Hatred of Writing is now available at both Atomic Books in Baltimore and Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago. Copies are also still available direct from me through PayPal on the order page. Many thanks to those who’ve already ordered! Your support means a lot.
From the depths of the salt mine comes…Hatred of Writing.
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Posted by sean on November 8, 2018
https://sd-stewart.com/2018/11/08/hatred-of-writing-update/
Now Available: Hatred of Writing
Selected short fiction from the past five years.
Limited to 50 numbered copies
48 pages, digest-sized, hand-lettered cover
Published in October 2018
Available here: Atomic Books, Normals (in-store only), and Quimby’s.
Posted by sean on October 1, 2018
https://sd-stewart.com/2018/10/01/new-zine-hatred-of-writing/
I remember. They said I wouldn’t but I do. I don’t remember everything, but enough.
Dawn is now breaking—through the window pink sky appears, followed by a spray of golden light. From close overhead a lone crow utters a single drawn-out caw. Silence follows.
The silence only spreads itself so far. I stretch out its thin covering and fold myself inside it.
This is neither a beginning nor an end. I know how I arrived. I can turn and see a faint trail threading back to the fields of my youth. There are burn marks where attempts at erasure have been made.
I wanted to help, in this one way, this very simple way. They said my ‘self-limiting naiveté’ would destroy me. They were wrong. Instead their rigid framework destroyed me.
The air was cold, like it is today. And these stretched and endless limbs were no more suited to it then than now.
What strange form of life it was. How grew the light late in winter days—spreading across fields, streaming out over the river. How the darkness hid our fears.
Holy songs and rituals haloed material desires. Now far off—now beyond—now tinny at the end of this dying line.
Sudden harmonics ring out like hinges from one wall of noise to the next. Awash in reverb, notes soar to the forbidding sky.
I am underneath them. They enter my bones. The fullness of sound enters me, expanding at speed to the point of fracture.
The rending leaves two tottering halves, headless and forlorn. Push one down the hill while the other spins and spins. Rotate or roll away, makes no difference.
Yet still the light remains, ever-present, flashing in our eyes. It illuminates the new but it is the same light, and from the same sources. Even with our backs turned it warms us.
As we return to plaster together the beginning of another day.
[Text extracted from several years’ worth of abandoned drafts and reassembled, with minimal edits, to form a new whole]
Posted by sean on December 13, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/12/13/prelude-to-nothing-let-there-be-light/
There is nothing where you are going.
What do you mean…nothing.
I mean what I say.
That means nothing.
I understand it to mean something.
I think it’s just something to say…
[shrugs]
But there are things here…around me.
Are you certain.
Yes.
Describe them.
Leaves scattered on the sidewalk. A car’s headlights flicking on in the predawn gloom. The distant whistle of a train.
And do these things have meaning to you.
I-I’m not sure.
Take a closer look.
Well, I notice them.
And what about faces—do you see faces.
They are obscured.
Do you wish to see them with more clarity—to distinguish one from another.
Perhaps.
Now it is you who are evasive.
It is in my nature.
And everything that came before—what happened between when you left and when you returned—is it now gone.
Yes, for the most part. I see only glimpses but I cannot bring it all into focus.
In those glimpses you see more than in what surrounds you now. The latter is of little consequence.
How do you know.
It does not matter. What matters is in between.
In between what.
The words.
Posted by sean on July 20, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/20/revised-guidance-from-two-years-ago/
As they rode along the edge, the brambles drew back their thorns like cats retracting their claws.
This was something to see: fifty black cats and as many yellow ones, and then her, and one couldn’t really be altogether sure that she was a human being. Her smell alone threw doubt on it—a mixture of spices and game, the stables, fur and grasses.
Riding a wheel, she took the worst roads, between precipices, across trees. Someone who’s never travelled on a wheel would think it difficult, but she was used to it.
Her name was Virginia Fur, she had a mane of hair yards long and enormous hands with dirty nails; yet the citizens of the mountain respected her and she too always showed a deference for their customs. True, the people up there were plants, animals, birds; otherwise things wouldn’t have been the same. Of course, she had to put up with being insulted by the cats at times, but she insulted them back just as loudly and in the same language. She, Virginia Fur, lived in a village long abandoned by human beings. Her house has holes all over, holes she’d pierced for the fig tree that grew in the kitchen.
—from ‘As They Rode Along the Edge’ by Leonora Carrington
This story is now available in The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington published in the USA by The Dorothy Project, and in The Debutante and Other Stories published in the UK by Silver Press. Both titles have been published as part of a 2017 centenary celebration of Carrington’s birth, which also includes the NYRB republication of her asylum memoir Down Below and her children’s book The Milk of Dreams, as well as Joanna Moorhead’s biography The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington.
For a breakdown of the differences between the two supposedly ‘complete’ collections of Carrington’s short stories, read ‘Hyenas, Horses, and Rabbits, Oh My!‘ by Selena Chambers at Weird Fiction Review. Over time Chambers will be reviewing each of Leonora’s stories found in the two collections, as well as evaluating the other books listed above.
