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Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940
Page 17
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17 to play my favorite record; the first scene of Chaikovsky's SWAN LAKE ballet, as loudly as possible. The sound was not so deafening as -- maddening, or better still, intoxicating. How I Loved it! I sat cross-legged, eyes shut, dreaming, at last absolutely happy. More: ecstatic. "The first notes were like an invitation emanating from a lost dimension, calling me, wheedling. Promising haven, peace. The call of the unknown: not the lure of a dashing adventure but of mystery, mournful secrecy, epic splendors... "Deep in my heart there's a sort of innate Slavic sadness which responded to the music's plaint, and my thought traveled with the melody effortlessly on and on. The warm darkness of my closed eyes lightened to infinities of cold, deep-blue emptiness, through which I felt myself gliding as the theme progressed. "Each harmonic burst, every wailing echo, dominated me. My thought was borne farther and farther like a leaf in a tempest...There were bass chords which made my throat quiver, and tears burned under my lowered eyelids. I felt a tingling at my shoulders, and with eyes still closed but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned, beheld luminous yellow -- draperies? -- fluttering behind me, buoying me: like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails. "An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonishing me to withdraw from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come -- but the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing filaments, vascular channels of fluid light. "A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats, emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed me was only a distorted, ghostly echo...In tangible waves this greater music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to force me away on its tides I know not whither. "Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote place came -- trees? -- snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore, instead of leaves, flexible lenses...They left behind them red trails on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focusing their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places, greying rapidly under the moons' effulgence, chemically affected by it. "And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups, pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous cluster, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact forms...shuddering with a violent ardor...From erectile protuberances rimming the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with incandescence under the condensed moonlight. "Spent drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant orgasmic matter drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved away indifferently. "Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew, dulling, becoming opaque, substantial -- thrusting out probing roots, developing limbs,
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17 to play my favorite record; the first scene of Chaikovsky's SWAN LAKE ballet, as loudly as possible. The sound was not so deafening as -- maddening, or better still, intoxicating. How I Loved it! I sat cross-legged, eyes shut, dreaming, at last absolutely happy. More: ecstatic. "The first notes were like an invitation emanating from a lost dimension, calling me, wheedling. Promising haven, peace. The call of the unknown: not the lure of a dashing adventure but of mystery, mournful secrecy, epic splendors... "Deep in my heart there's a sort of innate Slavic sadness which responded to the music's plaint, and my thought traveled with the melody effortlessly on and on. The warm darkness of my closed eyes lightened to infinities of cold, deep-blue emptiness, through which I felt myself gliding as the theme progressed. "Each harmonic burst, every wailing echo, dominated me. My thought was borne farther and farther like a leaf in a tempest...There were bass chords which made my throat quiver, and tears burned under my lowered eyelids. I felt a tingling at my shoulders, and with eyes still closed but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned, beheld luminous yellow -- draperies? -- fluttering behind me, buoying me: like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails. "An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonishing me to withdraw from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come -- but the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing filaments, vascular channels of fluid light. "A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats, emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed me was only a distorted, ghostly echo...In tangible waves this greater music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to force me away on its tides I know not whither. "Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote place came -- trees? -- snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore, instead of leaves, flexible lenses...They left behind them red trails on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focusing their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places, greying rapidly under the moons' effulgence, chemically affected by it. "And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups, pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous cluster, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact forms...shuddering with a violent ardor...From erectile protuberances rimming the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with incandescence under the condensed moonlight. "Spent drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant orgasmic matter drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved away indifferently. "Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew, dulling, becoming opaque, substantial -- thrusting out probing roots, developing limbs,
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