fallslikesnow

Silver in the Moonlight Chapter One “Between the lighthouse and the hills At the crossroads that none can see When the moon is full, through the eye in the stone Turn east to come to me” Tom woke struggling to breathe, as though his sleep had been ended by some large beast leaping on his chest. His room was dark, lit only by the dim starlight through his window, and the only sound was the heaving of his chest. As his panic slowly ebbed away he struggled to hold onto the one thing he knew to be important from the dream that had caused it – the clear, unarguable knowledge that in moonlight blood looked like molten silver. The next day, he rose after spending the rest of the night trying to sleepily sort through the feelings this dream fragment had left him with. Fear certainly, but also a strange kind of exultation, as though he has been given a piece of knowledge that few others possessed and fewer still could use. That idea brought him to a halt as he absently pulled on...

USA Coastal Waters, 29 deg 14' N, 92 deg 24' W 03-05-2002 Losses At some point over the last three years I lost something. Exactly what is hard to put into words, perhaps because no word exists for it.. This thing that I have lost was an ability, a way of looking at the world, perhaps a blind spot of some kind - whatever, it had, I suspect, no independent existence of its own, but was rather defined by the place where other, more "concrete", psychological and emotional entities intersect. It had something to do with: mental and emotional flexibility; curiosity about the world around me; a set of precious memories that served to glow with significance and a kind of holiness and provided an anchor when times were hard; many other things, some or all of which may be referred to subsequently. As I said above, the lost thing partakes of all the above qualities and more, but had a flavour of its own. It manifested as a kind of clear-sighted and realistic optimis...

We hit the tarmac running. The chopper blades still turning, we ran through the smells of half burned aviation fuel and rain under a sky so low it looked like the ceiling of a hospital room. We claimed our bags and jumped in a taxi for the railway station. When the sun is out Aberdeen can look like some slightly grim town out of faerie: the granite sparkles and accentuates the fanciful touches of the architecture. The delicate crenelations along the top of a terrace of shops; the impractical turretts on a dour family home. On days like this one the city looks like it was carved out of heavy dark cloud: at any time it could collapse into vast pools of dirty water. We caught the train. "I anticipated a greater degree of total non-linearity there my friend," said Shawn. "We dodged bullets both metaphorical and psychological, although thankfully not literal." East Scotland raced past outside the window. Wasted little towns, falling apart as we passed. "...

"'Tis ane of their Tenets, that nothing periƒheth, but (as the Sun and Year) every Thing goes in a Circle, leƒƒer or greater, and is renewed and refreƒhed in its Revolutions; as 'tis another, that every Bodie in the Creation moves, (which is a ƒort of Life;) and that nothing moves, but [h]as another Animal moving on it; and ƒo on, to the utmoƒt minuteƒt Corpuƒcle that's capable to be a Receptacle of Life." The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang [1893]