional.∫ Perpetrators of violence, whether they are states, organizations, or individuals, can exploit this desire for comforting beliefs and stability. Anthropologists working on issues of violence have also pointed to the inadequacy of standard social science conventions of representing the disorder and emotion involved; by the time we have told the story in the removed voice of social science narrative, our very account has tamed—and thus obliterated—much of the immediacy and lack of structure that characterized the events.Ω Indeed, the control and closure that result from telling the story of what happened as a narrative with a known ending—about an event of a certain type—move the readers away from an essential aspect of the lived experience.∞≠ Although this is a 362 Elizabeth Mertz di≈culty that may never be completely surmounted, it can be ameliorated by use of discursive strategies such as Faier’s first-person ‘‘eyewitness account’’ to describe a tenuous, potentially eruptive moment. As Faier takes us face-to-face with villagers who threaten to get their guns, the fact that she has placed herself in the narrative brings an immediacy to our reading; we realize that in that moment our narrator herself could not be sure of the outcome. We can for a time stand in the ethnographer’s shoes (and thus closer to her subjects’ positions) at an unstable instant in which, quite literally, life and death might hang in the balance. And in moving imaginatively that much closer to moments where the narrative’s ending is uncertain—where the unthinkable conclusion hovers closer than is comfortable, we may also be able to reach closer to Ichlas at the moment before she was killed by her brother in the name of ‘‘honor,’’ reliving if only fleetingly a point in time at which she looked into familiar eyes and imagined another ending—a moment before the violent explosion of cultural and personal boundary-crossings made death the certain ending of the tale. If scholars studying some of the bleakest moments of human history and interaction are urging us away from the complacency of closure in social science analysis, so, too, are researchers operating in less traumatic realms. Thus, psychologists attempting to develop adequate theories of the self or the person have moved increasingly away from static, bounded conceptualizations toward more contextual, processual, and fluid approaches. Psychologist Kenneth Gergen writes of ‘‘the breakdown of the knowable self ’’ in contemporary understandings, noting that ‘‘as the sense of self as a singular, knowable set of essences is questioned, so doubt is cast upon the existence of other bounded entities’’ (1991:17). Gergen urges us, in a move reminiscent of Wittgenstein and others, to view ‘‘the locus of understanding [as] removed from the heads of individual persons and placed within a relational space’’ (1990:602). Vincent Crapanzano describes ‘‘the constitution of the self and other’’ as ‘‘the result of momentary arrests in a continuous dialectical movement,’’ a movement that is in crucial ways shaped by contextual features of linguistic exchanges (1990:419). The field of ‘‘cultural psychology’’ and its many relatives in anthropology, linguistics, and other fields are all centrally concerned with the exploration of this decentered, processual approach to the psyche (see Shweder 1990; Wertsch 1985). In parallel fashion, a number of authors in this volume—building on similar theoretical approaches developed by anthropologists and so- The Perfidy of Gaze 363 ciolegal scholars in recent years∞∞—point out the inadequacies of static, bounded conceptions of person, nation, locality, and place and urge us toward more turbulent, shifting perspectives. Here is ground less amenable to the safe, comforting security of easily-drawn boundaries and clear centers; here are spaces constantly in flux and remade by the people who inhabit them.∞≤ Just as we are pushed to confront the instability and potential perfidy of everyday human signals and connections, we are urged by this scholarship to confront the pain of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paradox in human cultures, geographies, and societies—to turn away from the comfort of closure toward ethnographic accounts that do better justice to the lived realities of human existence. (Of course, we should avoid idealizing ordered systems, remembering that pain can lie in certainty and order as well.) The Palestinian women in Faier’s account occupy this in-between territory, struggling with their own blurred personal boundaries as they fight against accounts of an honor killing that render the murder an accepted and acceptable ending to some stock narrative. If Ichlas was a prostitute, one narrative would go, then her behavior creates social disorder and brings shame on her family; her