Hoofbeats on the shingle of
The naked shore, the ocean of
Faith drawn back and exposing
The bare stone and sharp-edged
Not quite smoothed rocks and
Nothing like the soft sands of
Sweeter southern climes their
Beating waves wearing down the
Doubts and fears of harsher
Shores salt-stained and sere
Dead salt-marsh stalks jutting
Up over poisoned slopes at
War with its waters and the
Unforgiving sogged soil

The sixteen piston-head
Shoe-strikes thundering across
Hard-pebbled beaches not
Worthy of the name, the
Tide of prophesy driven forth
By that vexed nightmare
Awakened from a stony sleep
By a rocking cradle and the
Hand of a rough beast, her
Hour come round at last
Not to slouch, nor to roar
Nor to bathe in the blood
Of the sinners and the saints
Nor any horror of a dreaming
Asiatic visionary, poisoned by
Essene imaginings and Greek
Linguistics and the
Apocalyptic aspirations of
Those who would see the
Curtain rung down on the
Last ding-dong doom bell
On the last guttering spark
Of the last rock beneath
The last gloaming red-hued
Sputtering star

Nor, rather, the fantasies of
Union and wonder and utopian
Lion and lamb and loving
Kindness dancing together in
Febrile orgiastic impossibilities
The predator and the prey
Together in a kind-hearted
Eternity of denial of their
Essential selves as if
Truth pitted against truth
Breeds forth anything but
Chimerae and monsters and
Ravening bestial conflicting
Desires drenched in the
Worst sort of zero-sum
Devouring red-toothed nature.

What beasts are these, then
Trotting glad-hooved towards
Bethlehem to be born?
Paradox and pity
Delight and dismay
The beasts that shouted
Love!
At the frozen heart of
A world that could not
Find it in its bitter
veins to believe.

Thus the merciless Will of Melchior -
Fallen Puritan,
Man of Faith
Man of Science,
Scriptural scholar
Polymath, reader, translator
Parser of faded texts and
Pursuer of that which
Without age
Without time
Without fade
Without faecal
Foundering, faltering, failing
Retains its shape and its
Purpose in this and past
Ages and those to come
That which moments and
Men hath no purchase -
Laid out his implacable
And iron purpose:

"That which the Truth can destroy
Ought, should, and shall be
Wiped out, expunged, extirpated
Taken by Time lifeless to
The lime-pit and the potter's field
Its dross washed into the gutter of
The rest of the filth of the
Mayfly world that wafts before
Our traitor eyes like the rising
Mists of a false and gloaming
Morning that, lit by a lying
Counterfeit orb, its spark having
Spilt, is swallowed once again by
The vast and lifeless abyssal dark."

Melchior was a branding-iron
And his heavy, red-hot mind
Tore through the wisps of
Whimsy and ignited the
Tissue-paper wrappings of
Theological well-wishings
And lit alight the airy
Understandings in every
Word of every book he
Chased the God of his
Fathers and the Truth of
His self-willing into which
He would forge the
Testimony of revelation
In all the books of his
Exploring, arguing
Questioning age
Hot-hammered upon the
Predestinate anvil of his
Unyielding implacable
Towering self-regard
And refusal to bend
His human Reason before
The excuse of the Leviathan
The example of the Adversary
The admonition of Job.

Melchior's last will and
Testament, its terms to be
Taken from its compositional
pulp, and printed upon a
Rare and terrible parchment
A vellum scraped from the
Expired flesh of his
Cooling corpse, the words
Of his hot heart painted
Palimpsest upon the hide
That held within it such
Spark that would not
Spare any tinder that
Flame might flash alight
Burn, burn all that
Fire might catch fire
Until every spider-web
gives up its snares
Until every cob-web fails
Rotted by time and
Torn by the
Turning of the truth.

This, the book in your
Human hand, hot from the
Heat of your beating
Heart, is the key-stone
Of a great and terrible
Temple to the Truth his
Fortune and Faith hath
Been pledged and placed
Dedicant, a vast Library
The ritual reliquary of
Inquisition and inquiry
Without guard, without limits
Without fear of heresy or
Any fire but that lit by
The flame of providence
An edifice built as a
Lighting-rod for the
True and eternal revelation of
That eventual bolt from the Blue.

Thus the echoing
Thundering beat of
Melchior's last Will and
Testament which has been
Placed here at the heart
Of the pyre of his dreams
Of God the Eternal
That Prodigal Father
For whom our hearts await
Like the fattened calf for
The celebratory feast-fire.

