Forty Shades of Terror

A few weeks ago, mainly for idle fun born of a misguided sense that my opinion even matters in an overcrowded world, I began to post a sporadic list of my forty favourite horror movies on my Facebook timeline. And not simply horror movies, but a specific kind of horror movie: one that stays under your skin or burrows inside your psyche and won't leave, one that truly disturbs, unsettles or frightens you... or, more accurately (since it's my list), me. I also wanted these films to burst, blur, and mock genre boundaries, somewhat. To be controversial in at least one sense or another.

After a while it occurred to me that this list, as fun and provocative as it was, would end up scrolling off and eventually become lost in the corporate purgatory of Facebook's dodgy, disposable theology. So I grabbed these little capsule reviews and impressionistic thumbnails with a view to reproducing and even building on them right here on my blog where, in theory, they will live a longer and more fulfilling life, even after their teeth wear down or fall from their drooling mouths.

But wait. This is a writing blog, not a movie blog, I hear you grouse. And not unfairly, either. Okay, somewhat lamely, I will justify it by arguing that if—by my writing—I can highlight and illuminate these cinematic gems for others, then the holy act of writing will have played its part in the greater scheme of sacred artistic endeavour. Or something. Look, it's a symbiotic thing, kind of like something you might encounter in the frigid interstellar void that crawls within your very DNA and begins to slowly chew and tear its way back out again...

So anyway, watch this space. You know, the one where no one can hear you scream. (See what I did there? Shut up.)

The Crow Highway

Thanks again to Dan Mader and his Friday flash fiction challenges. Here is the latest two minutes-worth of strangeness to be dredged from the dank recesses, in which Ted Hughes meets Iain Banks, maybe? Along with something far less savoury.

Exercises like these force you to not think about your writing, to allow the words to emerge largely unedited and unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness style, which makes them interesting on a psychological and a literary level. Not sure what they reveal. Not sure I want to know. Although I suspect Crow knows.

I live on the crow highway. We all do. Crow wants us to bleed. Crow wants us to smile and reveal rotten teeth. Crow himself smiles as he hears us moan in our sleep. As children are beaten. As wives are punched. Crow doesn't smile because any of this makes him happy. No, crow smiles because he knows all things find resolution somewhere along the loop and that a predatory beak stab here will become the tugged, torn earthworm there, and that the once-assailed will be the assailant, somewhere along the crow highway.

My Own Private Cannery Row

© Tracy Prescott MacGregor

Rarely do I write poetry. Even more rarely do I allow it exposure. Not entirely sure why. I revere great poetry, but I find it to be a rare species: elusive and golden, hiding in shadows or, occasionally, in plain sight.

So here's a poem, no more fanfare than that.

My Own Private Cannery Row

"Accept loss forever." — Jack Kerouac

Here I endure my own private cannery row.

It crackles and breeds in

the dark parts of

an unruly heart—corrugated sheets layered over 

smoky post-afternoons, 

heavy enough with loss

and the memory of loss

and the fear of its return

and traffic

and iron

dragging gull

flocks in slick patterns against a volcano sun.

Twenty-first century. Under a bridge,

five slow crawdaddies move

in murky shallows 

sluggishly annihilating an 

immense fish head, 

while Steinbeck sleeps

and, worse, will never again wake.

Makeshift guido, cursed on a contrary shore, 

adrift off a refugee coast, face

boasting reflected orange 

yet

this smudged collar's powder-blue and new-sewn

with my fugitive name (upset) in gold below it:

Beloved. 

Strong. 

Among.

The Woods.

Say it. Woods await those

who fear themselves

lost, and lost 

indeed

is my new locale.

I might even call it

sorrowhood.

Plus this:

Names are potent, yet

the cogent grain of twilight welcomes smut,

refracting it for such long

drawn-out breathless

prayer flag horizons.

Music, too.

Blue jazz in a wineglass, Hendrix, bluegrass,

pure smartass, rhythmic

tantric belligerence.

Hopper beckons, eyes downcast. Lonely as hell—

old, weird America, less 

permanent than it believes and now

utterly unnerved.

Primary. Planar. Endless

sunflower acres.

We've come so far.

A thick-framed window, sunlight

ambergold, pouring like

fresh-squeezed motor oil, dripping from a citrus sky, 

easing us toward some

inarticulate lie: Desolation row, go, desperation

ground, loud, discovery known, flown,

deception pass, past, passed

below, ago, just so...

We cutouts tacked as

silhouettes. Transfixed somehow

with the mundane interplay of 

pristine fonts on 

the Grocery Outlet sign, where

we value our view; our warm, fawn 

thriftstore pact.

