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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚
@acfick72.bsky.social
1.4K followers 570 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
All the people I was kissing
some are here and some are missing
in the nineteen-nineties
I never dreamt that I would get to be
the creature that I always meant to be
▫️Chris Lowe & Neil Tennant, 1990
View of Cape Town harbour with cranes and container ships, and beyond it Table, and on the hazy horizon, the stretch of the Atlantic coast northwards. One wasted one's youth here, and ought never to have been displaced here then.
November 13, 2025 at 4:22 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Looking skywards from the lower slopes of Huriǂoaxa at the southern edge of Africa.

🌳🌍☀️
Trees and a lamppost on the lower slopes of Table Mountain, with the rocky top of Devil's Peak under a blue sky.
November 13, 2025 at 3:03 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Clearly the children of 2076 will study that letter the way one studied the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1986 . . . if there are still school history lessons, if there are still schools, if there are still children . . .
Still from OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR (1969) showing Vanessa Redgrave as Sylvia Pankhurst in front of a banner which reads, in all capitals, “Our men are being sacrificed in vain” as she says, “The politicians chatter like imbeciles while civilisation bleeds to death”.
November 12, 2025 at 6:32 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Morning at the southern end of Africa on this imperial tour of the provinces.

🌴🏭⚓️🏗🌍☀️
View of Cape Town harbour and Table Bay from the slopes of the mountain in Walmer Estate. There are. Ranes visible over the rooftops of Woodstock (where the beach used to be); the city centre is out of frame to the left, and the horizon is marked by the curve of the bay towards the Koeberg nuclear power station on the left and the Durbanville hills on the right; the Salt River mouth is hidden by development. The view northeastwards showing the Cape Town Civic Centre, seat of the municipal government on what used to be the fore shore but is now reclaimed land, on the left, the harbour pier, and fuel storage tanks on tbe right. On the horizon in the centre of the image, barely discernible, is Robben Island. The rocky top of Devil's Peak under the blue sky above Cape Town. Cirrus clouds in a blue sky; morning in Cape Town.
November 12, 2025 at 6:33 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Overlooking Table Bay at the southern end of the continent.

🌍
The lights of Woodstock and Cape Town harbour.
November 11, 2025 at 10:29 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Historically, there were even fewer facts. The Previous had all died out in the Something that Happened, a great disaster brought upon themselves by a reckless level of individuality, lawlessness and greed.
▫️Jasper Fforde, 2024

📚💙 📚✒️ #BookSky
Extracts from RED SIDE STORY by Jasper Fforde (2024) 'Let's suppose the RISK map is a correct generalisation of the world's land masses, and the map we have extrapolated from Beck's is a good idea of the shape of our island. Ignore everything you've been taught and ask yourself this: which part of the map looks like a mirrored capital "L" with a bulge on its western side?' Once he said that, no one had any doubt of the most likely candidate, a small island in the centre of the map, dwarfed by everything else that surrounded it. There was an island to the left and a landmass to the right, as might have been observed from the chalk cliffs. 'Great Britain,' said Jane, reading the name written across the island. We stared silently at the map. We'd been told we were the biggest and most important island, but it now looked as though we were geographically . . . insignificant. 'That's a lot of Somewhere Else out there,' I murmured, 'and potentially populated by thousands of Someone Elses'. 'Millions', said Harry, in another huge leap of thought that left us all a little stunned. 'What would they all do?' asked Lucy, but no one had an answer
November 11, 2025 at 12:24 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Huriǂoaxa; though some people saw, and others still see, a table . . .

An uncomfortably humid day in the provinces at the southern end of the continent.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🧊🥃🌳🌍☀️
Photograph of "Table Mountain" taken from one of Cape Town's southern reaches.
November 9, 2025 at 10:48 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Juggling schedules and managing the imperial diary to conduct 4 interviews each day next week . . . One is depleted. Time to unplug the computer and restore one's spirit to the usual imperiousness with some reading in the #LateImperialLibrary in rainy and stormy #NorthJozi . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🪻🌍⛈️
Upright student desk with Yugoslav made Olivetti typewriter (1989), bibelots, prints, photographs, and shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Edward Gibbon through Nadine Gordimer, and from Elizabeth Grosz through Eric Hobsbawm. Antares typewriter, mini zen garden, potted plants and toy brick mugs holding stationery on a handmade 1952 geained wood table, backed by a white brick wall and the bottom of windows showing trees at the bottom of the garden. Cluttered main desk with bibelots, stationery, photographs, mobiles, printer, and dictionaries and thesauruses; laptops have been removed and put away. Shelves of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Stephen Donaldson and Fyodor Dostoyevsky through Nadine Gordimer and Günther Grass.
November 7, 2025 at 2:08 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Cold snap in #NorthJozi with jacarandas at the end of their bloom signalling the shift into summer; preparing for a last tour of the provinces; noblesse oblige, and coffee.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🗝🚪🌳🪻🌍☁️
View of the swimming pool on a cold morning, 14 ⁰C, surrounded by trees. Chillies ripening in a potted bush on the balcony. View of the trees at the bottom of the garden, the jacarndas shedding their purple blooms, with empty bottles of a variety of colours in the foreground. Grey clouds over the north of Johannesburg.
November 7, 2025 at 6:41 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood.
Film still of Frances McDormand from OLIVE KITTERIDGE (2014), saying, “I read your son’s paper. It is lazy, slapdash crap.”
November 6, 2025 at 7:40 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Full moon over #NorthJozi, 22h00 . . .