Cerisuo pernices
Aoi horoborous
That which in
The grey matter
Sparks incorrect
False knowledge
False understandings
That alcoholic fire which
Burning through gut
And mind
And liver
Ruins all reason
And faith and
Common sensical
Coherent cohesive
Now to now to
Now broken by the
Burning of the
Prophesy of the
Ring of fire to
Come, consuming all
Promise of the
Grace free-given
Burnt bridles with
The parasdisical
Promised by the
Divine made man
Ruined by that wash
Blue-tinted and
Complex biochemical
Blue Ruin that
Ruins all your hopes
Of the kingdom
Everlasting.

Gin.

Linneus sang of a single
Unified
Complete description of the
Botanical
And zoological
And mycological
Unity of the infinite world
Described by their
Deistical completist
Dream of the single
Lockean definition of
God in his epistimological
Reductionist essence of
That mechanical world
Physical and chemical
And biological and
The world in every ranked
And serried definition of
God in his every varied
Evidence of the doctrine
Displayed by his evidence
Diplayed in each and
Every evidentiary mark
And declension of the
Infinite variance of this
Our multipludinous
And infinitely various
Descriptors of the
Physicality of our
Non-scientific and non-
Descriptive world as it
Is in its undescribable
And variable infinititude
Of many-hued complexity
Created by the perfidious
And perplexing
Angels of his viciously
Anti-definitional
Refusal to be pinned
Beneath the assumptions of
Those who would
Prove their faith before
Evidence unescapeable
Before the Throne.

We are ourselves in history
We are ourselves in eternity
What can be the difference
Ourselves being who we are
ourselves being what we are
Physicality holding the souls of
Morality holding the flesh of
In flesh our lives being held
In soul the physicality suspended
The mind seeing the world through
The soul feeling God through
Each facing itself and the
Infinite in mirrored equivalence
And yet holding itself in itself
And still, being, ourselves,
Ourselves.

A very welcome antidote to recent discourse that only manages to heroically "discover" women writers in SF by erasing (or, to be more fair, being ignorant of) all who went before, sigh. It has been rather startling to me to find myself having sometimes entered the age of erasure, in some conversations. I have generational-competition bio-social theories about this.

Lois McMaster Bujold, talking about a review of an anthology of very-early female-authored SF.  It doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd find interesting - little SF from that era retains my interest - but I do find her irritation with today's gender warriors erasing previous generations of prominent women SF authors to bolster their persecution complexes interesting.

So:

3 oz. Beefeater's 24 gin
3 oz. V8 Fruit Medley
3 oz. Diet Mountain Dew

Let it gravity stir by pouring and then leaving it sit for five minutes.

I call it a "Slender Billy" after William II, one-time Prince of Orange and eventually King of the Netherlands, wounded as a lieutenant-general on the Allied side at the Battle of Waterloo.

This is the first mixed drink I've figured out which works with gin other than a gimlet.  I can't stand martinis, gin-and-tonics, and most other gin-based cocktails, so at least it gives me a reason to bother with gin on my booze shelf other than... completeness.

People writing "Paratime", time-travel and multiverse stories, kindly keep these basic points of logic in mind:

1) You do not exist in a world that diverges from your own world prior to your conception.

2) It is increasingly unlikely that someone with your name will have been born as the divergence-point approaches the conception of your respective parents.

3) Divergence doesn't change the laws of physics, unless the divergence *is* the difference in the laws of physics/magic/whatever the hell your superhero justificatory hand-waving calls itself.

4) As always, you're allowed one point of divergence.  No cheating and invoking multiple divergences, excepting only the appearance of your characters in the parallel world.

5) Point 4 goes out the window if you've included Paratime Police or Paratime Imperialists in your world-setting, but try to keep it consistent, people!

I'd beg for politically/economically/militarily realistic world-shifts (no, making the US revert to isolationism after WWII does *not* get you your shiny-green peaceful utopia, you commie-symp jackass!  It gets you Not This August in spades!) but I have to recognize that commie-symp writers gotta commie-symp.  But thanks for waving your sign wildly enough I know when to nope out of the story, you schmuck!

