About Me

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Adalbert is a forum for me, to post ephemera, photography, poetry, occasional travel notes, and various spontaneous motions. Cover photo: Parsonage where my great-grandfather spent his early years. Taken near Liegnitz, Silesia, ca. 1870. The "xothique" portion of the web address is a nod to Clark Ashton Smith's fictional continent of Zothique.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

2017


I'll mark the approach here of the new year and its uncertain potentiality with this fragment from The Pogues, featuring "Auld Lang Syne."

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Liege Quarter-Profile Moustache


On the adhesive-gummed, torn bottom of the photo, I  can just make out the city name of Liege, in Belgium.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

In the Mountains of Madness


A month or two ago I took in an advance review copy of In the Mountains of Madness, a biography/cultural study of H.P. Lovecraft. I also took a look at the work in its final form. I noted few differences between the two versions, other than a few spelling corrections. The book has a few good points; it's adequate as a basic account of Lovecraft's life. But Poole's study contains numerous flaws.

   The ideas and writing are frequently inane, derivative, or poorly-researched. With reference to the movement which succeeded in vanquishing Gahan Wilson's Lovecraft-figure trophy bust from the World Fantasy Convention awards, Poole writes: The petition further urged that the award, in a symbolic move, replace Lovecraft's head with that of Octavia Butler, an African American writer that any objective observer would describe as one of the greatest fantasy and horror writers of the twentieth century, one whose work in many respects exceeds the boundaries of genre.

   Come on now, the bar's set pretty low here. A fantasy and horror writer? A cursory web search reveals that Butler was a science fiction writer, not a "fantasy and horror writer." And just how is this assessment of her "objective?"

   Here's another questionable statement: "He (Lovecraft) did not call the suicide hotlines that did not exist in 1904." What is the reason for mentioning something so banal and obvious, in such a contorted manner? Other dubious segments of the book include a forced attempt to define Lovecraft as an earlier practitioner of gaming, and a strange statement concerning the possible future cult status of the prose poem "Nyarlathotep."

   In total, the book is a curious exercise, lacking in useful insights.


 



Sunday, November 6, 2016

Rest Stop, West of Boardman



Rest Stop, West of Boardman

By Jonathan Falk

Crickets screamed under the wind, blades of night query past. My stilts beyond the Columbia walk, corneas pulsed with newer life. Censor: Sachem Pharos, green light signaled on hermit’s island in the river’s hippogriffs, basalt eruptions, laved with painted floods. Tom Jefferson stacked his books apropos of milt sunset. Fruit could need I fruit flies time fruit powder.

I remember the transient beard, something to shift when I saw for a moment scoriac splendor, a fairyland, one of those viewpoints I shot past driving, marvelous things, lunar lava and farms. Eagle Creek trail, drought childhood sneakers melting. Time the panhandler raven. You rode with old Nils, you better not drink a cup of coffee.
On the Washington shore, one blue light knocked on the night, filter of dawn.

Written before the switch to Daylight Saving Time, November 6, 2016


Photo: Columbia River Gorge, 9-16-16.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon, October 2016



Stuart Gordon at a Q & A session following a screening of the unrated director's cut of From Beyond. One observation Gordon made was: Republican administrations are golden eras for horror (but don't get any ideas). Saturday's events also included a dynamic live radio show presentation by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society: Dagon:  War of Worlds, with splices from The Temple, Dagon, and The Shadow over Innsmouth. And I caught some other movies and short films.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Providence


And today back in Providence, RI, for the first time since August, 1986. Today I walked by H.P. Lovecraft's last home, and also visited his grave in Swan Point Cemetery.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

District of Columbia

The Lincoln Memorial at sunset. Photo by JF, 9-20+16.


I spent a few days in Washington, D.C., recently, on my first visit there.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Visions of the Western Interior

 The Daly Mansion

In the past three days, I've visited the Daly Mansion in Hamilton, Montana, along with Fort Missoula, Wallace, Idaho, and other places.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Dry Falls, 9-11-2016



At Dry Falls State Park, Washington State, 9-11-16.  Location depicted: Umatilla Rock.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

At the Grave of Farnsworth Wright, Labor Day 2016



A photo of me at the grave of Farnsworth and Marjorie Wright, Willamette National Cemetery, Happy Valley, Oregon, Labor Day, 2016.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Robert Anton Wilson, Portland, 1986


A cutting, covering Robert Anton Wilson and his appearance in Portland in 1986 (I was at the lecture).

Sunday, August 21, 2016

"A City on Mars," Frank R. Paul


"A City on Mars," the back cover of  Amazing Stories, December 1940. Artwork by Frank R. Paul


Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Blog Birthday



Today marks eight years since I started this blog. I'll have Jimi Hendrix (with Curtis Knight) play a version of "Happy Birthday," to mark the anniversary.

