December '23 Miscellany

The same form of miscellany post as ever - nothing immediately festive, though I hope you have feasted.

***

I watched a film: Danger Close - about the battle of Long Tan, this being a prominent event in the Australian experience of the Vietnam War. 

The film is (in the nicest possible way) unexceptional. An interesting event, to be sure, and appealing in the way that films from outside Hollywood are - you've never seen any of these actors before, and can't attach stereotypes or type casting to them. And, of course, it's Vietnam shorn of the accumulated imagery and emotion of the American experience. Further, Danger Close has an utterly explicable but still faintly funny trait, in that it is a film from, for and by an English-speaking country about the Vietnam War that shows more Viet Cong faces than American ones. 

So why am I talking about it here? Well, it has some very fine procedural elements: we see the actions and reactions of platoons, of D Company (6th Battalion, Royal Australian Rifles), of the battalion's Lieutenant Colonel, of the task-force commander at Nui Dat. As well as the actions of artillery sections, fire control officers and air force liaisons. Communication, for artillery barrages, ammunition resupply and airstrikes - to say nothing of simple reports -  is a running feature. Hence, the title: Danger Close. 

Communication - accurate, timely, swift and clear communication - of this kind is a challenge.  Is this one that should be worked into tabletop play more? 'Roll a d20 to blow the correct notes on your bugle'?  Well, that's less satisfying. And I'm not sure the presence of (say) harmonicas or mobile phone keyboards at the table would be terribly pleasing either. 

One point of comparison is the video game Radio Commander, a strategy in which you keep track of units (once again in Vietnam) via conversations. Though the pre-recorded selectable responses there are a little dissatisfying when all else is raw and comparatively grounded.

I dare say this is the sort of thing that the more traditional sort of wargaming has worked out somewhere. More research needed.

***

The degree of 'punk' in Steampunk is a perennial discussion here and on associated other blogs. Generally, I've held that '__punk' is an artefact as a label and that Retrofuturist is a more helpful designation. 

Well, here's a gentleman tracing the history of Steampunk and making the case for punkishness. You might compare it with some of the ideas discussed in my Faufreluches posts. I can't say that I necessarily agree with the conclusions in the last part, but otherwise it's rather good. 

***

I found a second-hand Penguin edition of the Lais of Marie de France. They're pretty short, authentically of their time and nicely spiky. A useful reference point for Medieval Europe, as well as full of assorted supernatural happenings and vengeances. Read a couple over lunch.

***

Investigating Censor is a work on Itch.io by Dave Greggs - AKA HCK, the chap behind Grand Commadore, whose work may be known to readers of this blog. You'll find a few samples over at Grand Commodore if you want to go over those before taking the plunge.

Anyway, 'Investigating Censor is a dark rules-light RPG wargame set amidst a campaign by oracular warrior monks to eliminate a sect of human-sacrificing pirates.' For more first impressions, here's some art. 

It's been interesting interacting with a piece of Greggs's work as a PDF rather than a blog post. Things have a little more room to breathe. Greggs writes a lot - and I like it! But I do sometimes idly wonder what would happen if a seven-foot hairy-chested Editor with a pick handle and a set of brass knuckles sat behind him as he wrote. 

"So, Dave, what are you working on this morning?"

A few things I like about Investigating Censor:

Player Characters Organisation - Players are the titular Censors. It's a wonderfully evocative set of ideas - the mix of legal, customary and religious authority could be quite heady. The very title of 'Censor' throws you into a different set of social expectations and ideas. This is a strength of Dave Greggs, I would say - the Investigating Censor, the detectives of Starling and Shrike. It's reminiscent of 40k's Inquisitors or Rogue Traders, and rather more successful than Mass Effect's Spectres.

Setting - A febrile coastal region, recently gone through regime change and approaching some measure of equilibrium. I suppose I associate it largely with South-East Asia, but it's clearly not a neat one-to-one comparison. Appendix N of IC urges readers to make and share regions for IC, so I may have to do just that! 

(I also quite like Appendix P's tonal variants.)

Framing - The various districts you move into are described socially with 'Centres of Gravity' and 'Key Personalities'. I quite like this encounter framing: whether the local magnate is Young and Feckless or Old, Careworn and Senile or a vigorous Capital-S Schemer to rival Iago, there's still an awful lot that has to go on around them. Whether the planet is volcanic or stable, it is a planet and the moons better recognise that.