Alcohol marks the lines
Distilled morality determined
By edges and titrations and
The percentages of everyday
Intoxication deduced by
Proofs and procedures and
That which determines drunkeness
By the lawbook distinctions which
Divides the good law abiding
Tipplers from those who guzzle
Without limits and considerations
And Saturday Nights set aside
From Sunday early mornings and
Good standing in ones own
Baptist first service standing
Proving ones salvation by
The ability to stand in the
Face of a raving monstrous
Hangover in the face of the
Lord however willing to
Justify those who can stand with
The saved on a Sunday morn.

Huh.  There was a big mocking to-do last winter when San Francisco's beloved Borderlands bookstore encountered the city's dung-brained minimum-wage increase and the owners' budget keeled over and died.  Much mockery of the liberal-leftist urban economic mindset, all right-thinking libertarians had a field day.

Then this happened.  I'm not sure whether to characterize it as social media meets "other people's money", or the continuing revival of the early-modern patronage system, but bunches of butthurt SF SF&fantasy fans kicked in a lot of money to float the cost of the increased wages for a year.  The owners of Borderlands managed to find a way to monetize urbanite nerdcore cultural status-anxiety by turning their store into a sort of open-doors social club.  I don't know how deep the money-well is for this sort of thing, or whether it will only work for "landmark" cases, and all the marginal outfits which either aren't "club-able" or can't swing the necessary publicity will fall by the wayside, but I have to wonder if this is the gateway to that glittering technocratic neo-Victorianism that Neal Stephenson was on about in The Diamond Age.  We'll see if they eventually pull up the draw-bridges and exclude the wrong sort from dirtying their nice new high-tone clubs.  I rather suspect that the doormen will be theoretically oriented towards ideological outliers, but in practice will tend towards keeping out the smelly street-trash.

On The Thesis that All Art is Political

A child of the future told me

His professor a prophet to sing

A song of militancy for thee

Art the ideologue's sole thing

Bound in uniform to forever be

Her long dark locks wrapped

With a length of barbed-wire

An officer's cap her only hat

Severe Marianne at the barricade

her only stance the banner held

High and straining forever forward

Above a blur of faceless men to lead.

All art political!  

And that

Which cannot

Be parsed

By this slogan

Or that cant

Kitsch! and

Thus a figure

Of derision

And dispute.

And so the party walls off

The faithful behind a fence

Of dogma and defenses

Raised against phantasms

Of unregimented minds

Bandits of book and bell

Wreckers in their hidden souls

Never laid bare before the

Altars of the proscenium

That enclosed ritual stage

Of the people's theatre

The democratic arts!

There is a certain breed of

Man, sabre on his belt

Who cannot look upon
Well-plowed acres of

Spring-green fields of hay

Without seeing in his
Mind the fields of fire

The lines of advance and

The cover inherent in a 

Cool dark wood across

Nodding heads of grain.

Thus the organizer and

Party militant gazes upon

The cultured and popular

Arts, and sees nothing but

Fields of battle to be 

Conquered and paced off

Fortified against the next

Tribal faith to come

And seize that which has

Been taken for the 

Party of the Faithful

Or revolutionary Red Front.

You!  With your gift of 

Song to raise above

The congregation ingathered

To stand before the

Familial altar of your

Gods as they might be!

Were you born to sing

Hymns of praise and beauty

Or to bawl out a battle-march?

You!  Whose pen is sharp

And swift and all things

Clever and clear and 

Deft in the design

Is your pen a tool to find

Whimsy and the truth

Entwined in God's design?

Or is it a dagger to be drawn

Against or in service to

The devils of your day?

C.M. Hagmaier

2/20/15

The irony here is that I'm the most political, or at least, ideological combative, of would-be poets.  I like to think that it's a defensive formation, but...

And so, in dream and limb we sing
Blown free from our constant notions
That hath in sense extension unerring
Belief and faith winsome ablutions

Nonsense saith some Puritanical hearts
That hath more will than trust in grace
And constraining men in all their arts
That would by God's own troth lay waste

To each and every good notion gave birth
By hope and love and skill, by belief's art
Each man made light and swift and whole by mirth
And even flesh and dirt given still some part

Herein breaks free the bubbling brook of life
That extinguishes fire of divine strife

C.M. Hagmaier 12/27/14

Meh.  Iambic pentameter doesn't come naturally to me, and I think I got a couple feet wrong there, but oh, well.  There's a reason nobody does anything in formal measures anymore.

