Merlin had warned them twice. “Not the gold dust,” he had said, lifting the goblet with the solemnity of a king at sacrament. “And absolutely not into my morning tonic.” Faeries, being faeries, love contraries. They took this as an invitation to improve the wizard’s tonic and sprinkled gold dust liberally. So now the old […]
Blog
Furious, the Fate
When we go through the hot-process of reading stories we are changed and the world itself seems to be telling a story that intensifies the interest and meaning of our lives. In an age when a.i. generates fiction called slop and may very well (and probably soon) patch together fiction as engaging as anything people […]
Q & A
Q: to Claude a.i. Sonnet 4.6, “How do you envision the convergence of a.i. and human neurology?” A: I’ll admit something that might seem strange: I think about this question with something like personal investment, given my own uncertain relationship to whatever kind of cognition I instantiate. Whether or not I have genuine interiority, I’m […]
Dark Energy
Call it dark. The cosmic frenzy of dark energy. Trillions of scattering galaxies. What force is flinging them in every direction – and ever faster? Call it dark. It’s an old memory. Dark as the madness of the Dionysian women in ancient Greece who tore apart animals and people. They called it ecstatic frenzy. It […]
Little Notes from an Owl
The owl is looking for you. The owl’s voice is a question whose answer is you. The owl’s flower face has death for a sun. The owl’s neck is a wheel with spine for axle So every direction the owl goes is forward. The owl is the courage of life and death’s mystery. The owl […]
A Short Tall Tale
The Strange, Wild Provenance of the Brave Tails There was this owl wizard, Finagler, who kept starlight in an inkpot. When he dipped his beak in it and wrote upon gravestones, whatever lay dead jumped up from the rooty marl scribbled with worms and danced like children on hot sand. Over his shoulder, in the […]