Layers - Every level of social encounter has a variety of motivations proposed, with further reaching in as needed. Naturally, a Vice District has its own set of power struggles and problems and obsessions - but then there are region-wide political plays, or secret societies trying to accumulate clout and leverage - or just run-of-the-mill psychopaths. 
  Add to this the various tendencies of your NPC Allies, who do not have your monastic background. Antipathy, opportunity, infatuation, addiction, social pressure can all make them crack. (Maybe you could treat this like Darkest Dungeon's afflictions. The Investigating Censor sending out another expedition is not unlike the Heir sending out another band....)

Alchemy, Fetches and Fetishes - This is a world rich with low-level magics and wonders, without falling into the video game-esque problem of brigands carrying Claymores that shoot Ball Lightning. The presence of Alchemy and various charms enhances this, and feels apt. IC is about a prosperous land ill-used, rather than a blasted heath. This wealth finding its way into narcotics and easing nostrums works better than some potions in RPGs.

I disliked nothing immediately in Investigating Censor. Some worked examples might be good, but one has been released on Grand Commodore. I might care for a little more unifying detail for the Cult of Protection, though it's not strictly speaking a bad choice to keep them loosely sketched against the strong presences of the Censors themselves. (In any case, too strict a 'Pirate Code' will make them sound altogether too Blackbeard-Caribbean).

If the above wasn't quite clear, this may be considered a recommendation. 

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Civic Constellations

I've had this in mind for a while. There are those states of Calliste chosen as exemplars for TRoAPW, described in the Gazette here. Anyway, there's a way to quickly illustrate my point in that post with simple diagrams. These aren't pointcrawls, and if they're maps, they're pretty highly abstracted ones (you could probably leave off any of the identifying letters and they would still communicate something about the state in question). If you will, they are as like to a map as the constellation of Cassiopeia is to the figure of an enthroned queen.

Majestic Pavaisse!

Blue circles for regions listed in the Gazette; crossed circle for the capital. Blue lines for major internal arteries* - there are most likely other roads or rivers or passes, just none that make sense with a wagon train or a laden barge. Red lines for major trade links. 

Sea-girt Malmery!

Bustling Datravia!

Sharp-eyed readers will have noted that there are some places hitherto unmentioned for Datravia. Of course, Datresse is still the central point of that fair land, but there are some outskirts. Think of them as the region of Veneto to La Serenissima. Anyway, these are....

• Uitbrig, the ancient town with its long-established academies and seminaries.
• Ghaivera, Datresse's granary.
• Noysdam, known as The Citadel of Noysdam or The Noysdam. The rationally-planned recently built fortress city covering the main approach to the centre of Datravia.

Anyway, I hope these go some way to focusing on the ideas presented in the Gazette.

Far-reaching Tsymric!

*Internal in the sense that we are concentrating on these polities and seeing how they link together internally. If you were to tell me that the road from Purlitz to Loughdaine was built centuries back by the Horatione Cohorts and leads directly to Horato crossing five different principalities to do so, it would make complete sense.

How to Read the False Machine

TO REVEAL AN ANSWER: The piece of writing at the end of the last post was derived, basically, from some fairly negative and somewhat fantastical feelings about the experience of reading the Horus Heresy books. With a little element of the King in Yellow mixed in.

Roboute Guilliman: You, brother, should remove your armour.

Horus: Indeed?

Rogal Dorn: Indeed, it is time. We have all set aside our pauldrons except you.

Horus: I wear no pauldrons.

Roboute: [aside, to Rogal] No pauldrons? No pauldrons!

And on that revelation, trailing corposant, I move to another lurid book.

CONTEXT: P J Stuart, author of the blog False Machine, a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  and several interesting RPG products ran a Kickstarter to take a majority of that blog material and preserve it in a weighty tome. Behold, the above. It is as larger as many editions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, if a little lighter. (Quite a pleasing weight, really.) The cover is a distinct orange, with letters that seem to shift as you read them. That might just be a faulty bedside lamp, or fatigue on the part of Yr. Hmbl. Crrspndt., but I wouldn't put it past Patrick to have hexed it somehow. Illustrations from several artists, often former collaborators with PJS. Fascinating set of marbled end papers by Scrap Princess.