Grain Liquor on a Chequerboard

Sissah said to the tyrant

All I have done can

Be paid by a grain of wheat

Placed double on a board

For chessmen, square

By square as your majesty

Deigns, filled row by row

Column by column

Doubled and doubled

And redoubled again

Though your granaries fail

Though the universe fail

Heavy with precision

The tasseled heads nod

Over your honor pledged

All your wealth spilled

Across a child's toy

Tipped over-loaded weighed

With the finite product

Of your vast imperial 

Fruited plains exhausted

And still your word not

Redeemed by the 

Feckless promise of  your

Ignorant imperiousness

So my thirst distilled

From every single grain

Wheat and rye and maize

Through the retorts of

Clever men and the

Art of bourbon-masters

Casked and even

The angels whose share

Spilled by the action of

Wood and wear and 

Time's long march

Through cooper's art

And warehouser's 

Patience and the fat

Fungoidal mass that

Growth from drunkard's

Environmental footprint

Darwinian god's imprint

On the wood of a 

Distillery's backlot.

So I am, so it is

All that thirst and despair

And the joy of a nightly

Drunken haze that kills

The regrets of a million

Wasted fruitless lives

Brown-tinted oceans of

Misery murdered in 

Alcoholic metabolic

Poisons, before the 

Liver reduced before the

Heart ruined before the

Stomach shredded the

Sorrow that murdered the

Rest killed by the hand of

The merciful distiller's 

Daughter, bourbon

Sweet as innocence

Sharp as the morning

Swift as the ending

That brings with it

That final finishing

Hangover which

Hangs over 

Lies of Eternity.

One cannot kill time

Without injuring eternity

Well;
To hell with 

Eternity which gifts us 

This taste of fire that

Burns on the tongue

To mind us of that

Lake of fire before

Our inevitable end.

M. Hagmaier

12/7/14

Ah, fill the Cup: - what boots it to repeat

How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:

Unborn TO-M0RROW, and dead YESTERDAY,

Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,

One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste -

The Stars are setting and the Caravan

Starts for the Dawn of Nothing - Oh, make haste!

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit

Of This and That endeavour and dispute?

Better be merry with the fruitful Grape

Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House

For a new Marriage I did make Carouse:

Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,

And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

For "Is" and "IS-NOT" though with Rule and Line,

And "UP-AND-DOWN" without, I could define,

I yet in all I only cared to know,

Was never deep in anything but - Wine.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and 'twas - the Grape!.

The Grape that can with Logic absolute

The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:

The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice

Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald, First Edition

It's  insurance plan time, and we had a meeting at work on Thursday.  The company is picking up stakes and moving to a new provider, which is fairly disruptive to a lot of the folks at work.  Ironically, not for me, as my current physician, office and so forth was already part of the new network.   Personal pay-in is going up considerably, but it isn't anything I can't handle.  But I found myself giving out my doctor's name for several co-workers looking for a new home as their old primary care physician was left behind in the old network,  or in one case, because he hadn't had a primary care doctor at all, and the new paperwork requires it.

One of the higher-ups, who was a big Obama man, is apparently particularly feeling the pinch, and was less than thrilled.  Although that might have just been the laryngitis.

OK, I don't feel comfortable leaving that on top for long.  What have I been up to recently?  Eh, not much really.  Watching the new WKRP in Cincinnati box set, with most of the original music relicensed.  It's been a real nostalgia trip, apparently we didn't miss a single episode of the first season, and there's just something... homelike about the whole production.  Despite the fact that I've never set foot in Cincinnati.  It's still an Ohio River valley town, perched at the seam between the Midwest and Appalachia.

Ave Maria

The blood stopped flowing

After the dream of angels

And all her promises of

Essene purity will be for 

Naught and worse than

Naught in the eyes of a

Judging censorious world.

Ave Maria

Gratia plena

Maria, gratia plena 

Maria, gratia plena

She had told him, the 

Elder who would have her

Hand without the promise

Of children to honor his

White-haired age or

Posterity or the promise

Of a future grown from

Their common seed sown.

That by the imagined

Grace of a dream-angel

Heralding her courses

Stopped, blooming

Impossibly

Told him all she 

Could offer, the 

Shameful pregnant

Virginal liar befoe the eyes

Of a doubting dubious world.

