greenvincentine

[greenvincentine]

“Nothing is sweeter to funereal hearts On whom the frost of ages has been laid… than the eternal sight of your pale shade.”

Charles Baudelaire, “Mists and Rains” (translation)

[greenvincentine]

Look and they Can't be found, Playing their Presence down. Listen they make No sound, Look and they go To ground. You may wake To find Your coffee cup Is empty, And the tray You left Is not bedside The door. You are sure you Had another Hidden carton When you look For it, it's not there Anymore. Inky bloaters! They're a Consequence of Never being sure, Look and they Can't be found...

"Inky Bloaters" Dannielle Dax

[greenvincentine]

These towns were all the same.

The corner in Chattanooga did not strike her as any different from a downtown curb in Charlotte, just as the holiday decorations seemed not to distinguish Albany’s sidewalks from those in the various cities of, say, Ohio or Pennsylvania. And she’d seen a few, because sidewalks in various cities are what you see when you can’t stop moving.

It was the same with friends, lovers, the last husband, and even a couple of distant cousins; all of them offered identical disappointments, cruelties, and neglect. Because of this, she went through people the way a five year-old goes through a box of animal crackers. The moment she heard the single word—or spotted the one gesture—that had previously signaled that this cousin or that neighbor might injure her in a small or large way, she packed a bag and unfolded a map.

She was never wrong about people. That girl at the cosmetics counter near the bottom of the escalator was like ice, and so it was child’s play to correctly guess that the department store worker who greeted her at the top of the escalator would be just as aloof. Those three women walking together past display windows might be her girlfriends for a year or longer, should she choose to stay in this town. Then the day would arrive when they were not her friends. Arrival and departure.

She could take a bus the rest of the way. She knew precisely where each one was headed, long before the destination sign came within view. All buses have the same destination. They were all the same.

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Faye Tully, my new massage therapist and also my "regular" therapist, makes house calls. And she practices alternative healing.

Yesterday afternoon she popped by for tea and stayed until just after midnight; tells me these non-professional social visits are "part of the process." I'm all for it, now that my lower lumbar is worrying me again.

Faye made herself at home with a book of ghost stories and some vintage pulp magazines I keep on hand for October evenings on my back porch. After a long silence (roughly an hour) I mentioned that, re: alternative healing, at the hospital where I work there's an emphasis on evidence-based medicine. Empirical science and whatnot.

"Do the experts at your medical center understand that appointments with specialists always being four to six months out is essentially 'no' medicine, evidence or not?" she fired back.

Yep, Faye is one tough cookie. And she's not whistling Dixie when she uses the term "alternative."

Has a little bag of carved jade runes in her briefcase. Tarot. Planchette. Keeps miniature black candles in an old Altoids tin. Her notes are written in hieroglyphics with a quill.

Among other keepsakes in that briefcase was a crumpled photo of a man "somewhere in Yugoslavia, 1945" whom she swears is her grandfather and fought the fascists; he's got a beat-up Enfield slung over his shoulder and wears a partisan scarf, so maybe so. That photo and her Eastern Bloc accent make Faye's claim to be born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, seem slightly off bubble.

But I do love that she carries in a tiny wicker basket her treasured pet hedgehog, Mr. Brush. He's a well behaved and endlessly curious little gnome, so I let him have the run of my porch during the visit.

Faye lit one of those candles, which, after three hours, was still not a quarter-inch shorter than when match met wick. I told Faye that her perpetual candle was one of the most amazing devices I'd ever seen.

"Infinity is a constant illusion," she sighed. "But we can always dream about forever."

"I see what you did with that sentence construction," I replied." "Constant with infinity. Always with forever. Is your incantation redundant, tautological, or just magical?"

"Look at you catching the subtle clues, inspector," she said. "But I'm not the local witch, even in October."

"Well you kind of are," I said, then scooped up Mr. Brush and rubbed his belly. "You have the cutest little familiar in town."

The greenhouse clock stuck midnight. Mr. Brush made a happy clucking sound. Faye pinched out the candle.

"You should give that a rest, Dave. Especially in October."

