Tag: Literally Reruns

Diane’s He Believed He Would Win is a thoughtful slice of darkness that brings forward many uncomfortable questions about hope and faith.

Whenever I reproach God I do so as a reproach of humankind. As far as I’m concerned, if there is God, then I figure that something I once heard is true, God placed us in charge of what we do and whatever happens isn’t by God’s hand, but is just stuff that happens. The “time and chance happeneth to them all” sort of thing; of course this is all due to our turning away from God–something well described in the Cohen song that goes “Lover Lover Lover Lover Lover Lover, Come Back to Me.”

This week’s entry into the archives is by the inimitable L’Erin Ogle. L’Erin always lands in an unexpected fashion, and I hope she doesn’t take the stunned silence that often follows her work personally, or incorrectly. It’s that in the case of something such as Ugly, the depth of the work and its refusal to be easily digested by the mind do not allow for the quick formation of intelligent comments. Nearly all the remarks that accompanied the story on its original release (including my own) are complimentary, yet not of great depth. For L’Erin’s work has to be examined and given time to sink in.

I have a feeling that if there wasn’t a place like Cambodia, we would have to create one. I’ve never been there; but I understand that any place capable of building Angkor Wat and nurturing Pol Pot (a unanimous first ballot inductee to the Evil Fucker Hall of Fame) is someplace one can still notice from a great distance.

Today we visit a story from five years ago that still shines as though only five seconds have passed. Moving Day is a quiet thing that disturbs and asks unanswerable questions about the echoing hell of humankind’s worst action.

The two things that stand out for me in Rachel Sievers’ Paper Lined Tables are displacement and expectation. A hard to face big problem is usually addressed through an unrelated smaller trouble, and waiting for something is often better than getting that something. Mostly, the things most wrong in our lives are impossible to articulate without receiving negative pushback from a person associated with the woe. And dreaming of a best pal dog without accounting for how you will deal with the uptick of chewed slippers, barking and dogshit in your life can be stressful.

Horror and tension are the theme of this rerun, in case you didn’t get enough of those items this week–or maybe because you have.