And Now for the Diamonds

The Stars Like Sand, a book of Australian SF alternative history, speculative, or otherwise non-mainstream verse, edited by P. S. Cottier and Tim Jones, is here -

i.e., is now on my bookshelf -

It contains Les Murray, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Dorothy Porter, John Shaw Neilson, S.K. Kelen, Philip Salom, Les Wicks, Dorothy Hewett, and me

- & I can't help smiling.

& so my thanks to the editors & conceivers & pushers & doers of this project. Nothing like this is easy.

The Legacy of Ashes

I'm up to the Bay of Pigs, or between a quarter and a third of the way through, Legacy of ashes : the history of the CIA.*

The CIA was deeply lunatic from the git-go. (James Jesus Angleton was a champion alcoholic who shared his operational details beforehand with Kim Philby. For example.)

As always, I'm at a loss. Which aspect of the tale renders me speechless? The epic criminality or the epic incompetence? The kabuki nature of the the Cold War or its hundreds of thousands of real murders?

The one thing that comes reeking off the pages is that every one of these CIA planner-motherfuckers - before or after lunch or electroshock - operated with a sense of impunity.

===

*Legacy of ashes : the history of the CIA / Tim Weiner, Doubleday, New York, 2007.

New Links

In Other Words Merida has become The Merida Review. Merida is a mixture of essays, images, fiction, and poems, some translated, some appearing bilingually in English and Spanish. Over the last eighteen months or so, the editor, Cher Bibler, has been kind enough to publish some of my work.

The 100-year Photo Archive and several other long-term projects and obligations will be finished soon, and I'll be freer than I have been for over ten years. I'll be able to try new things, do new things, do different and more frequent things, with fewer time & conceptual constraints. And that, say my poor narrow shoulders, is a good thing.

Meanwhile, Merida's transition has changed the old links. These are the new links.

Fiction:
The True Death of Agamemnon
Stephen and the Others
Woman Squared

Poems:
Death Poems
Some of the Crucifixes