death at the hands of a family member is fitting because it will return social order and family honor. In another version, the disorder was caused by Ichlas’s violation of the boundary between Jewish and Palestinian societies and states, while yet another narrative described her as literally embodying a violent clash between two other incompatible worlds and identities—modern cosmopolitan versus traditional village. In this latter case, the embodied collision of two incommensurate worlds is visible in the war between the immediate surroundings and her dress and manner, in the way her body crosses and violates boundaries. And, once again, her death o√ers a resolution of this conflict by actually removing the o√ending body and restoring order. In all of these narratives, the honor killing o√ers closure—a restoration of order. The Palestinian feminists seek to unsettle these comforting narratives by o√ering a more upsetting story in which the killing creates disorder and injustice. This story opens the door on a world in which women’s safety is far from certain, in which rape is possible, in which no woman can with certainty guarantee herself immunity from an honor killing. At the same time, the feminists who work to unsettle settled narratives are simultaneously living with blurred boundaries of identity and disbelief, and Faier does not attempt to resolve this ambiguity for us. Some are vividly caught in-between and 364 Elizabeth Mertz are vocal about their confusion—or even hospitalized for their mental anguish—while others bear the collision of transforming worlds and states more quietly. Anthropological Accounts of Unstable and Transforming States: In-between Concepts, Disciplines, and Epistemologies Because they occupy and tell us of the ‘‘in-between,’’ the essays that comprise this volume capture well the sense of vertigo familiar to those of us who find ourselves frequently bridging distinct worlds, disciplines, or epistemologies—a position that Maria Lugones refers to as ‘‘world-travelling’’: I think that most of us who are outside the mainstream U.S. construction or organization of life are ‘‘world-travellers’’ as a matter of necessity and survival. . . . In describing a ‘‘world’’ I mean to be o√ering a description of experience, something that is true to experience even if it is ontologically problematic. Though I would think that any account of identity that could not be true to this experience of outsiders to the mainstream would be faulty even if ontologically unproblematic. Its ease would constrain, erase, or deem aberrant experience that has within it significant insights into non-imperialist understanding between people. . . . (1990:390–402) Lugones explains that we can learn a great deal about interstitial moments—moments of fluidity and translation—from those inhabiting the margins of power, who experience such world traveling as an urgent and constant necessity. If everyone must at times travel across boundaries, if ‘‘selves’’ are always somewhat fluid, if all social experience at times slides from clear structures into provisional, constructed, and contested spaces, then it may be not the most elite and privileged— those abiding closest to seemingly stable centers—who can teach us the most about these ubiquitous aspects of human life and society.∞≥ And, of course, as Zabusky’s essay vividly demonstrates, sometimes the lessons can come from increasingly unstable centers, as the boundary between center and margin blurs. In the study of our subjects’ blurring boundaries—and our own—we are often called to work in-between and question the boundaries of disciplines, theories, and concepts. The idea that work from the margins (and transforming centers) can advance the central understandings The Perfidy of Gaze 365 of social science is underscored by the authors in this volume. Indeed, as Judy Rosenthal pointedly implies, it may be that those we study were there ahead of us, understanding more fully the paradoxical and fluid character of social relations long before Western social scientists began to grasp the traps and promise of such a vision: This penchant for overcoming dualisms and divisions does not mean that Vodu people do not believe in distinctions or in ‘‘two sides of things.’’ They virtually worship the culturally invented, two-sidedness of things. . . . At the same time, they imagine that borders and others distinctions are constructed for purposes of crossing, and that sides are divided up precisely so that they may fuse from time to time. (this volume, 339) Rosenthal’s at-times deeply ironic commentary counterposes the alarmed response of those who prefer neatly divided, static categories to Vodu people’s incessant boundary-crossing and their easier acceptance of complexity and motion in the social ordering and disordering of life. Ries, in describing the inversion of expected social ordering she found in postcommunist Russia, speaks of the odd discourse that locates order and even safety in the Mafia, commenting wryly: ‘‘Despite all of the mystification I may detect in their talk, I often find myself thinking that because of the stark forms their economic ‘re-education’ has taken, my Russian interlocutors perceive the structural realities of class, power, and transaction in the capitalist marketplace more clearly than I ever will’’ (this volume, 310). Their continually unsettling discourse poses street bandits as occasional sources of social redemption from ‘‘the tangles of hypocrisy and cynicism in which people feel themselves caught’’ (this volume, 309), as they navigate a disappointingly chaotic transitional time. The cynical talk of ordinary folk in Russia, with its constant critique of capital accumulation and state power, ‘‘actively deconstruct[s] whatever legitimizing discourses or practices are presented on behalf of the reformulated political-economic order’’ (this volume, 277)—refusing the proferred depiction of an orderly movement ‘‘toward democracy and justice,’’ insisting on a vision of state power as equally as ‘‘inaccessible, inconsistent, and involuted as before’’ (this volume, 309). Echoing these themes in the work of Rosenthal and Ries, Parnell contrasts more orderly models of a central, centered state and its concomitant discrete (clearly defined and owned) parcels of land with the 366 Elizabeth Mertz more disordered geography that emerges from ethnographic study: ‘‘Conflicts that grow out of the disorganization of multiple ownership of land . . . reveal a composite rather than a Western state’’ (this volume, 148). Similarly, Eve Darian-Smith’s article tells of an intriguing response to European unification in the border area of Kent: a peculiar combination of increasingly porous boundaries—between England and Europe, between Kent’s claim to local autonomy and eu law—and a renewed defense of clear, strong borders for Kent as an old boundary-maintaining ritual is revived. And, just as psychology-from-the-margins may yield a truer, more adequate vision of the processual-self experienced even by those at the center, Darian-Smith and Parnell show us how ethnography-from-the-margins can advance the central project of developing ‘‘a theoretical language that allows us to talk about community and state at the same time’’ (Parnell, this volume, 177, paraphrasing Chatterjee 1993:11). In both cases, work in margins and destabilized centers allows us to see through the inaccuracy of unrealistically ordered social science models and advances our understanding where more centrally located, normal-science projects have remained mired— that is, aware of their inability even in less obviously fragmented situations to capture process but unable to extricate themselves from this bind. Sounding a theme close to the hearts of many of the authors in this volume, Cli√ord Geertz has recently written of his ‘‘sense that one is continually putting together ordered pictures and having them come apart just at the moment one gets them more or less put together; that the tension between an urban tradition a long way from dead . . . and an urban life outrunning that tradition’s categories is pervasive, chronic, and not obviously resolvable,’’ thus accepting the in-between scholarship (and social world) of which these essays speak.∞∂ For James Freeman and Nguyen Dinh Huu, the view from the margins yields a grim assessment of Western-based bureaucracy and theories as they have impacted the lives of refugee children. This narrative tells of cumulative traumatization of these children, first as they fled Vietnam, then as they struggled to survive in refugee camps, and finally when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) forced them to repatriate from the camps—at times to certain abuse and neglect. We learn that the ‘‘culture’’ concept played a role in the ideology that spawned this forced repatriation. As Freeman and Nguyen relate these children’s stories, they move from the more anthropological genre of ethnography into an account that is unabashedly engaged and judg- The Perfidy of Gaze 367 mental. Albeit through the pages of volunteers’ letters and case workers’ reports, we hear the voices of abandoned children living in brutal and inhumane circumstances: one child prays to die in his sleep in order to avoid the temptation of suicide, which he regards as a sin. We hear the sharp contrast of o≈cial reports (‘‘[T]he uncle seemed to be taking good care of them’’ [this volume, 228]) and of ethnographic observation (‘‘The middle child, the sister, hid in fear near one bed. The eldest brother was severely malnourished and ill. . . . The uncle had gained weight but the children were