Meanderings
Another filler post. I’m working on two separate short stories right now which should be finished soon! In the meantime, enjoy!
I went for a long walk today all the way over to the Schuylkill River. Originally this was going to be some meditative piece using said walk to ruminate about irony poisoning and how we’re all probably doomed but I’ve written too much depressive shit lately so I’m taking a different tack. Maybe next time.
Using the Situationist concept of the dérive to try and break through my insistence on rigidly following certain paths with no deviations led me to some lovely discoveries today. Typically, I walk up one of the north-south streets between 10th and Broad and then across Pine to 26th before shooting up to Locust with the centerpiece of the entire walk being Rittenhouse Square (because that’s where the people-watching is best) before finally walking along Walnut down one of the aforementioned north-south streets to home (yes, you may use this route description to stalk me, but don’t do anything nuts because there is no darker fate than idolization by forty-something true crime ladies).
I decided to mix it up a little today by cutting across Panama and Delancey Streets, two perfectly gorgeous side-streets lined with the houses of the 19th century old line Philadelphia bourgeoisie. The streets are a mix of prim, modest Federal style red-brick homes and more floridly Victorian Gothic and neoclassical dwellings (some designed — or at least clearly influenced by — the great maverick architect Frank Furness).
The former are classically elegant but also somewhat samey and wearying on the eye:
The latter are aesthetically ostentatious but more interesting to look at:
I personally love these blocks. They truly represent the best in American urban design and even if the houses are totally unaffordable except for the wealthy and/or decrepitly ancient I liked pretending I’m in a Whit Stillman movie.
Swinging up 20th, I discovered that the doors of the rather imposing St. Patrick’s Church were open. The church is a 1913 rebuild of an older building, and is a holdover from the period when the posh Rittenhouse Square abutted teeming Irish slums along the Schuylkill River. This is Situationist praxis in action: discovering the hidden layers beneath the urban surface, the fossilized beach under the shiny new paving stones (or overpriced cafes). Interestingly enough for a historically Irish church, the building is Byzantine in style, more redolent of Ravenna and Constantinople than the stoney Gothic structures of rainy, windswept Ireland. The interior is physically impressive but made of rather dull-colored brick (which, given the Irish depression-induced love of plainness, is a nice compromise with the rather exotic architectural style):
This is offset by neo-Medieval stained glass windows and mosaic Stations of the Cross, which admittedly go hard:
Switching from physical meanderings to internet meanderings, a few weeks ago I fell down an Ira Einhorn Wikipedia hole; I’d known about the man for years but after learning he might’ve briefly been neighbors with David Lynch (no word if they ever met) I decided to investigate further. For those unaware, Einhorn was a Philadelphia-based hippie who among other things was an early opponent of the Vietnam War and helped organize the first Earth Day celebration. He also — more infamously — murdered his ex-girlfriend — the Texas-born, Byrn Mawr-educated Holly Maddux — and stuffed her body in a trunk. Police were alerted when his downstairs neighbors complained about a terrible smell emanating from his apartment and discovered the body. Einhorn subsequently pulled a Polanski and fled for France; unlike Polanski, he was later extradited back to the States, found guilty of murder, and died in prison in 2020. Essentially, he was the original performatively progressive softboy who uses nail polish to hide the allegations.
In the process I discovered the video art of his other ex-girlfriend Cecelia Condit, whose short film Possibly in Michigan is apparently something of a TikTok/Hannibal inspired zoomer cult classic (philistines! I was the one who obsessed over weird avant-garde shit when I was fourteen and no one cared! My culture is not your costume!) and is one of the most nauseatingly off-kilter things I’ve ever watched. Condit saw Einhorn after his murder of Maddux but could not smell the rotting corpse because she took medication inhibiting her sense of smell. After his arrest and, uh, “departure,” she made a short film called Beneath the Skin, which is likewise extremely disconcerting and gains its power through the uncanny combination of dry humor and distressingly repetitive imagery. Both artworks come highly recommended.
Last meander, this time into literature: I’ve been revisiting the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps my single favorite writer and one of the most original literary voices of the 20th century. He’s definitely far from obscure (especially among my liberal arts-leaning audience) but there’s a tendency to focus on his most famous story, the excellently depressing but overexposed “The Library of Babel.” Here’s some alternate stories I’d recommend:
“The House of Asterion” (perhaps the best bait-and-switch tale in literary history)
“Death and the Compass” (one of the most genuinely chilling things I’ve ever read)
“Three Versions of Judas” (mind-bending blasphemy of the highest order)
“On Exactitude in Science” (Borges says more in one paragraph than other authors say in entire books)
“Shakespeare’s Memory” (one of his last stories, and also one of his most deeply haunting)