archives

 horoscopes

 accessories

 contacts

 theatre

 fables



 home

Add Sane Magazine to your My Netscape.

It is a gorgeous evening.

Vaguely autumnal in tone, the air is that exciting shade of crisp that mark evenings of promise. Evenings you'd like to write poems titled "Ode to an Early Autumn Evening" or "Ode to Joy" or "Upon an Evening Glorious" or some sort of thing, something that soars and soars and you'd be inclined to read aloud with a booming, James Earl Jonesy kind of voice, which is a shame, really that you sound nothing like James Earl Jones. (James, if you're reading, you can ignore that last bit, of course. Excellent voice, by the bye.)
You get a slight hop in your step, which makes you look slightly odd, half hopping down the pavement, which brings the element of embarassment and self-consciousness into your joyous evening, but in the deepening shades of the night you rationalise that people won't be able to see you properly, and either won't notice your jaunty step or won't recognise you. Despite encroaching darkness, your walking companion tells you that if you don't stop skipping they're just going to leave you to hop yourself back home, allowing for all sorts of nasty things to happen to you along the way, the sort of things that are inspired by fellow pedestrians when confronted with a person that looks like one of those seabirds that they can never remember the name for, all they know is they hang out on the beach all the time, steal tourists' food occasionally, and hop awkwardly down the strand as a child chases them with a plastic shovel.
At which point you've stopped shuffling, and commence sulking, but sulking in a cheery sort of early autmnal way. You walking companion, whom you might have once considered a friend, though, and this you mumble to yourself as you pass through the glorious evening air alongside unusually chipper automobiles and dogs out for their nightly walk, friends you'd expect to share in your happiness, and perhaps even hop along, or at least not begrudge you your skipping, no matter how foolish you look, but that's just what you get, you suppose.

At which point, your mumbling skills leaving something to be desired, namely, that content which should not be heard must either be mumbled more quietly or more incoherently, in order for people not to hear it properly, you find yourself, in the light chill of the early autumn air, but significantly closer to the pavement than you had been previously, not progressing any longer in a cheery but sulky manner towards wherever it is you were heading, but rolling about on the pavement with your former walking companion pummeling your sides. Which is nice, though, thinking about it, you decide you'd much rather be upright, and walking, enjoying the slight breeze blowing across the streets, ruffling the leaves in the trees and along the gutters, rather than rolling about in the gutters, or at least close enough to them. And being punched. Which adds a slight degree of hardship to the pleasant evening. Hardship and most likely bruises, the next morning.

It is a gorgeous evening.

disclaimer:
Breaking character for the second time in two weeks (which puts us in the dangerous area of acquiring a new characteristic, and the last time that happened, with the horoscopes, we still rue the day, we like stasis.), we're bringing you the review of yet another book this week, only we're not going to call it a review, we're going to call it a public service message.
The War Outside of Ireland, by Michael Joyce, is a breath-taking read. If you're Irish, still living in Ireland (do people still do that?), you'll want to read this book. If you're American, of Irish descent (and who isn't?), you'll want to read this book. If you're American, full-stop, you'll want to read this book, to help make some sense of it all. Or find that there is none, but that's all right. If you're English you can probably even read this book.
It is, in the way hyperfiction tends, elegiac, but gorgeously elegiac, singing "You Are My Sunshine" rather than brooding.
If you're a Sane Magazine reader from back in the old days, when we used to be literate, you'll want to read this book, as it's fantastically literate, and just stunning, at the end of it all, the way the long silences in a phone call between lovers or family or friends can be stunning and beautifully so. When you think about it.

And this is the second Michael in two weeks for whom we'd gladly write a book jacket blurb.