stunted, listless, and emaciated’’ [this volume, 228, 231–32]). And then the authors move to a more engaged stance, condemning the unhcr’s actions, describing their own e√orts to intervene, and taking a normative position. Here then is a blurring of the boundary between ethnography and social action—between social science and moral judgment. This convergence is more usually the domain of law or policy studies. Because I am trained both in anthropology and law, much of my work has attempted to bridge these two distinct and at-times warring epistemologies. There is a strong tug-of-war between the mandatory normative engagement of legal studies, at times perhaps without su≈- cient critical thought, and the more contemplative and careful stance of the anthropologist, at times perhaps shirking moral engagement. My legal colleagues repeat tales of the heartless anthropologists who evade ethical responsibilities by hiding behind the ‘‘culture’’ concept or various brands of relativism. My anthropologist colleagues express their dismay at the ‘‘bottom-line’’ mentality of legal scholars, so obsessed with instrumentalist analysis of situations that they run roughshod over the complexities, nuances, and moral ambiguities. The articles in this volume suggest some new bridges—but also, of course, some added complications—to be found in this core tension. In a sense postmodern long before the term became popular, some would chastise anthropology (along with postmodernism generally) for undermining or exploding fixed meanings and conceptual categories to a point where moral judgment becomes impossible—indeed, where no standpoint can even be carved out from which to assert the ‘‘reality’’ of events or perceptions.∞∑ Facing daily confrontations with urgent issues of violence and responsibility, many activists and lawyers respond with an irritated sense that such epistemological skepticism is a luxury only academics removed from the demands of engagement can a√ord. Once we have stepped through the postmodern looking glass, how do we 368 Elizabeth Mertz avoid a nihilist vortex where any account is as valid as another? The murderer’s denial of responsibility, after all, is just another perspective (see Frohmann and Mertz 1994:846–48). If there is no fixed ‘‘truth’’ or even ‘‘reality’’ to assert in the face of such denials, from what vantage can those who abuse power be called to account for their actions? How, then, is anthropology to respond to such critiques, which have come from within as well as from without? There is certainly some validity to concerns about the moral and epistemological implications of anthropology’s use of the culture concept or its reliance on relativism (see Freeman and Nguyen in this volume; Mertz 1987). And yet, the answer is surely not to assert singular, fixed standpoints; indeed, full recognition of the dangers of such a monologic approach has always been one of anthropology’s most important contributions. This kind of singular point-of-view is of course particularly problematic when it implies a lack of careful attention to the complicated ‘‘on the ground’’ experiences and understandings of the people in question. Indeed, this is one of the best and most powerful arguments, made in many of these essays, for the value of ethnography.∞∏ The ethnographies in this volume take us through the fixing and unfixing of social realities as states are reformulated and cultures transformed. Perhaps, then, the more interesting question becomes not whether there is any fixed reality, but rather what the significance is of asserting a singular, nonnegotiable truth at particular points in the history of a social shift. When does such an assertion of reality help in contesting abuses of power, and when does it aid a hegemonic impulse that obliterates dissent and di√erence, asserting a unity of perception when in fact there are a variety of important viewpoints to be considered?∞π There are numerous examples of times when the insistence on particular, fixed, verifiable ‘‘facts’’ has obscured a larger reality and, conversely, of broadscale descriptions that, in glossing over complicated nuances and divergent viewpoints, have failed to capture important truths. If we shift the question to asking about the e√ects of taking one position or another in a given situation, we move our focus to asking which perspective does the least damage—or, less pessimistically, which captures social reality more accurately in particular contexts. As Jean and John Comaro√ remind us, if all attempts to analyze social life must at times resort to ‘‘working essentialisms,’’ we are left primarily with ‘‘the crucial question [of ] how this is done, to what degree and e√ect; also, whose inter- The Perfidy of Gaze 369 ests are served, whose subverted’’ (Comaro√ and Comaro√ 1997:406). Again, there is no easy answer. Rather, this is a pain-in-the-neck shove into an ongoing calculus: assessing our own situations relative to those of our informants as well as to the professional discourses with which we engage, while also judging our informants’ situations relative to a plethora of possible contexts. This entails a further push out of any fixity of perspective—one akin to the plunge that Albert Einstein urged on sister disciplines some time ago.