And here's the first journal-like post from the distant parallel universe of 2008...Myspace and after-rumbles of the Surge:

Sunday, July 27, 2008


First entry

Just re-watched Marathon Man last night... Is it safe? Dim memories of seeing clips from it in 1976 on television...



Sunday, July 24, 2016

The Black Angel of Council Bluffs



The Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial, also known as The Black Angel, by the sculptor  Daniel Chester French. I visited the site in August, 1994.

Monday, July 4, 2016

Rebel Without a Copernicus


In recent weeks, I watched, for the first time in its entirety  the deeply accursed film of Nicholas Ray, Rebel Without a Cause. I saw a little of it on a videocassette once, which unraveled while the movie was in progress.

I was pleasantly startled to find an element of cosmicism, conveyed through astronomy, in the planetarium sequence, embedded in the James Dean vehicle.

What visions of Porsche Spyders and wind-up toy monkeys did Jim Backus have on the isle? "You're tearing me apart, Gilligan!"

Collage by JF, Independence Day, 2016

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Goomjah



Someone termed chance, cryptic, often ironic, enclosures, such as this, in correspondence, goomjah. Photos courtesy of Marc Myers.


Monday, May 30, 2016

It Can't Happen Here

  
Lately I've been absorbing It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. Noteworthy, among other elements, are the excerpts of the fictional, book-within-a book, "Bible" of the fascistic presidential candidate/ candidate-  elect/ U.S. president, Buzz Windrip, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy Zero Hour -- Over the Top, along with a few melancholy tones of landscape poetry, and a remote but resonant time, between the world wars, of fraternal organizations, Father Coughlin, and class conflict.

Collage by JF

Monday, May 16, 2016

Monster Trading Cards


A few of my monster trading cards from the early 1970s.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

In the Great War


Collage by JF, 2009


Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Light Portal


Roman Scott, NY, 1990s.Photo courtesy of Marc Myers.Photographer unknown.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Transient Wings




Transient Wings, Western Half of the Columbia River Gorge

I.
Loneliness, it’s such a scraped affair.
Hawk jewels flowed sightlessly westward.
The reason of the excavation was to reveal deep layers in stony time.
Vast sutures of independence whorl chakra.
At the mountains of energy, float with your mind until lunar provenance enlightenment reached.
The polished immensity of the mountains, twilight ermine fanfare of the argent musk.
Train de Chirico like whistling spiders, grave robber polka spinster yellow ancient grove sad mossy-flamed farmhouse, Edelweiss rocking horse.
II.

Hawk’s wings, rotating like spiders,
Kites drumming over slough and grove.
Train rolls austere and limber,
Caboose like a tramp, twilight of gold.
Rubbish eye incantatory,
Snowy fields, untrodden, transient and flashing on the crest of the Cascades.

JF April 2016

Photo of Crown Point by JF, July 4, 2002



Saturday, March 26, 2016

Uncle Bear



Another photo of my great-uncle Bruce with his pet bear. Montana, 1930s? Previous


My grandfather (with beard), and his brother Vic. Montana, 1919 
 Also see

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Colin Wilson's The Occult


Jacket from my well-utilized book club (!) edition of The Occult (1971), by

Colin Wilson

 

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Emblem



Emblem

Away over down the floor, twilight. Brought and immense monument, closed eyes. Hedge, blue gathering, night and quiet.

Shaded edge of inner range, gold and snow.  Crow on mead. Thick eyelids, garlands, whiteness, brooding over leagues of grey pines; sun waves across through grain fields, river, black bridge, flooded and stained paddies.

Pitted red stones, gilt and curved December leaves rolling down, massed and overbent rice, thunder, paws of fox, toothed muzzle open, bundled-twig broom, stacked splits beneath the raised house. 

JF -- ca. 1992, written after my first time in Japan
Photograph by JF, Yellowstone Park, 1975.


Sunday, February 14, 2016

February 1986


Photo of me, February 1986, Oregon, by Marc Myers.

And happy 157th anniversary of the founding of the state of Oregon

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Obitulog





From Roman Scott's Obitulog. "I wonder if that guy is still alive?" Dneprov looked intriguing. 

 After the last posting, the blog subsided like the last notes of Schubert's 8th or Bruckner's 9th symphonies.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Guiteau/Garfield


Collage: Guiteau/Garfield, by JF, 2016.

This was inspired by my recently watching the Murder of a President documentary on PBS, on the assassination of President James A. Garfield
Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes, time of my father's time, blood of his blood, life of his life, . . . were the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis.

-- Thomas Wolfe (source

I should re-read some Thomas Wolfe sometime. I always remember his description of his writing practice, using the top of a refrigerator as a desk.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Sunday, January 17, 2016

On the Way to Reno




On the Way to Reno

Monday, January 11, 2016

Adalbert Falk Monument



Monument to one of my ancestors, Adalbert Falk, in Hamm, Germany, 2015.  Thanks to Axel Weiß for all three photos posted here, and for visiting Hamm.

Hamm