....but I don't need this. I've read a bunch of the original posts, even commented on them. (Some comments are reproduced in the text of the book above. It's remotely possibly I'm there, I haven't checked thoroughly yet. Full Disclosure, &c, &c.)

Anyway, if a charming visitor to my snug garret were to ask over a glass of Oloroso 'My dear, what is that fascinating book on your shelves?', how would I answer them?

[QUICK NOTE: the Blog is False Machine. The Book is Speak, False Machine, whatever it says on the cover. Occasionally, I'm going to need to compare the two so they need different names.]

MOVING ON: On one level, everything in False Machine is either an RPG product or fuel for RPGs. Patrick Stuart is a man who will read and review works of fantasy - EG, Gormenghast or The Worm Ouroborous, or histories of the sort of period that have inspired fantasy fiction, as A Distant Mirror  - as readily as a work on the Psychoanalysis of Fire. This isn't to posit this work as merely fuel for the capital-P Product, but it is to indicate that there is a final aim in place for much of the work in here, a set of objectives. 

Now, most of the stuff that went into the actual books isn't in Speak, False Machine. The posts for Veins of the Earth became Veins of the Earth. Good thing too. But this references character and action on the part of the author. So, a newcomer should think on that.

The various articles have been changed slightly. Spelling mistakes and ungainly turns of phrase have not been corrected, we are assured. But other things have changed. Some comments are included, many are not. Illustrations that offer context have gone. See for instance the post called on False Machine 'Five.. Four... Three.. Two... ONE!' It must be shorn of the referential images that indicate the origins of the work without interrupting the flow of the fiction, or the end table that lays out the similarities in several works. It must rely on the title alone, which may be reference enough. 

Of course, one understands why such images are not included, but something may be lost. To refer back to my own work at the top of the page - how clear was that little mystery?

The material is not only presented in a reduced form, it is also framed differently. Blog posts that may have been weeks or months apart can now be put side by side, and there is benefit in this. Now we can read all about the Horus Heresy back to back (Hoorah?).

Back to back, and also in two columns. This sounds silly to make into a point in a new paragraph, but if you're used to a post being in one column, with a predictable set of links and gadgets at the side, it is a little strange to see it in two columns, and have the experience of your eye wandering across.

TO CONTINUE: It is very online. Sometimes that phrase is used as an insult: in this case, it is basically descriptive. False Machine was and is a web-log. It should not surprise a reader that Speak, False Machine bears the hallmarks of the internet.

There's a freedom of tone. Speak, False Machine has a good number of reviews. There is also a great deal of flippancy, plenty of cursing and a pool of references deriving from online cultures (hence a section titled 'Weebery'.) As good as these reviews may be, they would not appear in this way in the pages of a high-brow weekly. Certainly not at this length: word limits online are a very different thing to those in print. Quotes can be longer, explorations more discursive.

Thus, the rough set of points or ideas expressed by the (hilarious) 'WWII - Written and Directed by JJ Abrams' could be expressed by the sort of less strait-laced weekly magazine, but would probably not take that form or be expressed to that degree and so would be X degrees of magnitude less memorable. Now, do I prefer the rough-hewn original of that post on False Machine, or the smoother-formatted version in Speak, False Machine? The former has my fondness as the original, but the latter is superior. The evenness of the columns and text allow the wit to shine that much more.

To speak also on something I have kept at arm's length - there is also a portion of interpersonal drama. False Machine allowed for others to comment on it: it is a social medium of a kind. Further, Patrick Stuart has and has had long-term collaborators. It was honest and correct to include it - certainly, I might have been tempted to leave it out. 

So, a mix of material. Review, essay, fiction, comment, verse. Sometimes niche, sometimes universal, usually interesting. 

But is it any good?

Yes. Some of it was probably more interesting to live than to read about, but this is not a Curate's Egg. 

Is it a book you would have lying around your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

Well, I have no wife, but should a paramour in the midst of a certain charming entanglement of limbs and digits start talking about the Dover Beach Expanded Universe - well, my heart's beating would doubtless reach a furious tempo.

Can you not give us any real criticisms?

