Continued from here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2023/03/24/quadrilateral-thinking/
A SYMBOL OF A MEMORY by Jim Gibson
I was once sent as a boy on an errand for mince and dripping. And I also recognise the framing of stage plays or photos or paintings of real passing life. Wherever one is sitting.
I, too, have an understanding of most of my memories that happened in the past that I did not understand at the time. And some I shall never understand. And some I should have blocked out. Yet the memory of this protagonist is more powerful than most. It is shocking, recurrent and eventually somehow poetically self-destructive both to the person within the pages I just read and to the story itself. I wonder what sort of memory this unmissable reading experience will formulate in my mind in the future. A future that is far far shorter than the future when I was a boy. Having written this real-time review of it makes blocking it out almost impossible, I guess. Time will tell.
***
My review of the fourth current Nightjar will be in the first comment below….
The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews 
So, aptly, “Quite often a musical note halts her wandering, and her past is summoned:” as quoted from the next Nightjar…
STYX by Will Eaves
“Paint stripper burns across the sky in an acetylene flare.”
I know I sometimes take ‘my passion of the reading moment’ thing for granted, and perhaps overplay its effect in my reading life. But this time I am sure as sure can be that this is the perfect fit for the previous story above, but in a denser language, a Nightjar epiphany, memories as self and unaccountably transported by an emergency ambulance with me inside emitting Weirdtongue words waiting unaccountably for a gurney at my old narrative hospital even after we managed to reach it faster than the fast lanes of one’s life. Yes, this work is the epiphany of a self, where I imagine that others whom I knew will somehow summon SF-like my reincarnative core or soul that the body once contained, in this work represented by a figure bespoke for this story with a chalet bungalow’s secret eaves-cupboards unloaded, such as a past colourful army life et al for the character described.
In short, this work is a tour de force, second to none, of what both troubles and delights me about the human condition and the literature I read or the literature I make believe I read! Or understand or misunderstand!
I, too, fear the sky reflected in puddles. And, today, I fear what I can picture through this work’s porthole.
“The random may conceal a code.”
Cognomen being another form of AI Art? Not SF at all?
Cognomen’s attempts at *a* face from the foot of page 5 in STYX: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/40945-2/
All four Nightjars published by Nightjar Press here: https://nightjarpress.weebly.com/