There could hardly be a better time to be reading and appreciating Leonora Carrington!
(Click here to read my review of the out-of-print collection House of Fear, which includes a selection of her stories, the novella Little Francis, and the memoir Down Below, and here for my review of The Seventh Horse and Other Tales, which paired another batch of her stories with an abridged version of her novel The Stone Door).
Posted by sean on June 6, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/06/06/100-years-of-leonora-carrington/
Dear sister, Christa T. wrote, in summer 1953. When, if not now?
You know how it is: the time passes quickly, but it passes us by. This breathlessness, or this inability to draw a deep breath. As if whole areas of the lungs have been out of action for an eternity. When that is so, can one go on living?
What presumption: to think one could haul oneself up out of the swamp by one’s own bootstraps. Believe me, one doesn’t change; one remains everlastingly out of it, unfit for life. Intelligent, yes. Too soft; all the fruitless ponderings; a scrupulous petite bourgeoise . . .
You’ll certainly remember what we used to say when one of us was feeling forlorn: When, if not now? When should one live, if not in the time that’s given to one? It always helped. But now—if only I could tell you how it is . . . The whole world like a wall facing me. I fumble over the stones: no gaps. Why should I go on deluding myself: there’s no gaps for me to live in. It’s my own fault. It’s me, I’m simply not determined enough. Yet how simple and natural everything seemed when I first read about it in the books.
I don’t know what I’m living for. Can you see what that means? I know what’s wrong with me, but it’s still me, and I can’t wrench it out of myself! Yet I can: I know one way to be rid of the whole business once and for all . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.
Coldness in everything. It comes from a long way off; it gets into everything. One must get out of the way before it reaches the core. If it does that, one won’t feel even the coldness any more. Do you see what I mean?
People, yes. I’m not a recluse. You know me. But I won’t let anything force me; there has got to be something that makes me want to be with them. And then I also have to be alone, or I’m miserable. I want to work. You know—with others, for others. But as far as I can see my only possible kind of activity is in writing; it’s not direct. I have to be able to grapple with things quietly, contemplating them . . . All of which makes no difference; the contradiction can’t be resolved—none of this makes any difference to my deep sense of concurring with these times of ours and of belonging to them.
But then the next blow—if only you knew how little it takes for anything to be a blow to me!—might fling me up on the beach. Then I won’t be able to find my way back on my own. I wouldn’t want to live among a lot of other stranded people; that’s the one thing I do know with any certainty. The other way is more honorable and more honest. And it shows more strength.
Anything rather than be a burden to the others, who’ll carry on, who are right, because they’re stronger, who can’t look back, because they haven’t got the time.
—Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.
Posted by sean on May 5, 2016
https://sd-stewart.com/2016/05/05/when-if-not-now/
Hello, one.
Hello, other.
One, I’d like to tell you a story.
O joy! I love stories.
You might not love this one.
Hmm. Okay. Well, tell away, other.
A few days ago I was out driving…
Wait! cried the one. You don’t know how to drive, other.
That’s not important.
The one looked doubtful.
Look, I’m telling this story, one. And in the story I was driving. See?
O. Yes, I see, other.
So I was out driving. There I am in this big hunk of metal moving at 70 miles per hour. It was absurd.
O! We like the absurd, other!
Usually, yes…yes, we do, one. But this was not funny absurd. It was scary absurd. I mean, at any moment another hunk of metal could have veered into my hunk of metal and then I might have died.
O, yes, you are right, other, that is scary absurd. I would not have liked for you to die.
And the signs, the electronic signs kept shrieking at me.
What were they saying, other?
Always the same phrase, one: Nothing Super About Jail Drive Sober.
O. That is strange, other.
Anyway, after the signs stopped shrieking at me the sun began bleeding orange and yellow streaks all across the sky amid big puffs of blue and grey. It was so beautiful, one. It almost made me forget I was inside a big hunk of metal. And then, and then I saw something even more wondrous.
What was it! cried the one.
It was an enormous flock of geese, one. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, off to the side of the road in a big field. Some were the all white ones–
O! You mean Snow Geese, other!
Yes, and some were the other kind. The brown and black dingy looking ones that are everywhere now.
Canada Geese! sang the one.
Yes, yes! cried the other, excited now. And they were all swirling around, making their calls. And some were on the ground, poking around in the fields. It was quite a spectacle, one.
I bet it was, other, I bet it was.
Except now I am sad.
O no! Why are you sad, other?
Well, I didn’t stop my hunk of metal to take in the whole scene. I could have turned around and pulled over and gazed upon this sight for the precise number of minutes necessary to fully absorb a wonder of nature such as this, one. Also there may have been some unusual or rare geese in the flock, but I didn’t take the time to look for them.
O. Hmm. Yes, I can see how that might make you feel sad, other.
It’s a strange sort of sadness, one. Do you know it?
Yes, I do, other. I believe they call this special type of sadness regret.
I do not like this regret feeling, one. How do I stop it? Can I maybe stuff something down inside me? Chocolate perhaps?