I suppose it's a little odd to be holding a weighty tome full of stuff that has the internet aura of disposability, but to that's more an issue with context than content. In any case, this is less offensive in that regard than some books of Current Events I've seen reproducing an activists social media posts.

I see. Thank you, Mr, umm, ... -

A Milestone and A Millstone

You blink, and then it turns out you've hit Two Hundred and Fifty posts. I'm not certain that there's a really good way to mark this (though the suggestion of 250 paragraphs of 250 words each on 250 topics was advanced). Well, instead I have compiled the following list: 250 artworks, topics, images and so forth discussed by this blog. If the entry is in bold, there's probably most of a post devoted to it. That's at least one way to review the changing character of the blog.

To make this more than a list, please see also a little piece of writing afterwards. There is an extent to which the former is a clue to the latter, but I shall say no more.

1. Jack Vance's Dying Earth
2. Goblin Market
3. Wolfe's The Wizard Knight
4. The Song of Roland
5. The Kalevala
6. The Stress of Her Regard
7. The Cosmic Trilogy
8. The Banner Saga
9. Procopius
10. Count Belisarius
11. Marco Polo in the Court of Kublai Khan
12. The Pillow Book
13. The Book of the New Sun
14. Gormenghast
15. Virconium
16. Julie Taymor's Titus
17. Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder
18. Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle 
19. Gulliver's Travels
20. The Chronicles of Narnia
21. Van Dyck
22. The 52 Pages
23. King Solomon's Mines
24. The Pilgrim's Regress
25. The Pilgrim's Progress
26. John Ruskin
27. Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
28. The Mignola-illustrated Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
29. Macbeth
30. Coriolanus
31. Othello
32. MR James
33. Where Eagles Dare
34. Ice Cold in Alex
35. Shadowrun
36. Tim Powers's Declare
37. The Ill-Made Knight
38. Anathem
39. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
40. Mass Effect
41. Last of the Mohicans
42. Castle of the Otter
43. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
44. Mad Max
45. The Anabasis
46. Yoon-Suin
47. The Thousand and One Nights
48. Snow Crash
49. The Tower of Babel
50. Barsoom
51. Cyclopean architecture
52. Ruritania
53. Appendix N
54. Popski's Private Army
55. Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour
56. The Mughal Empire
57. Henry the Navigator
58. Dune
59. Fallout 
60. The Difference Engine
61. The Napoleon of Notting Hill
62. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
63. Shada
64. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
65. Discworld
66. John Wyndham
67. The Quatermass Experiment
68. Dan Dare
69. The Prisoner
70. Elric
71. Strontium Dog
72. Judge Dredd
73. Rogue Trooper
74. The Children of Men
75. Neverwhere
76. A Canticle for Liebowitz
77. The Saga of Recluce
78. Silverberg's Majipoor
79. The Third Man
80. Erast Fandorin
81. Rendezvous with Rama
82. Star Trek
83. The Culture
84. Firefly
85. The Blazing World
86. Lamentations of the Flame Princess
87. Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey
88. Blake's image of Urizen in The Ancient of Days
89. The Man who would be King
90. William Morris
91. The Poetic Edda
92. J R R Tolkien
93. A Sing of Ice and Fire
94. Tom Holt
95. Mere Christianity
96. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
97. Isaac Watts
98. Isle of the Unknown
99. The Winter's Tale
100. The Aeneid
101. Twelfth Night
102. The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare
103. Pygmalion and Galatea
104. The Steel Bonnets
105. The Dark Tower (CS Lewis)
106. Riddley Walker
107. Puck of Pook's Hill
108. Nathan J Anderson's Malacandra illustrations
109. Castle of Days
110. The Rivan Codex
111. The Mysteries of Udolpho
112. The Mausoleum of Thoedoric
113. Maria Lack Abbey
114. Trier Cathedral
115. The Book of the Long Sun
116. A Voyage to Arcturus
117. Nebulous
118. Iain Moncrieffe and Don Pottinger's Simple Heraldry - Cheerfully Illustrated
119. Clark Ashton Smith in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition The Emperor of Dreams 
120. The Monk
121. The Castle of Otranto
122. Ivanhoe
123. Arms and the Man
124. Flashman
125. The Mask of Demitrios
126. Barry Lyndon
127. Veins of the Earth
128. All Saints, Margaret Street
129. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race
