Festive Flash Fiction: ‘Last Christmas’
Behold! The first new F3 for a good few months. In the meantime, I’ve been concentrating on the novel, which currently stands on something like 40k, and veers from awesome to awful like a second-hand van with dodgy steering. With this piece, I was aiming for something festive and upbeat, and – although I certainly nailed the former – well, see for yourself …
LAST CHRISTMAS
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. You gave me three heaped sacks of fabfeed and the rights for a garage reproduction of the ‘56 Eames Lounge Chair. Now don’t get me wrong – no regrets and all that. I didn’t even know you had the kind of money you needed to get your hands on the IP. But you could have done something better with it; something more-You called in a favour? Top-sliced the license fee? Oh.
Not that me knowing that would have changed anything. In fact, if we look at the bigger picture, I reckon it’d have probably made things worse. Looking back, we’d long known the whole circulatory atrophy thing was a possibility – the counsellor never thought to make a secret of your meat’s predispositions. Biological noise, waiting for an opportunity to derail you. Sometimes, in the soft, fleshy core of the night, I still see the woman’s face – pale and stern, as she chews thoughtfully on the stem of her tortoiseshell glasses.
The way I saw it, you were doing more with your life than I ever could with mine. “Destined for great things” they said, reporting your every move in the blogs and newsfeeds. All this, while I was struggling to do something for anyone other than myself.
You tell me that isn’t true; that I’m exaggerating. You say you were resigned to your fate, but I know that’s not true. I saw it in your eyes. You might wonder whether this whole thing was just an attempt to prove myself. Sure, it could probably be framed – handwaved – as a vestigial reflex of familial loyalty on the part of someone without any kids of their own. But I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that was the whole of it; that’s something that continues to scare the crap out me, far more than the existential angst that comes with the package of being trapped in this place. I mean, I’d like to think that it came down to the need to know. To know that I was capable of altruism – one selfless deed, one sacrifice. That’s all I needed.
Ah, yes. Very funny. I suppose I could have started off with something smaller, but the clock was ticking, and – even in my darkest hours, when the thoughts start to echo inwards – I know I did the right thing. Not necessarily for the right reasons; sure, there’s always doubt on that front. But I look at you now, tinkering with water filters, alternative energy, and tiny little nanowotsits, in a place with a name I don’t think I could even pronounce. I wonder what I’d have been doing, given the opportunity. Staring absently at the latest iterations of the telenova imports, probably – drinking whisky and wondering where it all went wrong.
Still, I suppose you’d best get on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mum’s been trying to get in touch – I bet she’s dying to hear what you’ve been up to.
Happy holidays, bro.
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This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Alter-Urbanism | Chernobyl, Ukraine
[Part of the alter-urbanism project]
In the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster, Chernobyl has been cast as a city reclaimed by nature. As to whether this portrayal is justified by the evidence, the jury’s still out … but whatever the truth, it certainly hasn’t been allowed to stand in the way of a good story. Take the first-person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (based loosely on Stalker (1979), a film by Andrei Tarkovsky). The game and its 2008 prequel – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – are both set in an alternate reality where a second nuclear disaster caused strange changes in the zone of alienation.
We’re talking a strange mix of historical fact, malevolent alien hive minds, and a multitude of mutant beasties. A reflection, then, of the symbolism lashed to Chernobyl in popular culture, public memory, and the collective unconscious?
So, what does this tell us about the alter-urban typology? This wild city isn’t simply anarchic, chaotic (as a “feral city”), or organised in a way which ignores / subverts the precepts of “Western” urbanism (as a “rogue city”) … instead, it actively endangers the bodies of those who would seek entry. Rather than amorality and ambivalence, the “wild” of the physical environment and its perverted forms of (un)nature approach the human intruders with absolute emnity. For a better sense of this reading of the setting, have a look at this trailer for Clear Sky.
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(Image courtesy of Vivo (Ben))
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Notes toward a genealogy of alter-urbanism
On the last Wednesday of November, I took a train up to London, meeting Paul at the Tate Modern, with the ultimate intent of attending a public Battlespace/s lecture, Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare. A tight bundle of peculiar and fascinating tangents from the mouths of Geoff Manaugh and Antoine Bousquet, the lecture was run under the aegis of the Complex Terrain Laboratory (blog) and publicised with the following description:
Contemporary political discourse on armed violence and insecurity has been largely shaped by references to spatial knowledge, simulation, and control: “human terrain”, “urban clutter”, “terrorist sanctuaries”, “failed states”, “core-periphery”. The historical counterpoint to this is to be found in the key role the successive technologies of clock, engine, computer, and network have all played in spatializing the practice of warfare. In this context, what implications do “feral” Third World cities, “rogue” cities organized along non-Western ideas of urban space and infrastructure, and “wild” cities reclaimed by nature, have for the battlespaces of today and tomorrow?
A substantial ramble follows beneath the cut. Brace yourselves!
Life since Guy Fawkes Night
Superstruct finished in a crazy webcast thing, which was the most (and the weirdest) fun I’ve had in ages. I wrote the 33,000 word beginning section of a surprisingly elegent sci-fi novel, and am now seriously struggling to maintain momentum and self-discipline. I submitted a speculative job application, and am at peace with the fact that there’s a 95% chance that nothing will happen as a result of this. I discovered The I.T. Crowd, and wondered why I hadn’t done so sooner.
I went to a Goldsmiths open day on four hours sleep, managed to sustain a cogent and upbeat conversation with a member of their Business Development Office, and thoroughly enjoyed the vibe and atmosphere of the place. That said, I have – thus far – failed to submit a Masters application, and am in the process of working out to compress my aims and academic interests into a page-long “personal statement” that doesn’t make me sound like a twat.
I bought a new jacket. I finally read Brasyl, by Ian McDonald. In Brighton, I was “turned” by vampires in SoHo, but didn’t find Mr. Smith. I went to Cornwall to see a friend from university. I learned why – as a woman – it might not be a good idea to accuse your housemate of shortening your menstrual cycle, and marvelled at the windswept desolation of the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus. I spent too much time on trains.
I discovered the concept of the cloudworker, and have embraced it a viable and desirable life goal. I attempted to talk my parents out of investing in property. I met Paul in London, and hit a public lecture at UCL about “feral cities“. I’m currently ordering some jottings for “notes towards a genealogy of alter-urbanism”, a tangetial ramble through history and fiction which really needs be to decide on a format … be it blog post, article, wiki, or pamphlet. I speculated on how capitalism is like nature, colonizing those volcanic islands that pop up from time to time in the North Sea. I bought a copy of Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village, which I fully intend to devour over the next couple of days. I cried at The Devil’s Whore in the same way as I once cried at Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom, and thought a great deal about constitutional reform.
What have you been up to?