He returns to the bookstore.
Walks along the seawall that keeps back the tide.
Spring, rain falling, to the west the sun sets, crepuscular rays through cumulus clouds.
Over cobbles and past warmly lit shops and cafe's to a side flight of stairs that leads to the landing.
A wrought iron sign advertising "Prometheus Books", Prometheus, holding proudly aloft that fire he's stolen, the windows exude an warm amber light, enter, welcome.
This folio, swapped with the owner, the devil's deeds +1, credit on their next purchase.
But what should this be?
He has been charged with finding the next book. She trusts him. And so now, with credit in hand he browses again.
The books, the displays, they have turned, this store is a river, never the same twice, books, in and out, the displays upon the shelves have changed and are changing and are ready again to be admired.
Here, demanding your attention, a to-scale waxwork anatomical model, Man disrobing of his flesh, and, in a curious touch, from those folds of skin and flesh at his feet are growing waxwork flowers.
Instructional on a variety of levels.
"The Soul Atlas", by famous Cartographer Immanual Kant, never completed but illustrated by Homann, this the only edition. Or "The Anatomy of Souls", attributed to Herophilos but illustrated by Vesalius.
The first, the world inside made external and drawn to the scale of the world, and the last, the world drawn within man.
She would like, no, she would love either of these, but looking at them he can't choose. Whatever he chooses would be right, and wrong, for there always would be the one left behind.
Continue, past the rest of the Anatomical texts, the atlases and maps, at the other end of this shelf there's a large globe within a filigreed cage. The filigree, upon examination, is filled with constellations and embellished with jewels of topaz, sapphire, garnets and rock-crystal. The Globe, inlaid with precious minerals, gems, lapis and malachite, turquoise and azurite, comprises an earth-centric orrery used by astrologers to adjust the houses of the Zodiac, interlocking cogs, not merely a globe, upon winding hidden gears the planets will rotate about the sphere, each made out of their corresponding elements, alchemical symbols inlaid with the element denoting the planets: gold, mercury, copper, iron, tin, lead; in size and position suitable for both understanding and drawing the finest of horoscopes.
This, to be admired and marveled over, it's purchase out of reach.
More shelves, now a wall, towers of books, religion, an ornate glass reliquary, set in gilded brass, enclosing a tiny, withered, blackened twig, with plaque labeled "Sānctum Praepūtium".
The owner is here, looking through the selection and replenishing both randomly and with deliberation from the tottering towers in front.
He looks at him, eyebrow raised: "The Holy Prepuce?"
The owner replies without batting an eye: "One of hundreds.".
He's genial, so matter of fact that further conversation would be fruitless. They are of the same mind, he decides.
Faith, religion, these are not to be addressed yet, although these shelves are filled with Bibles, Korans, The Upanishads, Sutras and Bhagvad Ghita's, and beneath them volumes upon teetering volumes of informed and enlightening commentary. They have not yet discussed this.
Move on.
And by turns, in the bookstore that is perpetually inventing itself, reordering it's shelves, a labyrinth encompassing the sum total of human experience, to the occult.
The bank of shelves adjacent, 90%, from the walls of religion.
Now, here - better than religion, which she regards as too formal, stuffy, completely true, it's been poorly explained since day one.
But here, perhaps, something for her. There are all manner of fetishes, charms, and grimoires.
A Voo-doo doll from Haiti, but lightly pricked. Tarot Cards, by Crowley, Rider-Waite, or the original Marseilles deck. The I-Ching. Giant Quartz crystals from Minas Gerais in Brazil. Crystal, glass, stone spheres for scrying. A silver pendant, hand with a glass eye in the middle.
A bullet, large caliber, brass case engraved, cut with small crosses and a pointed multifoil arch, hold the primer, turn the casing and find within a finely detailed ivory idol of the Virgin Mary.
She would love this. She eschews Christianity, but instead relies on a myriad of protecting saints: St. Anthony of Padua, to find lost objects, St. Christopher for her travels, St. Francis of Assisi for her dog, St. Jude for the party out of power, every Saint she adds to her canon, is in her world, another angel enslaved, she needs only it's image, it's picture, it's statue. She, who reads the future by opening the Bible, cutting it's leaves with her eyes shut to place a finger upon verse or psalm and receive her fortune, the new-aged adventurer never so committed to any one theosophy that she could understand it, merely attempting to entice and tame their lesser angels and demons.
Superstition. It's all superstition. The first 2 commandments the first 2 to be broken, by every follower of Christianity.
This aisle is a dead end.