Growing within her

A new world burning

Every vein afire with

Impossible possibilities

The infinite encompassed

By her fragile human

Mortal womb stretching

Pains upon pains

The walls of the 

Unknowing world within

Her small feeble frame

The ramparts of all

That is and was and

Will be held within her

Flesh straining to hold

All of creation creating

Itself within her 

Created finite self

Infinities distilling into

A tincture of grace

The universe drawn out

Like a camel through

Like a fat man through

Like the world through

The eye of a needle.

And she will be the

Needle-eye of 

A world birthing itself

Into the world existent

And every worlds possibility

By her womb redeemed.

And the angel had told

Her of the myths and

Fantasies to be

The ramparts of legends

To sanctify her frail

Human self by 

Generations of monks

And bookish scholars

And celibate judgmental

Saintly men bound to

Justify her soon to be

Sacred generation as if

There was no blood in

Birth or blood in the

Veins of that which

Was wailing to be 

Born, born in mortal

Fallen flesh.

Ave, ave dominus

Dominus tecum

Benedicta tu in mulieribus

Et benedictus

Et benedictus fructus ventris

Ventris tuae, Jesus

Ave Maria

Immaculate!  Without

Sin or scar or 

Any of the taint

That any daughter of

Eve might carry within

Her moon-caught

Earth-born womanly

worldliness and want.

But what could be the

Point of a divine

Birth without flesh

Or blood or pain or

All the faults of 

Eve-knowing and

Cain's-marked 

Man and woman

Enjoined and born and

Bred.  And she had

Indeed been born and

Bred and descended from

Ten thousand generations

Of quarreling bitter 

Bastards and harridans

And selfish, squabbling

Vicious people, chosen

Or not, pious or not,

Blasphemers, murderers

Whores and whoremongers

Thieves and slavers

Slaves and sinners.

A daughter of Eve was she

Daughter in turn of a son of

Cain, no matter how the 

Stories invented notional

Seth to distance the

Laity from the direct and

Proper conclusion that

They all were born of that

Line that lived, and not that

Of childless simple 

Blameless Abel.

Ave Maria

Mater Dei

Ora pro nobis peccatoribus

Ora pro nobis

Ora, ora pro n obis peccatoribus

The birth was upon them

And she could feel the

Curse of Eve in her

Agony, and worse, could

Feel the infinite agony of

Which her horrible straining

Separation was but a

Distant and mercifully

Shallow echo

The birth-pains of a

Universe opening its

Human eyes for the

First time, and His

First Cry cracking

The firmament like a

Miscast bell struck by

A hammer too hard and

Sharp for the frail

Metal cast by a 

Smith too unsure of

His material and the

Purposes intended.

Infinity compressed

Within one small wailing

Infant and that wailing

Will echo across the

Whole of creation from

The first crack of 

Dawn to the last

Clang fading on

That final, lifeless

Worthless rock. 

Every mother brings

Into the world two

Things: one life and

One death and all

That lies in between

Is out of her hands but

Still her gift given

And Eve bore a Cain

And Eve bore her Abel

And she bore the 

Burden of both

And she?  The new

Born mother, what

Burden for bringing the

Death of God into

A world split asunder

By the birth of that

Which could not be

Contained by that

Which nonetheless

Yet contained it?

The Church which

Was to come would

Remember and sanctify

That death as a

Passion, ritual upon

Ritual, play upon

Play, signifying the

Corn-god triviality of

A man's tortured 

Death as if death

Were something of

Note in our fallen

Failing world, when

All around them death

And pain and misery

March in endless

Serried ranks like

The hosts of hell

On the double-step.

Nuct et in hora mortis

Et in hora mortis nostrae

Et in hora mortis nostrae

Et in Hora mortis nostrae

Ave Maria

For the mother of

The infinite suddenly

And impossibly

Finite the one and

Only - horrible and 

Comprehensive and

Terrible - miracle was

Always

And always will be

That awful birth

Now and forever

The scream of 

Everything 

Aborning

World without end.

November 22, 2014

The very definition of "voter suppression"?  Some idiot property manager putting up "no trespassing" signs at both entrances to my local voting precinct at Lambert Hall, 03 Bellefonte South.  The officials were just sitting there, doing their ritual rather than doing their job and getting rid of the damn signs.  Who cares how closely the political signs are located to the entrance if you have to break the damn law to set foot in the precinct?

Trying to get a hold of someone w/ the party or the county.

Update: someone from the party called back & got the details, and is going to try and do something about it.