∞∫ It poses an analytic issue and a reflexive or ethical one, both of which will have to be considered not only as we interpret what we observe but also as we compose our own texts. Ethnography in unstable situations and transforming states is a particularly well-suited site for confronting these issues. For the ethnographer, it would seem, the task is in part how to sustain an ‘‘appropriate modesty’’∞Ω without flinching from ‘‘famine, violence, su√ering, and other forms of terror’’—without, in Lewin’s words in this volume, remaining ‘‘mute about evil’’ or becoming an unwitting collaborator in the production of human misery, as Freeman and Nguyen warn us is possible. In abandoning any lingering yearnings for purity—a search which anthropological work should long have brought into question in any case—scholars will have to accept partial solutions, concepts that are useful but flawed; they will have to themselves self-consciously occupy margins. This is reminiscent of a similar injunction by some of the critical race theorists in the legal academy, who have taken issue with the relativizing and deconstruction of fixed ‘‘rights’’ urged by critical legal studies. Instead, they urge that we inhabit the gray area between complete acceptance of the ‘‘rule of law’’ as a panacea, and complete rejection of formal law as a possible solution to some problems. As Patricia Williams reminds us, reliance on informal norms is a luxury only ‘‘insiders’’ to social systems can a√ord; while most assuredly imperfect, the language of ‘‘rights’’ has at least provided a toehold to which outsiders could cling in attempts to climb and enter the strongholds of the privileged (1991:146–55). We hear, then, a repeated theme—a call to accept the partial, the less-than-perfect, a call to inhabit the uncomfortable interstices of stable categories and unstable critique, a call to humility about the constructs with which we must work but also a call to engaged scholarship. The articles in this volume thus sound a theme found in the work of a number of other anthropologists currently urging a revival of ‘‘public interest’’ scholarship, following in the foot- 370 Elizabeth Mertz steps of earlier similar anthropological e√orts (Nader 1999; see also Hymes 1969). If anthropology, along with a number of other disciplines, is now caught even more ‘‘in-between’’ than is its usual wont—struggling between a postmodern shattering of fixed standpoints, on the one hand, and, on the other, its often-accurate perception of ‘‘systematicities’’— then perhaps it is from work on transformation at the shattered centers or vibrant margins of societies that a new post-postmodern approach will emerge. The work in this volume suggests that this next step of the anthropological journey—which, in many ways is at the cutting edge of a journey that much of Western social science seems poised to undertake≤≠—will push us still further beyond the comfort of stable concepts and fixed social structures. At the same time, while embracing uncertainty and accepting the lack of closure that is found in much of what we study, these authors also insist that we notice, respect, and take account of the systematicities and anchors to which our subjects (and we) cling (see Rosaldo 1993). Here is a space that is truly ‘‘inbetween’’—between fixed reality and completely relativist deconstruction and between concepts, disciplines, and epistemologies. It is arguably a space anthropology has occupied, if only in partial and uneasy ways, for some time.≤∞ Fragmented Realities, Structured Truths: The Ethnography of Transforming States And so we turn to the ethnographies in this collection for the guidance they provide in navigating this perplexing space between structure and chaos, improvisation and constraint, social construction and raw power—a space in which choosing one of two comfortable ‘‘either/ or’’ poles is no longer a satisfactory response.≤≤ Within these articles the nested contradictions appear as mutually entangled and sometimes even mutually constitutive—as paradoxes resistant to easy or clear resolution.