A Fiji mermaid, her long, needle-like teeth bared, frightening and - despite the glass case, filthy coated in dust. These, from the museum, they have more than they know what to do with. Every sailor turned naturalist returned from the equator with at least one. Folded and withered manta rays, chimpanzees crudely stitched onto shriveled fish, creative taxidermy.
A Jackalope. A piece of reddish fur attached to a piece of bone that argues it's a yeti scalp, from a monestary high in Tibet. Grotesque chimeras from the ends of the world.
There is nothing for him - or her - here today.
Continue.
Shelves after shelves, curios mark the path, ladders climb to the highest reaches.
Art, books about Klee, Mondrian, Modigliani, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Dali, Escher....
The list is endless. These shelves, 12 feet high, banked 2, 3 feet deep, 20 feet wide, and they will be emptied within the week, filled again.
What to get. To get them. To get her.
Now...perhaps he has found it. A large tome, heavy, oversized, upon a corner shelf between psychology and medicine. Shulgin's Pharmacopeia.
It's wrapped in brown paper, sealed with wax, there is no perusing it.
This. This is the book. He knows Shulgin, his work, and this - for him? for her? "For Us" he decides. He can't leave it behind. Not today.
To the counter, beneath it fine leather journals, unruly, ruled, with slim lines, lightly printed crosses or dots. Ink and inkwells and all manners of fountain pens made of swirled celluloids, like Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus all stretched and racing past...the cabinet, lit from within, millefiori paperweights, blobs of glass hold pulsing jellyfish blown from uranium, radium, neodymium, cadmium, manganese, unobtanium, swim above bright undersea corals.
The owner, after a time, finds his way to the counter. Smiles when he sees the selection.
"I was wondering when this would sell....".
"The paperweights...the jellyfish?" he enquires, and the owner explains. Rotating UV lights, hidden under the counter, different frequencies light them in different ways, thus, the illusion of movement. They are not cheap, but he takes one and places it on the counter. The jellyfish stops swimming, it still glows, but you can examine the details, the bell, the tentacles, the coral...exquisite detail. He admires this. It is a beautiful thing.
The owner places it back beneath counter and the jellyfish begins again to swim in it's tiny aquarium.
This book, Shulgin's Pharmacopeia, It's expensive, all of the credit and then some. The owner explains that this is not a book that can be returned. It is to be consumed. Digested. It must be slowly enjoyed. It is a book to be read once, and savored, over the entirety of your life. Do not rush it - for the ending - the ending, well...
Is he describing a novel?
Nevermind.
The trade is complete, the credit is used up. A "fair trade". He pays the difference, steps out of the shop, into the night air, brisk, a slight rain, sea spray, down the steps and left towards home.
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- Category: Love
They are, to each other, invisible. They see, they speak of many things long into the night, the things they speak of, a fraction, the smallest fraction of experience.
But it is their experience.
They speak of ideas, of artists, music, of movies and plays - all these things, invisible. They have the experience and then, briefly, attempt to relive it. But the experience is gone. They talk of their dreams, detailed, half-remembered and fleeting, invisible, conjured in the mind for the remembering or the telling - otherwise, invisible.
Their relationship is an abstraction, the shared glance, "Mamihlapinatapai", each reading the others mind, but this is imagination.
They talk of their feelings, but feelings, they are invisible. They fancy they can read each other - hearts and minds worn upon a sleeve, displayed in their posture, attitude, upon their face, revealed in small gestures, a door held open, a flower plucked and given, an unsolicited gift that marks and expands their territory. But these symbols, they are nothing, the thinnest froth upon the ocean. What you see is not what is there.
Invisible, the waves in the sea, only visible at the boundary between wind and water - and - the rest, the depths and the firmament, are unknown.
Their conversations, of all conversations - the smallest portion of things they could be discussing. Their skin, when touching, again - much ado made of a connection that is as much a physical boundary, barrier, you cannot go further than this, try as you might.
Unable to see the minutiae of each others lives, their ambitions, separately spoken and vaguely interpreted by the other, his writing, made tangible on the page but so much left to write about - an impossible task that he will never complete and he is stymied by the scale of it.
And she, paintings, one after another, acrylic, oil, the general improvement in technique, the explorations, failed, successful, but - in this is well, she is up against the same - in a world of infinite possibility of form, color, meaning - how to proceed?
They are clumsy in this.