130. Journey to the Centre of the Earth
131. The Gardens of Ynn
132. The Talos Principle
133. The Critias
134. The Timaeus
135. Journey to the West
136. Equestrian Portraits of Charles I
137. St Mary Le Strand
138. Raiders of the Lost Ark
139. The Diamond Age
140. The architecture of John Outram
141. The Ishtar Gate
142. Age of Mythology
143. St Peter and St Paul's Church, Pickering
144. Seeing Like a State
145. Reflections on the Revolution in France
146. 'Catapaulta' by Edward Poynter
147. The Stygian Library
148. The Name of the Rose
149. Roger Corman's 1964 film of The Masque of the Red Death
150. Paul Kidby's Discworld illustrations
151. Votan
152. Not For All the Gold in Ireland
153. The Ancient Greece of Odysseus
154. Marian and Trinitarian columns
155. Ilium and Olympos
156. Thackeray’s History of Henry Esmond 
157. Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon
158. A Song of Ice and Fire
159. The art of William Nicholson and James Pryde
160. Silent Titans
161. Seven Pillars of Wisdom
162. Shardik
163. Vita Sackville-West, The Eagle & The Dove
164. An Atlas of the Soviet Union
165. Doctor Syn
166. Mythago Wood
167. Stardust
168. Rogue Male
169. The Day of the Jackal
170. HCK's Maximalist City-State World
171. The Fall of the House of Usher
172. The House on the Borderlands 
173. HMS Apollyon
174. Excalibur
175. The Cruel Sea
176. Electric Bastionland
177. Francis Spufford's Red Plenty
178. Mistress of Mistresses
179. Tip & Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa
180. The Vorrh Trilogy
181. Tumanbey
182. The Well of the Unicorn
183. Joseph Wright of Derby, 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery', 1766
184. Appian's Roman History
185. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Monday Starts on Saturday
186. Garth Nix's 'Down to the Scum Quarter'
187. Fallen Empire
188. The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch
189. A Tale of Two Cities
190. Costumes from the 1883 Cambridge Greek Play production of The Birds
191. Fading Suns
192. Passion Plays
193. Richard III (1995)
194. Candide
195. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
196. Magical Industrial Revolution
197. Tales from the Mausoleum Club
198. Max Beerbohms's Seven Men and Two Others
199. Henry Kuttner, Fury
200. Northwest Smith
201. Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Slumbering Ursine Dunes
202. The Bas-Lag Cycle
203. The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China 
204. State of Emergency
205. The Taheiki
206. Anvil of Ice
207. The Cthonic Codex of Paolo Greco
208. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
209. Warhammer Fantasy
210. A Very British Civil War
211. Conquest: the Last Argument of Kings
212. Demon Bone Sarcophagus
213. Time Bandits
214. John Dryden
215. Hic Sunt Myrmeleones
216. Spanish-suited playing cards
217. They Were Defeated
218. Lazarus and World of Lazarus
219. The Dragon Waiting
220. The history plays of Mike Walker
221. The Dream of the Red Chamber
222. Jack Vance's Emphyrio
223. The Metabarons & The Incal
224. Pilgrim (not the radio plays)
225. Layer Cake
226. The Search for the Perfect Language
227. Dr Zhivago
228. The Ring Cycle
229. The High Crusade
230. Giulio Cesare in Egitto
231. Lord of Light
232. Dorothy L Sayers
233. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
234. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
235. The Knight in Panther Skin
236. The Last Coin
237. Tales of the Alhambra
238. Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
239. Mouse or Rat?
240. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
241. Conan the Barbarian
242. Diplomacy
243. Holinshed's Chronicles
244. Tales of Hoffman
245. Indo-Saracenic architecture
246. Ely Cathedral
247. Ronald Blythe's Akenfield
248. Towers of Trebizond
249. Evelyn Waugh's Helena
250. Troika!

***

So, you've probably been cursed.

You opened the book. You touched the little statue in the dark alcove. It was something like that, surely. Now you see things.

    There's a world beyond this one. A world of constant violence, of struggle. You see men there, or things very like men. They fight and they talk: they talk about fighting, they fight about talking, they fight about fighting, they talk about talking. It's riveting, but it shouldn't be a surprise to you. The ancients, after all, could enjoy rhetoric and wrestling both.

