Something Wicked this Way Comes

15.11 21:45 Something Wicked this Way Comes

137 bus, southward. To see a child operate a phone as an adult does, with tiny pink fingers and legs swinging out the pram, like a twisted mirror. Mixed feelings of impressed and impressed upon, like a twisted mirror can't turn away from in vanity.

“Bumping out through the Mirror Maze they saw two, four, a dozen Miss Foley’s ... Her eyes, flexed wide as blasts of photographic powder, were skinned white like a statue’s. Deep under the glass, she spoke. She murmered. She whimpered. Now she cried.” *

Click through adverts, dismantle pop-ups and make a decision on the next video, only to pick a new one from the new recommended select. Full intent. Total choice autonomy.

She chooses a crap and colourful animation.

I barely recognise the difference in thumbnails, but I guess you learn to read them quickly when you get to needing that fix. At age ... 4 maybe?

Something tells me she just likes the navigational challenge, smooth fingers never still, poking to home to youtube and back.

“The carousel, deserted, empty, traveled on its way through its own special time, forward. ... The brass poles flashed by into the future, pulling the flesh like syrup, stretching the bones like taffy, the sun-metal color burning Jim’s cheeks, flinting his eyes.

Fourteen-year boy, fifteen-year hand!”

Take a seat on Bradbury's carousel, sit on the horses head if you get travel-sick backwards. How many spins for my phone to grow too heavy to hold?

I’ve harboured this idea for a long time, that progression is baked with obscelesence, that everything learnt is eventually forgotten or adapted. Things are bigger quicker and easier and I’m not even trying to keep up, call me old school but my iPhone 11 is just fine. Still, check my old Walkman.

Yo, Vinyl night?

Dude. My discs take lazer.

The wide cresting wave leaves it water behind.

What a sight! A huge tunnel of aquamarine glass, potent energy whirling in all directions but for the curtain ahead, leaning in patient suspense against the still air.

The exact moments of design and innovation roll on.

︎︎︎2009 Mozilla Firefox 2025︎︎︎

* ‘Something wicked this way comes’ written by Ray Bradbury (1963).
It’s a funny book I picked up. An old copy (my collecting habit), written in chilling description and preserved in yellow musty pages. A boyhood fantasy horror, two friends, neighbours, sneak out in the night and investigate a ghostly carnival travelling into town. Autumn people, the Illustrated man, a witch and the Skeleton just a few of a cast of a spooky crew all preying on youth. No diddy! Circus freaks that feast on the fear of ageing and the lost joy of youth, with carousels that sap age as they spin. Borrow the copy if you like.