≤≥ Thus Zabusky’s essay describes the increasingly fragmented sensibility of ssd scientists’ professional lives. However, this fragmentation conceals a more coherent undercurrent that is in some sense deceptive; it pulls people into cooperation with a system whose movement may be fighting against the tide of pure science that these scientists believed they were riding: The Perfidy of Gaze 371 The shifting centers that accompany the transnational processes of big science and European integration produce not only improvisation and cynicism but dreams and domination as well. . . . [E]veryone feels out of control, pushed and dominated by forces that they cannot see and over which they have no control. . . . For [ssd scientists], the forces of big science and European integration seemed, on the one hand, to make their work possible and, on the other, to lock them in prisons. (this volume, 138) Trapped in the ‘‘iron cage’’ created in part by their own desires, in part by the larger movement of capital, organizations, bureaucracies, and funding, these scientists spoke of ‘‘a clean and pure science . . . unfettered and free,’’ while experiencing a daily, distracting fragmentation of their enterprise. Similarly, the fragmented lives of the child refugees in Freeman and Nguyen’s account permit bureaucrats concerned with career progress and an appearance of success to perpetuate distortions that conceal the way their own system is deeply complicit in the very disruption it is supposed to prevent. And, again, in Lewin’s account, we witness the Judenrate, pulled in by the false lure of potential safety, participating in a Nazi system that uses the fragmentation it creates to conceal the fact that those who participate risk contributing to their own—and their peoples’—ultimate destruction. Rosenthal describes the ways in which myths of ethnic fragmentation in Togo have been used to cover up state violence, with the government attributing arrests ‘‘by police and military’’ to the necessities of coping with virtually nonexistent ‘‘tribalism’’ (this volume, 320). And Gordon’s account tracks the rising panic over rumors of ‘‘Native risings’’ and ‘‘Native unrest’’ in Namibia that fed support for ever-tightening laws to limit indigenous people’s movements, culminating in ‘‘the routinization of terror in dayto-day interaction’’ in the service of colonial capitalism (this volume, 77). Thus, on the one hand, these ethnographies tell of surface fragmentation on top of hidden systematicities. On the other hand, however, we also see the lure of a mythical, fixed, safe reality throughout many of these ethnographic accounts—a drive for stability or justice, a will to make a coherent story even where none exists. And, as we have noted, this is a lure to which social scientists are not always immune. So, a favored colonial trope that renders indigenous practices as ‘‘customary law’’ and searches for ‘‘authentic,’’ singular voices to speak for compli- 372 Elizabeth Mertz cated, polyvocal societies in e√ect freezes into static form the fluid, shifting, and threatening practices such as those of the Vodu orders. And, we have increasingly come to recognize anthropology’s complicity in such mistranslations. In Gordon’s account of Namibian vagrancy law, the colonizers move still further, in e√ect trying to freeze the people themselves into static form, clamping down on dangerous freedom of movement so as to produce a docile workforce. And Parnell demonstrates the inadequacies of ordered models of the state to capturing the fluidity of an increasingly decentered state, enacted in splintering communities and sprawling land disputes. Darian-Smith shows us the concerted reassertion of fixed boundaries occurring in Kent just at a point where the line between England and Europe as territories, along with the boundary between British and EU law, is blurring. Searching for belated closure, De Nike implies, a West German legal system that never fully confronted its own Nazi past now excorciates East German judges whose erased history contains a far more decisive rejection of Nazi jurists and legal outcomes. As Faier’s ethnography of Palestinian feminists reminds us, even the rebels who seek to destabilize dominant narratives can feel the vertigo that results when these accepted stories and patterns give way to a less reassuring and more disordered picture that takes account of violence and powerlessness. Or again, we saw in Lewin’s account of Tory’s conversation with Miller the way in which social actors may cling stubbornly to appearances of normal life and interaction in highly abnormal circumstances—in denial of the potential perfidy of ‘‘normal’’ conversation, of the daily signs we use to signal continuity of meaning and to build trust in human connection and society. This web of talk is one of the key means by which bureaucratic myths of normality and stabilized situations are perpetuated. Thus, lulled by webs of talk and writing that insulate them from the harsh realities of displaced Vietnamese children’s lives, bureaucrats at a far remove can hide from a fractured, painful