Category: Imagined
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The Book of the Sun
[How is it that I never posted this? It’s a personal favorite of mine, from 1992 shortly before I moved from LA to SF for what I thought was my last move. A. was talking about his dreams today and I thought of it.] My room grows larger, and daily there is less in it,…
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A letter to a younger self
A few days ago, I was reading The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves. It's a collection of, well, exactly what it says – which suggests 'it gets better' messages, and many of them are. But it was interesting that they also do different things, take different tones… I thought I should…
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Alternates
A night when, wakeful from minor physical discomforts, I think of different paths, different ways my life might have gone. I’ve done this before of course – as someone who spent a lot of time reading science fiction and fantasy when I was younger, the idea is utterly familiar. The most important alternative path was…
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Crossing
Crossing from one year to the next…. This year has been one of separations and endings. In fact, more than ever in my life, I've made many breaks – but without having to do so, and at my own speed. As I am someone who has, many times, suddenly leapt or been driven from one…
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Summer’s day
I am a bit tired today – a mistake in minor medications, a mildly bad night… and, as so often, I only realized at about five or six a.m. what the obvious mistake must have been, and why my guts were churning as a result. Not terrible. A bit exasperating. And two different friends, eager…
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Familiar
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by
in Academia, AIDS/HIV, Death, Illness, Imagined, Memory, Music, On writing, Personal, Psychology, TelevisionThe image seems clear, even obvious, to me – it could be from one of the better-written fantasies, or from a film about some medieval saga… an old man living alone in the woods; there is a shift in the wind, or the light – he looks up, creases his forehead slightly, sniffs the air…
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Things
A time of flickering changes, referents – going through books, CDs, tech, implements and bowls and glasses, my office at school, my office at home, the living room, the kitchen: the world of things. There are burdens here, and entanglements – I am approximately as good at letting go the world of things as I…
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Closing doors
So: in a burst of extraordinarily blinkered and sociopolitically aggressive pettiness, the UK government pulls us out of the EU. I've been joking for months that I have two passports, but unfortunately they're the ones nobody wants… but just try to trade them for something more respectable, better. Slovenia? Great, flat trade, or shall I give…
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Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire
If you think about it all: rot, chaos, aggression. Disintegration. But my desk remains, my job remains, my friends and colleagues remain… I buy food, talk to students, plan trips. There are no problems. To be honest, there have been some fairly disastrous periods even during my lifetime when one couldn't depend on governments for simple…
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What is it to…
What is it to 'go on', to 'leave behind', to 'finish with'? I don't quite mean moving on to doing something else, which is often coloured with the anticipation and energy of whatever it is that is new. ••• Over the past few weeks, my cable company has been running episodes of The Closer back…
Paul Attinello 