I’m not sure, other, the one said gravely. I think you have to wait and hope for it to fade away. Chocolate never hurts, of course, but I’m not sure it’s strong enough to fix this.
Well, how can I avoid it in the future then? I do not want this regret feeling ever again, one, never ever.
I’m not sure you can totally avoid it, other! But you can try to take every opportunity that comes to you, and that way at least you have tried.
O, will I then not feel sad? Even if I try to take the opportunity but don’t make it? Even if I…fail?
I can’t promise you won’t feel sad, other. But your sadness will likely feel different than regret. It will be mixed in with the satisfaction of knowing you tried. So that might make it feel not so bad.
O, thank you, one! I think this was very helpful. You are so wise!
I’m glad, other! I am always happy to help.
Goodbye, one!
Goodbye, other! Until next time.
______________________________
For more discussions between the one and the other, click here.
Posted by sean on February 8, 2016
https://sd-stewart.com/2016/02/08/the-one-and-the-other-discuss-regret/
Then she was quiet and they were walking together, crossing the Luxembourg Gardens the sun was disappearing behind a thin film of grey the air was cold she started to shiver but he didn’t seem to notice it was as if he had come out with the express purpose of finding her and now he was taking her back and perhaps it was like that he had always had that sort of taciturnity, as if speaking was painful and silence too she wanted to take his shoulders stop him turn him round look into his eyes and ask him what he was doing what they were doing where they were why he was so sure she would go with him that she had nothing else to do the day to give up to him no other friends to see or work to do that she too had just come out for the same express purpose of seeing him finding him returning with him she wanted to look into his eyes ask him to explain but what was there to explain that was always what happened always how it was there was the need to explain to understand and then nothing to explain nothing to understand but still the need persisted and it was as if this nothing was what had to be understood how it could be nothing and something both together and at the same time so that it was as if a hand had taken your heart and squeezed it and it slipped up and out of your hand like a fish you had to hold it you had to press it you caught it again and again it jumped you would never catch it and
–Gabriel Josipovici, The Air We Breathe
Posted by sean on August 6, 2015
https://sd-stewart.com/2015/08/06/from-the-air-we-breathe-gabriel-josipovici/
The double take impregnated desire in both parties. Or did it.
(We’ll suck on that sugar-coated lemon for the remainder of our days.)
In dreams they meshed well, swimmingly even, though waking life led only to the double take, and once a brush of limbs.
Their twinned desire, limned in mind alone, clashed like rutting stags. From their invisibly ravaged bodies a horn or two broke off in a fugue of predestination.
(Perhaps you found one in the woods and thought of them.)
At the party one befriended a dog while the other dematerialized with a stranger.
Stranger things have happened. It’s an old story and doppelgängers may have been involved.
Posted by sean on January 9, 2014
https://sd-stewart.com/2014/01/09/lemonade/
She looked different from every angle, causing no one to ever remember her. She divided her time between this and that. There were long walks to nowhere. There were staring-out-the-window reveries lasting for hours until a thin string of drool hung from a mouth agape. As evening’s loam drifted down around her, rooting her further in place, she closed her dry mouth and prepared for bed.
She woke up at the same time every day with high ambitions. By the end of breakfast these were dashed to pieces on the great hulking boulders of the afternoon hours, casting their dark shadows as they always do across the glowing yellow light of daybreak. She dressed herself regardless. Her uniform consisted of a shapeless grey jumpsuit and knee-high rubber boots. It is possible that birds nested in her hair. Yet on certain days she looked neat as a pin. Without her uniform, in fact, she looked like most anyone else. It all depended on the angle.
She eked out a living by teaching small children how to pour without spilling. It was one skill she had perfected before she realized the entire system was rigged. Her services were very much in demand, for most parents did not want their children making a mess, while at the same time they were ashamed of their own inability to pour without spilling. Thus they were determined to give their children the one chance they never had, to progress through life without the need to always mop up the table after serving drinks.
Her one true friend was a mollusc named Boil that had lost its shell and now spent its days at the coffee shop down the street from her quarters. The mollusc was irascible in temperament but tolerated her, for she would stroke its foot when it grew apoplectic. Most days she and Boil sat in the coffee shop drinking espresso and waiting for the day to end so they could go home and go to bed. They filled this time among the hulking boulders by doing crosswords and spitting on other customers when the barista wasn’t looking. The barista, a morose badger named Larry, disliked Boil. The feeling was mutual, in fact, for it is well known that badgers and molluscs are natural enemies.
This was her life. She was sure the beginning had ended at some point. But when and where that had happened remained elusive. When she was young she remembered playing with molluscs in the tidal pools at the ocean beach. She never dreamed that after the beginning of the end she would find herself spending most days drinking coffee with a mollusc. Things have a way of coming full circle, though, don’t they, she thought. But was there a hand other than her own drawing that circle, this she also wondered as she walked. And then the window. And then the drool. And then the blinding yellow light shattering the boulders, grinding them to fine powder, the fertile loam of her life.
Posted by sean on December 31, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/12/31/the-end-of-the-beginning/
s. d. stewart 