truth and still live with themselves— indeed, can even feel good about what they’re doing. When Judenrate listened to such webs of talk from Nazi o≈cers, they misrecognized the degree to which this pacifying discourse concealed ongoing genocide— a fracturing of life and society beyond comprehension. For the activists in Faier’s article, resistance to gendered social domination and injustice required an ongoing battle to unsettle views of the social order as fundamentally safe and nonviolent—of violence and perfidy as routine rather The Perfidy of Gaze 373 than unusual. Quoting Dean MacCannell, Gordon also reminds us that ‘‘[t]he spread of fascism depended on a set of everyday social practices. . . . The capacity for self-delusion enabled settlers [in Namibia] to suppress or gloss over the obvious in order to normalize a terrible event, ‘coolly re-inscribing the event into the realm of the ordinary’ ’’ (this volume, 79–80). Vagrancy laws in Namibia, Gordon argues, provided just such a reinscription of the colonizers’ disruption of indigenous society and culture, rendering it as a commonplace legality regulating everyday conduct.≤∂ These authors also remind us of the ways in which our own discourse can become part of such a misleadingly tranquilizing ‘‘web of talk’’: like the un bureaucrats, social scientists are at times at risk of participating in discourses that project distorted images of closure and safety while people’s lived experiences are to the contrary.≤∑ Rosenthal and Ries in particular urge humility in this regard, counterposing their informants’ more processual, irreverent, and destabilized understandings to arguably more limited social science models. Thus more sedate models of the social order that look to the state and the market as central organizing forces, Ries argues, would fundamentally misunderstand the daily paradoxes confronting Russians today. The myth and status of the ‘‘honest bandit’’ that emerges in such a crazy, mysterious, and unpredictable social context is not easily analyzed using carefully ordered models of markets, states, or capitalism. Interestingly, however, it is precisely a more turbulent process of capitalist development that animates much of the transformation Ries describes. Thus, behind the fragmentation of lives on the ground, there is often yet another level that is not random or fractured at all, but is rather a movement of systematic interests well-concealed from view, a movement of state, capital, colonialism, and patriarchy that cares little for the splintered lives it leaves in its wake, yet generates a benign appearance that is part of its mode of progress. Here, then, is a complex, double edge≤∏—an unreal stability masking fragmentation, yet a fragmentation that results from a very real systematicity. The essays in this volume, in presenting ethnographic and historical accounts of capitalist processes, bring us insistently face-to-face with dilemmas that are at once ethical and intellectual. If we avoid analysis of the systematicity, we participate in an untruth that perpetuates the fracturing of human lives. If we turn away from the fragmentation and unpredictability as it is made real in our subjects’ lives, we distort their truths. 374 Elizabeth Mertz And from what standpoint can we see or assert any of this? The contributors to this volume are exemplary in demonstrating how, in remaining close to the ground, ethnography can stay true both to the lived reality of destabilized and improvised lives, some of which know no happy endings, and to an unmasking of the forces at work behind the fractured surface. At times this work calls for a move into multiple, shifting perspectives and voices, while at others it calls for assertion of fixed truths and realities. For those with anthropological training, to engage in the kind of judgment Freeman and Nguyen unapologetically put forward (‘‘not all cultures are beneficial; some are clearly harmful’’) may seem heretical and even dangerous. Certainly the past several decades of anthropology have revealed the dangers and erroneous conclusions that follow the unthinking imposition of scholars’ versions of Western morality—or even simply (!) their conceptual schemes—not only in non-Western settings but also in the West as well. But, in another sense, in taking this kind of stance—accepting the inevitably partially compromised or impure position of some engagement in the worlds we study and relinquishing our remaining shreds of hubris about the ability of our own discourse to stay above or beyond social construction—we are simply returning to the kind of unabashed socially engaged impulse that has been an important part of the anthropological tradition at least from the days when Franz Boas’s forthright stance against racism set the standard for our fledgling discipline.