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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚
@acfick72.bsky.social
1.4K followers 570 following 2.6K posts
Reader; Emperor of Solitude; self-ironising Don of #NorthJozi; Anarchosyndicalist Czar of All Tolstoyan Russian Multiverses; House Fuller-Hallim; Mr Havisham.
🤴🏽📚🤓📖📝☕️🌍
An obsolescent isolate losing hearing and sight in the twilight of this incarnation.
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acfick72.bsky.social
AC Fick 📚 @acfick72.bsky.social · 15d
[I]t must be becoming increasingly clear to some, at least, that all of us are standing in the same deep shadow, a shadow which can only be lifted by human courage and honor.
▪️James Baldwin, 1972

On December fourth
water spurts out of the mouse.
▫️Anne Sexton, 1975

🫅🏾📚🤓📖💻🫖☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍
Photograph of Fiction Room A of the Late Imperial Library, showing the Calendario Romano on the left open to December, the picture a photograph of a dark-haired young man dressed as a priest holding a copy of LA VIE DI ROMA to his chest; on the rigbt, a table covered with a khaki cloth, a teapot and mug, a bowl of fruit, and shelves stacked with volumes of fiction alphabetised by author surname. A view into the Nonfiction Room of the Late Imperial Library, with a copy of the Calendario Romano hanging on the left open to December with a photograph of a young blond man in priest's garb in front of stonework, and on the right shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname, and a cluttered desk. An upright student desk from the 1980s with a Yugoslavia made Olivetti typewriter, a laptop, stationery and bibelots, and shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from J.K. Galbraith through Owen Jones. A cluttered desk with laptop, stationery, a printer, bibelots, dictionaries and thesauruses, a tablet, and beyond it a glimpse of the upright student desk from the previous photograph.
acfick72.bsky.social
To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.
▫️Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

#BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋
Extracts from THE LITTLE PRINCE / LE PETIT PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) Throughout my life, I have been in touch with many kinds of serious people. I have lived a great deal with grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that, I'm afraid, hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
December 16, 2025 at 5:31 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
It may be time to revisit #TheSopranos of North Jersey here in #NorthJozi this summer . . .

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Boxed DVD set of THE SOPRANOS (1999-2007) next to a tin containing a trivia game linked to David Chase's show, at the edge of a cluttered desk and in front of bookcases on which volumes of nonfiction have been alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Isaac Asimpv through André Brink and J. M. Coetzee to Michel Foucault.
December 16, 2025 at 2:56 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: XVI.
December 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
I had barely turned seventeen when the presiding judge […] handed down his verdict and sentenced me to what he called a life of making sentences.
▫️Paul Auster, 2023

#BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋
Main post and image contain extracts from BAUMGARTNER: A NOVEL by Paul Auster (2023) Great effort is required to make a sentence, and great effort requires great concentration, and as one sentence must inevitably follow another in order to build a work composed of sentences, great concentration is required throughout the day, which means that the days pass by quickly for me, as if each hour that registers on the clock were no longer than a minute. After fifty-plus years of quickly passing days, it feels as if my life has rushed by in a blur. I have become old, but because the days have passed so quickly, most of me still feels young, and as long as I can still hold a pencil in my hand and still see the sentence in front of me, I suppose I will carry on with the same routine I have been following since the morning I arrived here. And if a moment should finally come when I can no longer carry on, all I have to do is get up and leave.
December 16, 2025 at 10:27 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Morning in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi on a public holiday: coffee and back pain, because this is old age.

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A Fresian cow patterned mug of coffee on a shelf in front of a jar of marbles, a red candle holder, a plastic conifer, and a toy brick block castle. The room is lined with bookcases on which the volumes of fiction have been alphabetised by author surname from Margaret Atwood through Herman Hesse. Shelves on which volumes of fiction have been alphabetised by author surname (and arranged chronologically by date of publication within each writer's oeuvre) from Jean Auel through Jillian Becker. A Yuletide biscuit tin shaped like a 1970s Volkswagen kombi rests on the Paul Auster volumes. Morning sun shining into the garden showing the swimming pool surrounded by trees. Cirrus clouds in a blue sky as rain clouds roll in from the east (right side of the frame).
December 16, 2025 at 6:29 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
The future teaches you to be alone
The present to be afraid and cold
[…]
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
▫️Nick Jones, 1998
December 15, 2025 at 6:18 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
#NorthJozi in the late afternoon, before the current spectacular storm.
The Hillbrow tower seen in a dip of the crest of the Witwatersrand north of the Johannesburg city centre as thunder clouds gather.
December 15, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
ms-golightly.bsky.social
www.fotogramas.es/famosos-cele...
Carmen Maura: "No le guardo rencor a Pedro Almodóvar, pero casi dejo la actuación para siempre"
Carmen Maura se ha sincerado sobre su reconciliación con Pedro Almodóvar y el empuje que la ha acompañado durante toda su carrera.
www.fotogramas.es
December 15, 2025 at 8:20 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
So much for cutting all the ribbons and launching all the vessels to close off the year. Frantic electronic correspondence and telephonic conversations take up the morning, preventing one from finishing the last Auster novel.