    For a time - for a few times still - you walk the pavements, you sit at your desk, you sway in the train carriage, and there's a thrill to it. You know what's waiting for you when you close your eyes. There a world beyond this one, and there's always something happening there, monumental in every moment. The details flash into your head: place, costume, mannerisms, scene, weapons, names, faces, deeds. 

    And then you concentrate a little, and you see a little more. There's someone telling you all this. Even if there's no narrator's voice, there's a choice in what you see, what you hear. So you think about them, and maybe there isn't only one. Or maybe there wasn't ever any more. But you are locked into the deciphering process. When you sleep, when you speak, when you drink, part of you is working away at it. Work is fun: don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Labouring away at something you love is rewarding and satisfying and occasionally beautiful, and now you can do it all the time. 

    Really, you're quite lucky.

    But anyway, that part of it all aside, you also reflect on the events playing out. The characters - who fold and refold on one another, archetypes or commentaries or variations upon a source. If the things you see didn't vary so wildly in its people and moments or appear on so vast a scale, you might become dizzy with the degrees of sameness. And this too is a mystery, and thus an amusement. The ticking of your brain, as familiar and as alien as your heartbeat, or the music of the spheres, is slowly changing its rhythms to match.

    Then there's a slight change in the visions. It started with a slowing, an approach to the sort of crescendo you expect. It didn't quite stay that slow, and it didn't quite ever stop being that slow. There's an oddness to it. Figures - men - beasts - demigods - angels - circle you, warring and declaiming and crying out and beating their breasts. They clash and reset: swing, address, return. The motion round you is faster and faster, the figures ever more solid, ever better-defined in detail, ever more ready to spring to life. It is like staring at a circle of monoliths, framed gloriously against the sun, and knowing at the deepest conceivable level that these rocks will leap, will blur into sudden, astounding motion - and perhaps they did, and perhaps they did. 

    Again, you think again. You dip your head in cold water. You stretch. You ease your body. There are those sorts of problems that you need to step away from occasionally. Again, you think, again.

    It isn't like it was - well, of course it isn't! Never could be: some processes change you. Not something to lament overlong. But maybe you can capture a glimpse of what it was, once in a while. 

    Perhaps you might talk it over with someone. But this isn't really the sort of thing for polite conversation. Too much finicky background to lay out. Too much violence, too much religion, too much politics. Other people must know of it, though, mustn't they? 

    You can't recall who gave you the book. If it was a book. The picture. The play. The mezzotint. But it had to have come from somewhere. The world - this world - is not so strange that such things can creep up on you all on there own. There was a chain of cause and effect. Somebody gave you the book, long ago.

    So you search, and you do not search in vain. There are people who have seen something of what you've seen. But they won't talk about it, or they'll talk about all the wrong bits in tedious detail and in obvious ignorance of all the most vital points. The process is fruitless, and you get some very scathing looks into the bargain. 

    That doesn't matter, though. You've got work before you, and a handful of social ties to cultivate and maintain, and at the end of it all, a whole other world to go back to. 

    So you do. There's something coming, you can feel it. Something terrible and thrilling and revelatory, so literally apocalyptic, in its content and implications. 

    And then it's not there. Not there at all. Neither climax nor anticlimax, but still it persists. Believe it or not. The stone gathers neither moss nor speed, but it does keep rolling. There's a hint of tedium in the air, like the fug of men trapped too long indoors. Hell's bells, but it's dull. Still, you have to dig in. The initiate into new knowledge undergoes several trials, remember. 

    There is a biting of the bottom lip, a gnawing of fingernails, a wanness of countenance. Has someone commented on it? Vanity: most people you know have far better things to do than comment on your appearance. Whether or not they are, you apply nose to grindstone for a solid fortnight. They might call you a boring So-and-So now, but that's probably preferable than remarks about bloodshot eyes.

    You go back. You think things have changed. Perhaps they even have. Things move slowly, like a cinema reel put into a slide projector. There's a whirring from somewhere, and the sight of dust motes in a beam of light. The image is changing, slowly, resolving before your eye into what you always knew it would be. There should be comfort in that.

    The day is overcast. It is cool, but not chill. Your lunch hour is almost over. You pick up the little book from the bench, and slip it into your pocket. You'll be going back soon. 

***