(no subject)
February 1685
John Comstock’s ruin…and his withdrawal from the Presidency of the Royal Society had seemed epochal…Yet within weeks Thomas More Anglesey had been elected…The upright, conservative arch-Anglican had been replaced by a florid Papist, but nothing was really different - which taught Daniel that the world was full of powerful men but as long as they played the same roles, they were as interchangeable as second-rate players speaking the same lines in the same theatre on different nights.
--from Quicksilver
Dreams
The Ascension to Paradise is down the block, across the street, up some steel stairs to a cioppino joint, cum San Francisco’s Embarcadero or Monterey’s Cannery Row.
But as I watch souls try to reach heaven, I see how passersby become devouring demons, how asphalt melts and burn-binds, how the stairs becomes a steel Venus flytrap, how the maitre d’ at the top of the stairs turns beezlebub as he opens the door for you, inches away from bliss.
And, watching all the ways over years, it becomes my turn.
I begin to walk. Down block, across street. Stepping gingerly, cringing at approaching pedestrians. Up stairs…
…the maitre d’ holds open the door, says words of greeting…
…my toe to threshold:
Am I really going to make it?
Yes Dr. Freud: I’m feeling guilty about a few things, am I not?
As I drive up Natoma, the cops are on a crime scene; multiple murder victims, on the lawn of the convalescent hospital.
I’ve made some traffic mistake, and they signal me to pull over.
There is a survivor, black-haired, thin, weak, being helped by a woman.
The cops make me take him in my car, with orders to drive him home.
I tell him to drive, because I’m tired; she sits shotgun, and I get in the back to nap.
“Where’s home?”
“LA,” he says.
You gotta be shitting me.
“All the way to LA?”
“That’s what the cops said.”
Can they really make me do this?
I’m really tired. And as I drowse, they talk, and it becomes clear; they are the murderers - vampire-murderers.
Am I being hypnotized?
At a stop, I escape by “flying,” the sort of Taoist leaping a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
He pursues.
Black night, colorless trees and water black as Chinese ink.
This is what I get for sleeping right under a wide-open, rose-entwined window.
On a possibly related note, my shit smells like sulfur this morning.
John Comstock’s ruin…and his withdrawal from the Presidency of the Royal Society had seemed epochal…Yet within weeks Thomas More Anglesey had been elected…The upright, conservative arch-Anglican had been replaced by a florid Papist, but nothing was really different - which taught Daniel that the world was full of powerful men but as long as they played the same roles, they were as interchangeable as second-rate players speaking the same lines in the same theatre on different nights.
--from Quicksilver
Dreams
The Ascension to Paradise is down the block, across the street, up some steel stairs to a cioppino joint, cum San Francisco’s Embarcadero or Monterey’s Cannery Row.
But as I watch souls try to reach heaven, I see how passersby become devouring demons, how asphalt melts and burn-binds, how the stairs becomes a steel Venus flytrap, how the maitre d’ at the top of the stairs turns beezlebub as he opens the door for you, inches away from bliss.
And, watching all the ways over years, it becomes my turn.
I begin to walk. Down block, across street. Stepping gingerly, cringing at approaching pedestrians. Up stairs…
…the maitre d’ holds open the door, says words of greeting…
…my toe to threshold:
Am I really going to make it?
Yes Dr. Freud: I’m feeling guilty about a few things, am I not?
As I drive up Natoma, the cops are on a crime scene; multiple murder victims, on the lawn of the convalescent hospital.
I’ve made some traffic mistake, and they signal me to pull over.
There is a survivor, black-haired, thin, weak, being helped by a woman.
The cops make me take him in my car, with orders to drive him home.
I tell him to drive, because I’m tired; she sits shotgun, and I get in the back to nap.
“Where’s home?”
“LA,” he says.
You gotta be shitting me.
“All the way to LA?”
“That’s what the cops said.”
Can they really make me do this?
I’m really tired. And as I drowse, they talk, and it becomes clear; they are the murderers - vampire-murderers.
Am I being hypnotized?
At a stop, I escape by “flying,” the sort of Taoist leaping a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
He pursues.
Black night, colorless trees and water black as Chinese ink.
This is what I get for sleeping right under a wide-open, rose-entwined window.
On a possibly related note, my shit smells like sulfur this morning.