But come, listen, lookit.

Gather the lambkins, reel in the nets,

trawl the depths and count up the lost, 

bake the bricks, haul away the lumber,

give your day the ending it awaits,

its fitting close. Stumble past those who

would erode you, layer by

sheet, skin by cover, yet

keep on walking,

stumbling aloud, 

humbled,

cowed.

Agog. Gaga.

And keep your finger on

the fuck you trigger.

Especially that. Especially that.

Let the soft burr of a charcoal evening

smear the essence of your face like an artist

learning shading, blurring, obscuring.

Rendering.

Recurring.

Sudden evening quiet. The warm preemptive air. Sacred. 

Birds play then mute and the colours pulse dark, anticipatory,

so loaded, and indeed so

goddamned holy.

Abandoned flea markets,

green shoots and street scene clarity,

murmurs, a caress of freaks,

waterfowl feeding.

Someone in a waterfront townhouse,

on some higher balcony, 

is picking a banjo; pure

vibrations in the wires

aching with backyard echoes, 

the sound a trojan horse for a

renewed assault of grief, 

while your final drama speaks 

of absent fathers, trembling hands, 

half-gleaned urges, mother throes, 

white-hot and contradictory and 

wholly lonely: these

secret 

desert

fires.

Boo! And a Review

Been lax with this blog again; the balance of writing to editing has shifted toward the latter of late. Which is okay, as I love it almost as much as I do writing. However, a couple of writing-related events have gone unacknowledged, so here:

I have a new story out there. It's one of nine tales by independent writers in a new Halloween anthology, entitled Boo! And although its theme is Halloween, it refuses to be typecast as an outright horror anthology, with the stories ranging deftly across mood and genre... although my own story, with the cumbersome title of "Ambergris, Camphor, Laudanum, Myrrh," is unquestionably horror, and particularly unpleasant horror at that. Grab the book, it's under a buck.

Another activity I seem to find less and less time for is reviewing. Recently, I had the pleasure of reviewing JT Sather's hybrid memoir/self-help book about surviving tough economic times, How to Survive When the Bottom Drops Out. I'll reproduce it here.

Let me first get the negative out of the way. I'll say one word: editing. And pretty much leave it at that, because that one aspect is the only real impediment to the enjoyment of JT Sather's short nonfiction book, How to Survive When the Bottom Drops Out.

Otherwise, this lively hybrid of memoir and how-to book is, in its unique way, both gripping and endearing. As you read through Sather's accounts of good times and bleak times, scary moments and funny ones, you find yourself helplessly rooting for the protagonist thanks to his infectious good cheer throughout. Whether attempting to save a friend on an ATV from an encounter with an onrushing train or battling a sudden storm on the largest manmade lake in the United States while at the helm of a twenty-six foot cabin cruiser, Sather's practical yet genial advice never comes across as smug or know-it-all, always rich with both humour and common sense and expressed in a manner that is unique to the author, a genuine voice I'd probably describe as full of gritty bonhomie if I were far more pretentious than JT Sather.

Simply put, JT Sather is a born storyteller. And a funny one, without a mean-spirited bone in his body.

He covers all the ground you would expect from a man who clearly wants to pack everything he can into this all-too-short life: friendship, pain, love, work (and its absence), sex, couch surfing, Vegas, romance, dogs, dominoes, dancing, karma, cliff jumping, Yoopers, children's health scares, cheap beer, free sandwiches, skiing accidents, kindness, good times, the nostalgic power of music, and a chameleon-like adaptability, all while maintaining a genuine core honesty and refusal to take advantage of others, even in the hardest of hard times. It's the ultimate tale of paying things forward, and it's all true.

Read it; it might even save your hide if, like many, you've been caught through no fault of your own in the economic downturn. It will certainly help you stop feeling sorry for yourself. But at the very least, if you read this book you will come away simply liking people more, and that's a precious thing, however tough the times.

From Twitter To Storify

My first ever Twitter chat was a wash, as Twitter happened to choose that day—almost that exact time frame, in fact—for one of its warp core meldowns. Which was a shame, since it happened to be on September 12, one day after the anniversary of the event my little book is about. Everything about that book seems serendipitous. So, we rescheduled for Thursday the 26th instead and it went off without a technical hitch. It was an interesting process, one's responses to questions severely limited by the 140-characters rule, but having to answer so succinctly is an oddly satisfying challenge... a far cry from the interview I did with Richard Godwin a year ago. The contrast is almost funny. Yet both enjoyable in completely different ways.

Anyway, Kathy Meis of Bublish turned the whole thing into something chronologically followable on Storify, which you can read here if you're so inclined. Screenshot below.