🏰☁️🌍🌕
Full moon in a slightly cloudy sky in Johannesburg.
November 5, 2025 at 8:13 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Cue #CerebralRinse . . . 🧠🚿
Film still of Sigourney Weaver as con artist Max Conners / Angela Nardino / Ulga Yevanova in HEARTBREAKERS (2001), telling tobacco tycoon Gene Hackman's William B. Tensy, "That image will haunt me".
November 5, 2025 at 7:51 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
"But baby, it's [not even going to be] cold outside" (pace Frank Loesser, 1944); so, noblesse oblige, one shall go abroad to smile at babies and ask complete acquaintances, "So what is it you do?"

Morning in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi before a day of duty.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝☕️🌳🪻🌍☀️
Portable typewriter, mini zen garden, toy brick mugs holding stationery, a reading stand, and potted plants on a table handmade by my father in 1952, and a view into the garden showing trees through windows above a brick wall painted white. Simple pine table in front of bookcases of fiction alphabetised by author surname from Willa Cather through Ernest Gaines. Bowls of fruit, a straw hat, and a pair of spectacles can be seen on the table; also in frame, a handwoven basket from eSwatini, and on the far side, a sofa at the windows blocked by navy curtains. Work desk with laptop, printer, dictionaries, stationery, CDs, DVDs, bibelots, surrounded by bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Tim Dolin and Jonathan Dollimore through Josephus and James Joyce. Back of the workdesk from the previous photograph surrounded by bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Jonathan Lethem and Gideon Levy through Bertrand Russell and Richard Russo.
November 5, 2025 at 4:23 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Further mood.
Film still from the original television serial, DALLAS (1978-1991), showing Linda Gray as Sue Ellen Ewing, sitting on a yellow lounger poolside, reading a copy of “Texas Homes”, saying, “Appearances can very often be deceiving.”
November 4, 2025 at 1:20 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood.
Film from Patricia Rozema's 1999 film adaptation of Jane Austen's MANSFIELD PARK (1814), showing Embeth Davidtz as Mary Crawford, in the titular property's parlour, telling Fanny Price, in front of the gathered Bertrams, "I understand your bitterness, but do not direct at me."
November 4, 2025 at 9:38 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Lichaam, denk ik, als je mijn eigen lichaam bent

waar heb je me gevonden
waar breng je me heen
waar laat je me gaan

en wat is het in dat hoofd van mij
angst of verlangen, weerzien of afscheid
voor aarde, van aarde, naar aarde.
▫️Rutger Kopland, 2001
Self-portrait, 2025.
November 2, 2025 at 8:44 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
This is how ideology functions today: ideology tells the truth but creates conditions which guarantee that the truth itself will be perceived as a lie.
▫️Slavoj Žižek, 2023
Extracts from TOO LATE TO AWAKEN: WHAT LIES AHEAD WHEN THERE IS NO FUTURE? by Slavok Žižek (2023) Some of the noblest parts of our emancipatory tradition (anti-Fascist and anti-racist struggle, rejection of our commercialized and hedonistic way of life, the fight against financial elites exploiting ordinary people, the efforts to abolish leftovers of colonization . . .) are being gulped down by political leaders around the world. Their neo-Fascist or neoliberal digestive enzymes are removing the radical acidity of the ideas they've swallowed, and turning them into pieces of shit that smoothly fit the existing global capitalist system, although they present themselves as its destruction.
November 2, 2025 at 5:41 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
🚨
Title card from Volker Schlöndorff's film adaptation of Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1990) showing a conifer covered mountainous landscape through which a road winds, and the text reads: Once upon a time in the recent future a country went wrong. The country was called The Republic of Gilead.
November 2, 2025 at 10:24 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Thus the day begins in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾☕️🗝🚪🌳🪻🌍🌤
Frothed milk topping a small mug of espresso on a plain pine table. View to the south of clouds in a blue sky over Johannesburg, with the top of the Hillbrow tower rising above the crest of the Witwatersrand north of the city centre. Cirrus clouds in a blue sky. Jacarandas towards the end of their bloom and other trees at the bottom of the garden to the north of the Late Imperial Library.
November 2, 2025 at 5:24 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
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.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍
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).
November 1, 2025 at 8:35 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Your Hair Is White
You Have Breasts
And A Gut
Over Your Belt
You Are No Longer A Boy,
Or Even A Man
But A Sense Of Gratitude
Enlivens Every Move
You Make
▫️Leonard Cohen, "A Life of Errands", BOOK OF LONGING (2006)

