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God lit a candle and then made us. He was afraid of being alone in the dark.
A man doesn’t apprehend heaven in his gaze; he beholds a chasm. For he gazes not upward, but downward; deep into a cold, black rift strung along its jaws with tiny, dying lights.
It’s the compact mankind forged with canine when that first scrawny dog came into the cave to share a fire. Dogs were right there when we conquered this world. They helped us wrest it from all comers. We humans owe a blood debt. It can’t be repaid, only honored.”
Besides, as a man loved to tell me, There’s no future and there’s no past, only the eternal now. Time is a ring; no beginning, no end, just a big hole.”
Superstition isn’t my bag; on the other hand, I tend to respect the notion of synchronicity. Butterfly wings, prophetic dreams, and so forth. The atmosphere and the Americanized, commercialized tokens of death and devilry collaborated to reinforce my sense of impending doom.
Blackness ate inward from the corners of my vision. Reality crumpled and bloomed like a cigarette burn on a movie screen.
Whatever had transpired in this area in the ’60s and ’70s lingered as a dim, psychic taint. I tamped down the urge to growl. When a wild animal encounters something outside its natural routine, primordial instincts surface.
The scalpel of grim epiphany sliced into my consciousness.
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans, brother. Fear and attraction in the face of the tremendous mystery. We’re surrounded by majesties and horrors.”