Beyond them, the world, almost entirely invisible, only recognizable at the scale of their lives. A tree, recognizable in it's trunk, branches, leaves, vanishes in it's electrons, atoms, cells, in it's function, the same with people, animals, their focal length allowing them only to see one another in relationship to themselves at a scale relateable to themselves. You can see a person, but the rest of that person - the 99.99999% of them that makes them "them" - their atoms, molecules, cells, organs, their thoughts, intentions, emotions, their memories, families, history, culture, this is implied, generalized from prior experience, we know them only by this prejudice - however well intended.
Pull farther back, the houses, the street, the parks are visible, but the city never is. Only in abstractions, in curious maps drawn from hot air balloons or in the fancy of an artist, in photos taken from planes or satellites, or symbolic abstractions, from which much can be derived but little truly known.
These maps, they do not show the intricacies of the lives that make up the city, the chance encounters, noble and sordid details of the inhabitants, the histories of their families, the long emigration that finally ended them here, the wagon trains or schooners or airplanes that brought their ancestors, themselves, there are no maps to show the interdependencies of the various organs that comprise a city, the churches, governments, water and sewage, power, the shops and markets that give it a life beyond the small sum of it's members.
From far enough away, and with enough technology and resources we can animate these maps, show the ebb and flow of traffic, the tentacles of farther and farther flung suburbs that append themselves to the city, fill in, at nighttime a vast glittering constellation, a phosphorescent jellyfish hung in the sea. But these are all tricks done to bring it to a scale we can apprehend.
The air, on a good day, by and largely invisible, the water, by the good fortune of the developed world, invisible, its shape formed by the glass, curving the light that passes through it.
The infinitude of waves that make up the telephone, the internet, that reflect from satellites, appear on our phones as texts, on our televisions as "programs" or "news", that are hopefully beamed into space in our vainglorious search for an intelligence beyond ours, our audacity in thinking we would even recognize it, the light - and the darkness that surrounds us in the turning of our days, all this too is invisible.
The world, history, deep beneath their feet, invisible unless you should take the initiative, dig a hole, and always, deeper, deeper, always what you find is not what's there...
Your imagination fills in the gaps. And this - we know, this is not real. It is invisible.
The world, experienced, translated through sight, sound, temperature, texture, given a new life in the brain, often of a completely different aspect than what has been witnessed.
And in the margins are the demons, the angels, the hierarchies of a thousand, a million, an infinitude of celestial beings, bright lights and dark shadows, these, weaving destinies and lives, these too are invisible and only a lunatic could grasp what they're up to....
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- Category: Love
There is rain, and they talk and are uncertain of many things.
That they enjoy each others company, this is certain, however there is always the caution of giving away too much, too soon. They share irrelevant secrets. Free time is spent together - entirely, for her time is her own and she can do as she pleases. She schedules life's obligations around time spent with him. She is fluid, receptive.
His time is not so much his own. The bills for him keep coming in. He takes on work. Acting, the pay, not so good, but work is work. It pays the bills. His resume grows; the titular "Godot", Protopopov in Chekhov's "Three Sisters", toe tag #32 & cadaver #14 in a popular syndicated TV crime show. Masked attacker #2 in a Crimestoppers recreation. He gets work with a local Shakespearean company, playing Valentine in "Romeo and Juliet", Fauconbridge in "Henry the IV", Beaumont in "Henry the V", Mercer in "Timons of Athens".
She sees many of his plays and is admiring and encouraging. It is praised wasted on a talent he doesn't value, for he knows he should less be the player and more the author.
Slowly they grow together, intertwined. Green buds, the smell of lilacs in the rain-fresh air, great knots of dark cumulus clouds with silver linings, great steel anvils that grow throughout the afternoon promising the greatest spring thundershowers, gathering and poised in the sky, flickers of lightening, peals of thunder, afterwards, bright birds chirping against the bluest sky you've ever seen. They escape the city, drive through fields of lavender, wheat, canola, great swathes of prairie. Drive through gently rolling foothills filled with vineyards promising fresh inebriations, through staggering mountain vistas and passes swathed in snow, alongside emerald lakes and cedar chalets. Drive together when you can find the time, explore, find further flung antique shops, thrift shops, flea markets, odd museums, curious roadside attractions, past dilapidated farm houses, abandoned churches, shrunken villages, break uncharted territory, shun no detour, explore and discover...
Evenings there is the theatre, the cool walk home, she will be waiting for him, he has cut her a key, they will drink wine and fall into bed. His bed, her bed, the mattress pitches them together in the center and he begins, biting lightly upon her neck, shoulders, hands wrapped around her hips until she arches into him. Now he kisses down her body, he works his way to the front, kisses her nipples, flicks with his tongue, kiss her lips, then down her body until she wraps her thighs about his head, clenches it, he grips her ass as if he were trying to devour her, until it is too much and she pulls him again up the bed...