Always thus. Noblesse oblige in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.
A very cluttered desk with multiple devices to deal with end-of-year administrative matters.
December 15, 2025 at 7:27 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Sunday inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary.

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Copies of Nathan Thrall's A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ABED SALAMA: A PALESTINE STORY (2023), Sheridan Le Fanu's CARMILLA (1871 & 1872), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's THE LITTLE PRINCE (1943), and Andrew Sean Greer's LESS IS LOST (2022).
December 14, 2025 at 8:13 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; […]

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
▫️Henry Francis Lyte, 1847
December 14, 2025 at 7:12 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: XV.
December 14, 2025 at 6:24 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Cake (sic) in a mug: Sunday night in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖🍰☕️🗝🚪🎄🌍🌧
Cake (sic) in a cup in front of plastic toy brick structures and a plastic mini-Xmas tree.
December 14, 2025 at 5:46 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
One does sometimes wonder what it is about one's imperious, uninterested demeanour which so often prompts others to gauchely and pointedly remark upon the sexual unavailability of people one had and has no interest in. Is one known for having such spectacularly bad taste among these trolls?
Still from Pedro Almodóvar's LA CONCEJALA ANTROPÓFOGA (2009; it is a film within a film, made by the fictional Mateo Blanco / Harry Caine in LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS, 2009) showing Carmen Machi as a municipal councillor in a red dress sitting at a table opposite a woman who has passed out from drinking gazpacho laced with sedatives meant for someone else (reprising a sequence from Almodóvar's masterpiece, MUJERES AL BORDE DE UN ATAQUE DE NERVIOS, 1988), a large pile of cocaine between them, saying, "Every night, before going to bed, I do a bit of self-criticism."
December 14, 2025 at 2:24 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Another cool, rainy day predicted for #NorthJozi (the summer weather here used to and should be hot days with afternoon thunderstorms).

🌳🎄❄️🌍⛈️
View southwards and up the incline towards the crest of the Witwatersrand just north of the Johannesburg city centre, with the top of the Hillbrow tower slightly obscured by low clouds; in the bottom right corner of the frame is the top of a seven storeys tall plane tree. The view down onto the top of a tree obscuring the street, and agapanthus plants flowering. A decomissioned entrance drive next to a street lamp on the street, and the bushy tree and bits of the agapanthus garden. Grey thunderclouds rolling in from the north with the three lift shaft towers of the art deco building downslope visible at the bottom of the frame.
December 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
susiedentwords.bsky.social
Word of the day, should you be feeling a little huffish, is ‘apanthropy’ (18th century): a love of solitude and the desire to be away from other people.
December 13, 2025 at 2:02 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Mood: XIV.
a man in a white shirt is holding a tennis racquet in front of a green wall with the letter b on it
Alt: GIF of Pete Sampras dodging from side to side at the net of a clay tennis court at the French Open, trying to work out to which side his opponent is likely to return the ball, before lunging to his right as the ball presumably passes him.
media.tenor.com
December 13, 2025 at 3:23 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Aus dem stillen Raume aus der Erde Grund
Hebt sich wie im Traume dein verliebter Mund
Wenn sich die späten Nebel dreh'n
Wer wird bei der Laterne steh'n
▫️Hans Leip, 1915 & 1937
December 13, 2025 at 2:02 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Who knows if we shall meet again?
But when the morning chimes ring sweet again
I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That my heart and mind embraces
All day through
▫️Sammy Fain & Irving Kahal, 1938
December 13, 2025 at 1:48 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Today's balcony harvest grown from food residue in #NorthJozi.

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Red African bird's eye chilliies on a 1970s wood chip drawing board.
December 13, 2025 at 11:04 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Rainy Saturday, dropped temperature, mostly in bed in #NorthJozi . . .

🫅🏾📚🤓📖🛌🏾☕️🗝🚪🌳🌍🌧
Raindrops on a window pane obscures the view northwards of the lift shafts of the art deco building downslope. View into the wet garden, showing a palm tree with fruit, and the swimming pool. Trees and street seen through a wet window as rain falls. Grey skies over Johannesburg.
December 13, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
oliver48.bsky.social
"ON [12 Dec] 1982: 30,000 women form a human chain around RAF Greenham Common in opposition to the deployment of US nuclear cruise missiles. The historic 'Embrace the Base' protest was one of many non-violent actions at Greenham and other military sites across Britain during the 1980s"
via CND
December 13, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
workingclasshistory.com
#OtD 13 Dec 1905 anarchist farmhand, Sandor Csizmadia, and some friends set up the Union of Rural Workers in Hungary. Within two years it had 75,000 members in 625 groups stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8461...
December 13, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Reposted by AC Fick 📚
workingclasshistory.com
#OtD 12 Dec 1969 amid the huge Hot Autumn strike wave, a bomb exploded at a Milan bank, killing 16 and wounding 88. Blamed on anarchists, one of whom was killed by police, it was later discovered to have been carried out by the far-right and the state stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8380...
December 12, 2025 at 11:10 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Did this character living in obscene wealth just say, "Ten years ago today we stepped away from the patriarchy and towards something of our own"? Let me return to prose for #CerebralHygiene . . .
December 12, 2025 at 6:50 PM