Friday night tea in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🫖🗝🚪🌳🌍🌔
Mug of tea with an abstract bird design printed on it, on a pine table next to a wooden bowl with two oranges, a red ceramic bowl of apples and pears, a tablet resting upright on a stand made of plastic toy blocks, all in front of bookcases of fiction alpbabetised by authors surname from Bernardine Evaristo and Nuruddin Farah through Richard Hakluyt and Radclyffe Hall. Bookcases arranged at right angles, holding fiction alphabetised by author surname from Willa Cather and Miguel de Cervantes through Umberto Eco and George Eliot. A collection of LP albums are stacked on the wooden floor between the bookcases, supporting a framed Roy Lichtenstein print from the museum shop of the Louisiana in Copenhagen. Two shelves on two bookcases, fiction alphabetised by author surname, from Djuna Barnes and Julian Barnes through Elizabeth Bowen and Paul Bowles. Two shelves on two bookcases, fiction alphabetised by author surname, from Ray Bradbury and E.R. Braithwaite through Samuel Butler and A.S. Byatt.
October 31, 2025 at 8:27 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Memory is tied to a stake,
history silenced by firing squad.
[…]
Words are no longer enough to keep the wise alive,
[…]
Colonialists, coupists.
Who can tell one from the other
in these seas of crime and corruption?
Some of us have walked this road before.
▪️Lola Shoneyin, 2024
Extract from "A Fragile State" by Lola Shoneyin, in DEMOCRACY: ELEVEN WRITERS AND LEADERS ON WHAT IT IS - AND WHY IT MATTERS (Profile Books in collaboration with the 'Financial Times', 2024) Soon, the jackboots take over the markets Left right - right left - Right wrong - Fire. The strong arm of justice is fractured. It's house arrest for the gavel and the hand that wields it. Wigged warriors become acquainted with the jingle of a warder's key. Decrees overturn laws, Impunity trumps freedoms. We've seen it all before.
October 31, 2025 at 2:05 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
It seems on the boards some people monopolise, there are cards dealt to almost everyone else from which they are exempted. To wallow in such immunity evidently encourages those thus privileged to be their best selves . . . 🤷🏾‍♂️
A pink Community Chest and a yellow Chance card from a 1980s Monopoly™️ game, each card showing an illustration of prison bars, the text in all capitals reading: go to jail - move directly to jail - do not pass "begin" - do not collect £200m (the currency and amount altered).
October 31, 2025 at 7:18 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Friday in the #LateImperialLibrary, on a chilly, damp spring morning in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝💻☕️🗝🚪🌳🐦‍⬛🌍🌥
Cluttered main desk with laptop, dictionaries and thesauruses, thotchkes, and stationery, surrounded by bookcases of nonfiction from Regis Debray and Teresa de Lauretis on the left through Jenny Hartley and John Hartley on the right Bookcases of fiction alphabetiased by author surname from Sadeq Hedyat and Heinrich Heine on the left through Halldór Laxness and Camara Laye on the right. Damp garden around a swimming pool in the morning light. Pigeons in flight against a cloudy sky.
October 31, 2025 at 6:34 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Liberal power structures are anonymised rather than personal, they are spontaneous rather than planned, and the psychological attitudes that consolidate them breed selfishness and indifference […] Where power is dispersed, spontaneous and anonymised, it is even more difficult to fight.
Lea Ypi, 2024
Extracts from 'Freedom, progress and capitalism' by Lea Ypi, in DEMOCRACY: ELEVEN WRITERS AND LEADERS ON WHAT IT IS - AND WHY IT MATTERS (Profile Books in collaboration with the 'Financial Times', 2024) "Liberals often brush aside the history of colonialism as if it had nothing to do with their ideals. But the fear of colonialism (and of neo-colonialism in the form of debt dependency or subservience to international institutions hegemonised by Western liberal countries or humanitarian intervention) is not an unfortunate byproduct. It is the result of a theory of history in which the liberal capitalist society is the final stage of a process that culminates in liberating backward people from their own stupidity and oppression."
October 30, 2025 at 7:58 PM