She calls me Dave. Did I mention that she's gorgeous?

[greenvincentine]

This time of year, circa way back when, finding this and similar gems in any library had me set for the season.

I've been hooked since 4th grade, after reading a story by H.P. Lovecraft, the gist of which I grasped maybe 50%. Maybe.

But I stayed with this kind of stuff, reinforced by Rod Serling's "Night Gallery," which often presented TV versions of stories by some of the authors I loved.

By 8th grade at least two of my teachers sightly feared me, and if that's not a testament to the value of books, what is?

[greenvincentine]

“How many Magick days each month can our district expect in 2025?

Majick Days are made from rune days and circle days. We will cast runes on the third day of each month; our community shall gather as one on circle days.

There will be 17 Magick days in 2025. We know this because these days are determined each October (the Month of Months) on the measure day. A full moon marks the measure day, which for this year will be October 17. Taking 12 rune days from 17 Majick days leaves five circle days.

Therefore we shall form our circle five times in 2025. The date of each circle day is, as usual, unknowable in advance.”  

Minutes from Circle Day Advisory panel, Oxbourne-Welling Town Council, 13 September, 2024

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“While dreaming, we are out of touch with our bodies and consequently liberated from the physical constraints imposed by waking perception…The part of us that ‘leaves the body’ travels in mental, not physical space. Consequently, it would seem reasonable to suppose that we never “leave our bodies” because we are never in them.  The mind is not merely its own place, the mind is its only place.”

from “Dreaming, Illusion, and Reality”  Stephen LaBerge

Image: "Coney Island Fortune Teller," 1951, Martin Elkort

[greenvincentine]

“The astral light is projected by glance, by voice, and by the thumb and palm of the hand. Music is a potent auxiliary of the voice, and hence comes the word 'enchantment.'”

from  Transcendental Magic:  Its Doctrine and Ritual   Alphonse Louis Constant

[greenvincentine]

Susan can see the stones changing. Susan can see the sky changing.

What changes can you see? Do you think Susan will change too?

Science for Modern Living: 1 Along the Way  Victor C. Smith and Katherine Clarke

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Summer has arrived, and we feel its presence most strongly on this day. We know the season will bring signs and wonders.

Signs are the gifts of summer that we understand. Wonders are the gifts that we still seek to understand.

There are places that will help us understand the wonders. We can gather in these places to learn.

from The World We Know: Science for Primary Education  Karin Jurgens and Damien Fell  (Learning Cycle, publishers)

images: Richard Demarco digital archives

[greenvincentine]

Is this a picture of summer? How can you tell?

Science for You  Frasier, McCracken, and Decker for the Singer Science Series

[greenvincentine]

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam.

On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before."

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

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It is June. I am tired of being brave.

from “The Truth The Dead  Know”  Anne Sexton

image: Sabine Weiss

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The children have reached the edge of the forest.

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I shall go back again to the bleak shore And build a little shanty on the sand, In such a way that the extremest band Of brittle seaweed will escape my door But by a yard or two; and nevermore Shall I return to take you by the hand; I shall be gone to what I understand, And happier than I ever was before. The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung. But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

"I shall go back again to the bleak shore" Edna St. Vincent Millay

Image: Nosferatu (1979, Werner Herzog)

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The sun, that brave man, Comes through boughs that lie in wait, That brave man.

Green and gloomy eyes In dark forms of the grass Run away.

The good stars, Pale helms and spiky spurs, Run away.

Fears of my bed, Fears of life and fears of death, Run away.

That brave man comes up From below and walks without meditation, That brave man.

"The Brave Man" Wallace Stevens

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The house was just twinkling in the moon light,    And inside it twinkling with delight, Is my baby bright. Twinkling with delight in the house twinkling    with the moonlight, Bless my baby bless my baby bright, Bless my baby twinkling with delight, In the house twinkling in the moon light, Her hubby dear loves to cheer when he thinks and he always thinks when he knows and he always    knows that his blessed baby wifey is all here and he is all hers, and sticks to her like burrs, blessed baby

[The house was just twinkling in the moon light] Gertrude Stein

image: Coby Whitmore