1.
THE
STORM
The horizon starkly divides bright blue heavens from ochre earth. There is the hot, dry smell of sun-baked dust. A terrible stillness smothers everything.
A wind picks up, imperceptibly at first, then with increasing intensity. The breeze brings moisture. Clouds darken the sky. A solitary raindrop falls to the earth and stirs up a tiny cloud of dust.
Suddenly the storm breaks. The downpour obliterates the horizon in a homogenous grey. In the fury, all is one.
The heavy, dark smell of moist earth outlives the storm. Throughout the land seeds start pushing their bright green shoots up towards heaven.
2. THE VAMPIRE
... procreation is as close as a mortal can get to being immortal and undying
She materialised in his room in the dust of a moonbeam, hypnotised him, and sucked his blood. In the darkness of the moon she left him lying in a deathlike sleep, blood in dust.
By the light of the sun, he found her tomb and entered it and her: her deathless beauty enchanted him. As the moment came, weakened with loss of blood, his heart stopped. He died a mortal death.
Thus and only thus she conceived in her coffin and lost her taste for human blood. The moon waned while she swelled. She died in childbirth, an immortal death.
3. BRAZILIANS MOURN THEIR DOUBLE DEATH
Than whan his name apalled is for age,
Thanne is it best, as for a worthy fame,
To dyen whan that he is best of name.
"RIO DE JANEIRO. – Brazilians mourned the death of Ayrton Senna yesterday, calling him the country's greatest sports hero behind Pele and criticising Formula One officials for rule changes they say caused his fatal crash." (Pretoria News Monday, May 2, 1994, p. 1)
"RECIFE (Brazil). – In a ceremony befitting the football royalty status of its primary man, Pele (fifty-three) was married to a thirty-four-year-old psychologist here on Saturday in this coastal town, northeast of Rio.
"The king of football cried during the fifty-minute service..." (Pretoria News Monday, May 2, 1994, p. 5)
The less fatal Brazilian death received front-page coverage: weep with Pele for his long and happy marriage!
4. VESSELS FILLED WITH SOUL
Earth bore fruit wherever heaven rained, except in areas of clay, the earth which holds water.
The blind old woman gathered some clay and, inside her cave, pounded out the air-bubbles. Wise fingers fashioned from the clay a vessel, a space within space, to contain good things. She made several copies, her eyes fixed inwardly on the original in heaven.
When the rain ceased and she could feel the light of the sun, the old woman placed the vessels outside her cave. The eye of heaven burned the water out of them and made them hard, weak imitations of eternity.
5. A TREE FALLS
An author, filled with admiration for an ancient oak tree, wrote a story:
An old man contemplated an ancient tree and considered how much older it was than he, and how much longer it would continue to exist once he had died. In a fiery fury, fuelled by envy, the man chopped the tree down. As the tree fell it crushed the man beneath it. From the tree’s stump a twig eventually grew into a new tree.
Many trees fell to provide the paper to publish the story just so that the author could achieve a pale copy of immortality.
The horizon starkly divides bright blue heavens from ochre earth. There is the hot, dry smell of sun-baked dust. A terrible stillness smothers everything.
A wind picks up, imperceptibly at first, then with increasing intensity. The breeze brings moisture. Clouds darken the sky. A solitary raindrop falls to the earth and stirs up a tiny cloud of dust.
Suddenly the storm breaks. The downpour obliterates the horizon in a homogenous grey. In the fury, all is one.
The heavy, dark smell of moist earth outlives the storm. Throughout the land seeds start pushing their bright green shoots up towards heaven.
2. THE VAMPIRE
... procreation is as close as a mortal can get to being immortal and undying
She materialised in his room in the dust of a moonbeam, hypnotised him, and sucked his blood. In the darkness of the moon she left him lying in a deathlike sleep, blood in dust.
By the light of the sun, he found her tomb and entered it and her: her deathless beauty enchanted him. As the moment came, weakened with loss of blood, his heart stopped. He died a mortal death.
Thus and only thus she conceived in her coffin and lost her taste for human blood. The moon waned while she swelled. She died in childbirth, an immortal death.
3. BRAZILIANS MOURN THEIR DOUBLE DEATH
Than whan his name apalled is for age,
Thanne is it best, as for a worthy fame,
To dyen whan that he is best of name.
"RIO DE JANEIRO. – Brazilians mourned the death of Ayrton Senna yesterday, calling him the country's greatest sports hero behind Pele and criticising Formula One officials for rule changes they say caused his fatal crash." (Pretoria News Monday, May 2, 1994, p. 1)
"RECIFE (Brazil). – In a ceremony befitting the football royalty status of its primary man, Pele (fifty-three) was married to a thirty-four-year-old psychologist here on Saturday in this coastal town, northeast of Rio.
"The king of football cried during the fifty-minute service..." (Pretoria News Monday, May 2, 1994, p. 5)
The less fatal Brazilian death received front-page coverage: weep with Pele for his long and happy marriage!
4. VESSELS FILLED WITH SOUL
Earth bore fruit wherever heaven rained, except in areas of clay, the earth which holds water.
The blind old woman gathered some clay and, inside her cave, pounded out the air-bubbles. Wise fingers fashioned from the clay a vessel, a space within space, to contain good things. She made several copies, her eyes fixed inwardly on the original in heaven.
When the rain ceased and she could feel the light of the sun, the old woman placed the vessels outside her cave. The eye of heaven burned the water out of them and made them hard, weak imitations of eternity.
5. A TREE FALLS
An author, filled with admiration for an ancient oak tree, wrote a story:
An old man contemplated an ancient tree and considered how much older it was than he, and how much longer it would continue to exist once he had died. In a fiery fury, fuelled by envy, the man chopped the tree down. As the tree fell it crushed the man beneath it. From the tree’s stump a twig eventually grew into a new tree.
Many trees fell to provide the paper to publish the story just so that the author could achieve a pale copy of immortality.