Afterwards, trace the constellations on her back, blemish to mole, the nebulae of birthmarks, lightly, whisper close into her ear until it tickles and her toes curl, press your chin into her shoulder, feel her hips and pull her in close, her head upon your arm, your free hand reaching around to caress rosebud nipples...
Wake her in the middle of the night. Take her outside. Look at the stars. The shimmer of the Aurora, a fiery blue and green curtain being shaken out over the sky. Colors change, the luminous dance of brightens and then fades itself out of existence.
Meteors, wait, head to head in the grass, they unfocus their eyes and watch the sky and report the flickering trails - excited when they both capture one overhead, the fleet blazing, twinkle, the glowing trace that lingers upon the retina.
Discover, fireflies, far outside their range, come upon them in a hollow hidden in a field, flitting in and out, blinking, since when have they lived here? Since never. But, nevertheless, here they are. They have come for them.
Mornings, Music, Coffee on, a new day of fresh adventures and inspiration, a wide blue sky beckoning, where will they go and what will they do?
Love is the gift of a second youth. He knows it, but doesn't speak it. Perhaps she knows it as well? Or...
It doesn't bear discussion. If he feels it, then surely she must too.
***
She has a secret. A grimoire in her own hand, he has found it, secreted behind a book. A journal or diary. In it the conjuration of their lives. Her handwriting, childish, there are symbols, she has written her intents, and he has been summoned.
For him, she was less summoned than unfolded. Picked up like a rare book and discovered to be worth the reading.
But what are we to each other? And in this - well, he was summoned, she discovered, there is a divine plan. That they should meet, each on their own terms. And that he has found her swathed in poetry and read to her melancholy verse, after the cast of her heart, this, because now in their lives there is no melancholy or sadness, these feelings must be lived vicariously, through words or upon the screen.
***
She pores over his writing. Notes left strewn upon the desk, she knows she is forbidden, but - who wouldn't? There will be no secrets between them. And the writing, to be fair, is mediocre, there is nothing now that he has found her to chafe or rail against. She is his muse, and he dares not put into writing what might break the spell...
- Details
- Category: Love
The city encroaches it. All great cities are thus, prows built into the waves, the waterfront, shops, houses huddling behind. And the city grows, at first, around harbours, builds its own, houses, neighborhoods expand backwards, up into the hills, into the mountains, or further into the plains, because where else can they? And there comes a point where someone thinks to fill in the sea, and so they do, they build the city out onto artificial spits, islands, fortify it against the waves, build it up, higher and higher, filling it in more and more, raising up the seashore on great concrete piles, carry stones to fill it in, and so always the city is growing into the sea.
And let us for a moment consider the sea. Or the ocean. Or perhaps a great lake or river that abuts the city, but always there is water - London has the Thames, Paris the Seine, Montreal the St Lawrence, Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong - every city worth mentioning has this.
So to the sea. The city, a port that overhangs the abyss, strange creatures that are washed upon the shore, bloated, of no resemblance whatsoever to their former living selves. People gather, those that can stand the smell, to speculate at what this might have been.
Find tidal pools, lagoons filled with starfish, jellyfish, anemones, tiny crabs and barnacles, mussels, look out upon it, the spume of whales in the air, perhaps the leap of dolphins or rays, flying fish, the bark of seals and sea lions, otters crack shells upon their belly, the freighters, ships, sloops and sailboats that ply the waters know virtually nothing of it, every sailor and passenger is cautious of a too familiar acquaintance. They know only their side of the waves, this rippling boundary of worlds.
Consider what lies beneath.
The first few dozens of feet, well, on a clear day you can see this. Perhaps a sandy bottom, crabs, sand dollars, fish. A coral reef filled with life, bright neon fish of every shape and hue. The silhouette of sharks coming into shallow waters, the migration of gentle manatees, these first few feet would reward an entire lifetime of study. Jellyfish gently pulse, sea grass waves.
At night the waves are lit with bioluminescent plankton, footprints are outlined in the sand, splashes in the water generate sprays of light. Waves flicker as they crash into the shore.
These first few feet, we can know this - somewhat - we can see it, watch it.
But what of the Abyss?
For the sea, these first few feet, what we can see, this is nothing of it. Nothing at all. That decomposing monstrosity on the beach surrounded by curious onlookers, that did not come from the first few feet. These first few feet, trying to guess what is in the sea by that is like trying to guess the contents of a book by a single, randomly chosen word.
