Michael R. Barrick's blog

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Disclaimer: this is fiction. Yes, there is some truth behind it—write what you know and all that—but it is a distortion, an exaggeration, with bits outright conjured from the aether. And it’s just a vignette that needs to find a longer story to live in.

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Here is a place I found in a dream.

Here is a room beside a creek. The creek ran through forests and meadows once. Over time so many bridges crowded together over the creek that now where it flowed could only be called a tunnel. In the tunnel was hidden a door that had once been an exit. Here is behind the door and the forgotten exit is the only entrance.

Born in the 80s, goth is still going strong. Four devotees discuss the music and fashion and how love of the macabre draws together a warm and friendly scene

Goths are perhaps the most maligned of all subcultures. Over the decades, they have been unfairly blamed for high-school shootings, depression in teenagers and antisocial behaviour. In reality, goths are a collective of people bound by a shared love of fashion, music and art.

I literally caught a wild bird in my hand this morning. That doesn't happen every day.

I sat down at my computer this morning and out the window in front of me a small bird (bushtit, I think) was zooming at the bird-net I have enclosing my balcony. Primarily it is there to keep the cats *in*, but has the bonus functions of keeping crows from stealing from my cherry tree and ensuring the cats are safe from unlikely-but-worth-worrying-about rabid bats.

Paul Curtis was having a quiet Friday evening. He’d decided to stay in and keep his elderly cat company. As he reclined on his couch with his ancient and arthritic cat contentedly curled up on his lap he read an old book that had come down to him from his grandfather. The story was ridiculous swashbuckling and daring do that he had read before, more than once. He read it yet again to enjoy the feel of the leather binding, the vanilla smell of the yellowing pages and the sense of nostalgic connection to his late father and grandfather.

There was a knock at his apartment door.

How I spent my birthday, by Michael R. Barrick.

I guiltlessly woke up at the crack of noon with a fierce determination to coast through the day with a minimum of anxiety and the voices of decades of guilt-trips about what I "should" be doing on mute. Grocery shopping had been done the day before. Bills were already paid. One of the nice things about being born on the 31st is that my birthday is also a payday so I was unconcerned about spending the cash in my wallet frivolously.

Visible from the graveyard and sharing its name with the same martyr, St Pancras, is the sister station to King’s Cross, a Victorian gothic masterpiece built by Sir George Gilbert Scott. Just under half a century after this station opened, the architect’s son, Giles Gilbert Scott had entered a competition to design a telephone box. He trod around the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church, in the shadow of his father’s masterpiece, and found inspiration: the central domed structure of [Sir John] Soane’s tomb.

Opening reception for "Beginning with the 70s: Collective Acts", September 6, 2018.