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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚
@acfick72.bsky.social
1.4K followers 550 following 2.4K posts
Reader; Emperor of Solitude; self-ironising Don of #NorthJozi; Anarchosyndicalist Czar of All Tolstoyan Russian Multiverses; House Fuller-Hallim; Mr Havisham.
🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝☕️🌍
An isolate losing hearing and sight in the twilight of this incarnation. Embracing ennui.
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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚 @acfick72.bsky.social · 24d
I am too old
to learn the names
of the new killers
This one here
looks tired and attractive
devoted, professorial
He looks a lot like me
when I was teaching
[…]
the hopelessly insane
▫️Leonard Cohen, 2006

Thus we begin November in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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View into a room lined with books (volumes of fiction alphabetised by author surname, and the ones in frame are from Willa Cather through F. Scott Fitzgerald), a table with two fruit bowls, and a Calendario Romano in the foreground open to November, showing a man dressed as a priest reading a copy of El Pais as light streams in through a window behind him to his right. View into a room lined with books (shelves holding nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, the volumes that can be seen from Teresa de Lauretis through Todd Gitlin), two cluttered desks, and in the foreground, a copy of the Calendario Romano open to November, showing a very young man dressed as a priest inside a tiled room with a sculpture in a recess in the wall next to a large wooden door behind him. View of two cluttered desks with laptop, typewriter, printer, dictionaries, and bibelots, surrounnded by bookcaaes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from John Kenneth Galbraith and Eduardo Galeano through Pankaj Mishra and Franco Moretti. View of cluttered desk with dictionaries, CDs, DVDs, stationery, and bibelots, surrounded by bookcases (nonfiction shelved alphabetically by author or editor surname: on the left from Tillie Olsen to Bertrand Russell; in the middle from Theodore W. Allen through Gena Corea; and on the right from Richard Dawkins through Cécile Fabre).
acfick72.bsky.social
☎️
Still from THE SOPRANOS showing James Gandolfini as Tony, on the telephone, saying, “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” Still from DALLAS showing Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing on the telephone at the foot of the Southfork stairwell, saying, “I know, I know.”
November 25, 2025 at 7:25 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: II.
a close up of a man 's face with the netflix logo in the corner
Alt: GIF from KALEIDOSCOPE in which Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap, saying "Next" as he walks through a room.
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 6:55 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: I.
a woman wearing a black jacket and a pearl necklace is standing in front of a wall .
Alt: GIF from THE COLBYS showing Stephanie Beacham as Sable Colby wearing a black fur coat and elaborate jewels on.her ears and neck, her lips parted in surprise, then changing her expression to one of judgement and pursing her lips.
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Felled by illness. This is definitely not #NorthJozi summer weather. This twenty-third month of 2025 . . . and now it would seem someone has been cocking up the order of the volumes on the shelves of the #LateImperialLibrary.

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The view northwards as rain rolls in (at times in near-horizontal sheets). The trees at the bottom of the garden and the multi-storey art deco building downslope can be seen through the rain-spattered window, but the horizon is obscured by rain.
November 25, 2025 at 8:25 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Many rivers to cross: hamba kahle, Jimmy Cliff (1944-2025).
Jimmy Cliff, 1944-2025.
November 24, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
theguardian.com
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now
www.theguardian.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
yvanspijk.bsky.social
The English word ‘blue’ is a horse of a different colour.

While ‘blue’ is related to the words in its Germanic sister languages, such as German ‘blau’ and Swedish ‘blå’, it took a different route.

Its Germanic ancestor was loaned to French, where it became ‘bleu’, and then borrowed into English:
November 23, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
rhaplord.bsky.social
African-Ottoman borderlands during the early modern period: stories from the frontier.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/african-ot...
African-Ottoman borderlands during the early modern period: stories from the frontier.
In 1574, the first of two embassies from the kingdom of Bornu in the Lake Chad basin arrived at the Ottoman sultan’s court in Istanbul, seeking, among other aims, to delineate the frontier between the...
www.africanhistoryextra.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:02 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. […] Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.
▫️Omar El Akkad, 2025
Extracts from ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS by Omar El Akkad (2025) One day the killing will be over, either because the oppressed will have their liberation or because there will be so few left to kill. We will be expected to forget any of it ever happened, to acknowledge it if need be but only in harmless, perfunctory ways. Many of us will, if only as a kind of psychological self-defense. So much lives and dies by the grace of endless forgetting. But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging one's own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.
November 23, 2025 at 9:53 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Pace Rutger Kopland, "[l]ichaam, denk ik, als je mijn eigen lichaam bent" . . . en pace Frank Houtappels, "Wanneer ik voor de spiegel zit / Dan denk ik: wat is dit? / Is dit nou mijn lijf?"

youtu.be/rDN8h7FYCFI?...
Jenny Arean - Dit is mijn lijf (Gedeelde Smart, 2022)
YouTube video by Brigitte Kaandorp
youtu.be
November 23, 2025 at 6:34 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Sunday evening in the #LateImperialLibrary, contemplating clearing up after the Imperial Lunch in #NorthJozi.

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Cluttered desk with laptop, dictionaries and thesauruses, bibelots, books, and notebook. Second desk with typewriter, laptop, bibelots, photographs, and volumes of nonfiction from Edward Gibbon through Richard Hoggart. Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname; on the left Karl Marx to Czesław Miłosz, and poetry in the corner from Fleur Adcock to Edward Lear; facing the viewer, from Helen Nabasuta Mugambi and Tuzyline Jita Allan through Bertrand Russell and Richard Russo. A grained wooden table with portable typewriter, potted ficus, bowl, photgraph, and the collected works of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde in large format hardback.
November 23, 2025 at 5:13 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Just when it seemed the political and media institutions of the United States could not get weirder or more debased and debasing . . . Someone wrote about who doing what to whom after they did what? In a mainstream outlet? Why? Why?!