There are the illustrations and tales of sailors that have plied the seas their entire lives. The documented first-hand accounts of sea monsters, kraken, giant squid attacking galleons, tentacles reaching up from the ocean to pluck their sailors and pull their boats to a watery demise, of prehistoric heads upon lengthy necks, there are tales of ships towed by their anchors towards unknown purposes until in desperation they cut them. Sounding leads are brought up from great depths, flattened by the pressure. There are fish that lose all shape and explode when brought to the surface. There are the accounts of whalers, dinner plate sized scars on whales from their undersea battles with giant squid. Or the ghost ships - the Mary Celeste, The Lady Lovibond, The Baychimo, The Octavius, The Flying Dutchman, ships abandoned or found adrift with - quite literally - skeleton crews, bones tied to the wheel, to the Crows nest, skeletons dangling from the rigging through great swathes of seaweed, masts hissing and crackling with St. Elmo's Fire, phosphorescent ripples light the bow and stern, phantom ships sailing from port to port, emerging through fog, quietly appearing before terrified witnesses only to sail onward on their supernatural errands, to great domed cities and tropical ports appearing on distant horizons, shimmering just above the waves...
And even these mysteries, these are what are passed to us by witnesses - there are countless more, unrecorded, because none survived or returned to tell the tale. What we know, the hearsay, only confirms our ignorance. What of all the vanished lighthouse keepers, the Flannan Isles, for example, one perhaps an accident, but 3? The light lit, dinners on the table - and an uncanny, knowing quiet that speaks of sudden misfortune, the precise circumstances of which will never be known.
Imagine those first occupants of diving bells, watching the sea swarm past through portholes...A giant blown glass diving bell, Venetian, occupants lowered into a harbour, water pressing up through the bottom, wetting their shoes and ankles, earlier even, weighted to the bottom of the sea to gather shells, pearls, salvage cannon from shipwrecks. Great dark shapes pass overhead, shadows against the dappling light. Or Alexander, who surveying the depths from his glass barrel pronounces the world damned. Or John Deane, "The Infernal Diver", weighted and striding along the bottom of the sea, gathering treasures from shipwrecks, his copper and brass helmet fed by hoses from the surface, as deep as he dived he never once plunged into the twilight.
The mind wanders where the body cannot, these few expeditions beneath the wave fuel the legends of great spiraling cities grown of coral and conch shells, ornamented with pearls and fortified with cannon, populated by mermaids and water nymphs, guardians of towers of blackening ingots of silver, flashing doubloons, pieces of eight, gold chains, the viridescent glimmering of emerald and diamond brooches, rings, pendants, strewn upon the sandy bottom, jewels, precious metals, amphora, sculptures, the bric-a-brac of millennia fallen, falling still from that rippling boundary between worlds.
Poseidon now the keeper of fortunes that any, that every king would envy. The gathered riches and plunder of man and pirate rained into the sea. Mermaids, by reputation, Mermen, by implication, guarding those oceanic treasures. The rivers, the lakes, they are guarded by Neptune and the undine spirits.
Beebe and Barton together invent the Bathysphere, a small round sphere that fits 2. Built to withstand incredible the incredible pressures of the depths, the first attempt is a failure - three inches of steel, too heavy to be craned into the sea, and so they reengineer it, build another, more lightweight, and together they make the first, the deepest dives beyond all light, through the twilight zone, cables connecting them to a ship, bringing power, radio, light, fresh air, and finally steel to return them to the surface. These are their umbilical cords.
They are lowered into the abyss, the blackening void. There are two portholes, through which cramped they can look out into the sea. They see deep sea anglerfish, lantern fish, vampire squid, jellyfish. Grotesque blobs and streamers of protoplasm, outlandish goblin sharks, bizarre and fanciful creatures unfamiliar to eyes accustomed to evolution at or near sea level. They see other things too, even more unlikely, that challenge their powers of observation and description. The air is stale, foul, the bathysphere is cold, but they are transfixed. Turning the light off now their eyes adjust - they see the pulsing lures of the anglerfish, the lanternfish, the firefly squid, the vampire squid with it's clouds of luminous ink, plankton flickering like stars in the sky. They reach unprecedented depths. Silence? No, there is always sound, the straining of cables, crackle of the radio, the fan that brings them air, the hum of electricity, the distant song of whales, the clicking of shrimp, hold your breath and strain your ears to hear above the background noise...
Plankton swim and rain past them into the void. They are nowhere near the bottom, the sea might extend through the entire earth for all they know, it's unfathomable, without bottom, below them only the inky black increasing pressure of the abyss.
Something bumps the bathysphere.
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- Category: Love