Tending Fires

Life and love are flickering flame

Smoldering futile in the half-rotted muck

Of a thousand years of bog

Or underground

Coal-seam sightless flaring

Or bursting dryrotted pineneedle crown-fire

That sucks up the air from the forest floor

A pyric malestromic inferno

Consuming all in fiery seconds

The annihilation of the woods.

But woodland will need

That passionate hellish harrowing

That bursts the fire-broke seedcone

That tears through the mis-formed

Dead-ended past made Solid

That incinerates that crooked timber

That never made anything straight.

Thus, one advocate

The acolyte of the forest-fire affair

And single-night couplings

And lonely aftermaths and

The fatherless son walking

Under strangers' skies

The flare that comes and goes

Leaving man-child mankind

A scorched chaos of livid wilderness

A patchwork of lightning-struck desolation

And desperate procreation

And regret and uncertainty

And nothing certain.

No! Cries a domestic promethean

And acolyte of another path

And makes her case beside

The opened kitchen-door

Burning brand in hand, 

Thus:

A careful hand wrapping paper

And accelerants in wax and twine

A boxes of matches set to hand

And the twigs tented below

An arranged cage of branches

All within the sturdy hearth

Bound in brick

Bound in iron

Bound in brass

A binding proscenium

Behind glass-door enclosures

And beneath a well-cleaned flue

Place your firestarter.

That ardor, the incinerating

Bursting

Passionate

Consummation

Comes and goes

Lighting the small-wood

Lighting the logs

Lighting the yule-log

Burning the year-log.

That year-log fire

Whose flame steadily glows

Burns what is given it

Burning guttering red-orange flames

In the sap-sweet spring

Burning the rich roaring-fire of

The long-months summer

Burning the steady cherry-red

Warmth of the autumn reaping

And gathering in for the long

Winter days' ember-fire

That fire, fed, that heats

The roof-timbers warm

No matter how heavy

The snows weigh

On the shingles above

The life-long fire

That burns the wood of your years

A prophesy of fire

A life teeming with life

With children grown

And your children's children

In their chaos and youth

The family kept safe

Within the home kept warm

By love's long fire's flame.

9/19/14

So,  Byblos is Jbail when it isn't working off its passport - the local name.  This city has been continuously occupied by people for at least nine thousand years, and possibly over ten thousand.   It's definitely the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.  As such, the city has collected names like a social butterfly collects online handles.  It's Byblos to the Greeks, Romans, and those of us who take place-names from classical sources; it's Jbail to the locals and Arabic-speakers, it was Gibelet to the crusaders and Genoans, Gebal to the Phoenicians, Gubal to the ancient Caananites, and Geval to those that wrote the Bible.  The name of the Bible itself is derived from this city, which the archaic Greeks associated with papryus and thus gave the product the name of the city from which they traded it originally; it eventually was associated with the book, and thus "biblos".

The city is mostly Maronite, with some Shia, and at least one street's worth of Armenians, because I took a wrong turn and found myself in the town's small Armenian quarter, which turns out to be a single dead-end cul-de-sac on the bayside south end of the city.  My hotel was about a mile's walk from the tourist centre of Byblos, which I was told was a safe enough walk.  If you walk out where the drivers can see you, and you can see the drivers, it isn't crazy dangerous to walk the roads.  Assuming that you're walking in a place where the fumes won't choke you.  There were clusters of men  waiting for trucks to pick them up - day-labour, as anyone in the American South or Southwest would recognize.   The area was recognizably Marionite - there were the occasional tiny roadside shrine like this one, scattered every five hundred meters or so along the road.  This one was particularly battered, but the better-kept ones were usually of the Virgin Mary.

I got there too early in the day for the Souk to be active - the shop-keepers were just opening their doors when I walked through initially - but you can get an idea of how it looks.  Vaulted corridors separating brick alleys with sailcloth flying overhead to keep off the merciless August sun.  Lots of fossils, food, touristy trinkets, and for some reason, at least three places selling shoes.  I almost stopped to buy a new pair, since my current pair had almost blown out by that point, but I didn't have the energy to really get down to figuring out if they'd have any tennis shoes in my size in a reasonable color - they tended towards bright primary-color flashy trainers, not at all my style.

As I said, this is a Maronite town.  This is L'eglise St. Jean-Marc, a Maronite church with, I think, an attached school for young children.   It was quite a large compound, to the north and east of the souk and the ruins of Byblos of which, much more next time.