🤮😵‍💫😵☠️⚰️🪦
Still from BIG BANG THEORY showing Regina King as Janine Davis, the HR officer, staring at her laptop, saying, “Oh, come on.” Still from THE SOPRANOS showing Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano, saying, “I don’t know that world.” Still from FRIDA showing Valeria Golino as Lupe Marín saying, “I mean, look at this! What the hell is this?” Still from MUJERES AL BORDE DE UN ATAQUE DE NERVIOS, showing Juliet Serrano as Lucía, wearing a 1960s pink Chanel suit, being accosted by three uniformed Spanish policemen, one holding the pistol she discharged in the airport, saying, “Take me back to the clinic. That’s where I live.”
November 22, 2025 at 2:55 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
North, south, east, west: Saturday before the afternoon summer storm breaks over #NorthJozi.

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Cumulonimbus clouds to the south with the top of the Hillbrow tower just visible at the bottom of the frame towards the right. Clear blue sky to the north over the lift shafts of the neighbouring building downslope from the ridge of the Witwatersrand formation north of the Johannesburg city centre. The sky to the west over Johannesburg. Clouds in the sky to the east.
November 22, 2025 at 1:41 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Saturday morning, re-shelving at Gordimer, working through to Hardy, but all this will have to be redone before the end of 2025 to (re)integrate the books read in the past year.

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Empty space on a bookshelves with packed bookcases of fiction next to it, all volumes alphabetised by author surname and ordered by date within each writer's oeuvre. Genet through Haggard on the shelves facing the viewer, a glimpse of Fowles through Fuentes on the left, and in the passage on the right, Amis through Atwood.
November 22, 2025 at 7:56 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Time for some late night shelving in the #LateImperialLibrary — keeping the local apocalypse at bay with Sisyphean alphabetising . . .

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Shelf space after some reorganising.
November 21, 2025 at 8:38 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Afternoon thunderstorm with hail breaks over #NorthJozi, and pigeons take flight . . . while multiple helicopters ferry summit attendees back and forth across the city.

🐦‍⬛🚁🌍⛈️
Pigeons in flight above the lift shafts of the art deco building north of the Late Imperial Library. Pigeons rushing to roost as thunder rolls in from the west. Window pane marked by rain drops. Hail stones hit the outside sill of the balcony.
November 21, 2025 at 1:21 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Translation is the game of making explicit many things while covering some others with a mantle of discreet elegance.
▫️Mariana Dimópulos, 2025

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Two opposing pages from VAN MAN TOT MAN by Olive Schreiner and J.M. Coetzee (translated from FROM MAN TO MAN by Peter Bergsma and Anna Helmers-Dieleman, 2025). Main post quotation from SPEAKING IN TONGUES by J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos (2025).
November 21, 2025 at 10:08 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Friday morning in the #LateImperialLibrary: this year feels like it is just about to enter its twenty-third month.

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Bottom half of a large moka pot. Table with typewriter on a north-facing balcony in the Late Imperial Library, overlooking the garden. The garden and swimming pool. Tree tops at the bottom of the garden, and the art deco building to the north, downslope.
November 21, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
smendzianka.bsky.social
'Even true things shouted over loudspeakers are starting to sound like lies.'

Leonardo Sciascia
Leonardo Sciascia
November 21, 2025 at 1:20 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
"I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but we are experiencing violent storm conditions in the asteroid belt at this time. We may lose this valuable, deep space communication link. Please, be as brief as possible. Thank you."
▫️Richard Anthony Hewson, "Clouds Across the Moon", 1985
10 November 2025, Cape Town, South Africa. The call is definitely coming from inside the house.
November 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Today's harvest. 🌶🍅
Bird's eye chillies and two cherry tomatoes on a 1952 built grained wooden table.
November 20, 2025 at 4:05 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Thursday afternoon in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi: rain is forecast, and much correspondence with one's subjects must still be done by imperious (sic) hand. Today the House of Fuller-Hallim celebrates the Heiress Apparent's age of majority.

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Cluttered main desk in the Nonfiction Room of the Late Imperial Library, moving towards week-, month-, and year end, with laptop, printer, tablets, dictionaries and thesauruses, bibelots, and notebooks and books. Secondary, 1980s upright student desk with typewriter and laptop, bibelots, photographs, and shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Edward Gibbon through Eva Hoffmann. Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author surname from Al Alvarez, Ifi Amadiume, and Samir Amin through Zillah R. Eisenstein, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Elphick. Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Pico Iyer and C.L.R. James through Sheila Rowbotham and Arundhati Roy.
November 20, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
rbreich.bsky.social
A House panel is holding a hearing on a proposed ban on Congressional stock trading.

This ban is long overdue. Why should members of Congress be able to use privileged information to make money on the stock market, while they’re supposed to be working for you?
November 19, 2025 at 8:15 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Tonight, in the #LateImperialLibrary, we re-watch . . .
Title card for "The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom" (1993, HBO), starring Holly Hunter, Beau Bridges, Swoosie Kurtz, Gregg Henry, and Elizabeth Ruscio.
November 19, 2025 at 6:57 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
And if you look, you look through me
And when you talk, you talk at me
And when I touch you, you don't feel a thing
[…]
Stay, and the day would keep its trust
Stay, and the night would be enough

Faraway, so close
▫️U2, 1993
Burg Street, Cape Town, South Africa, 11 November 2025.
November 19, 2025 at 5:55 PM